Commentary on Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15

Elna K. Solvang
Give us this day our daily bread...and meat.
Anyone who has ever led a large group of people through unfamiliar territory is sure to
have heard complaints -- often over trivial matters -- from some or even many members of
the group. The complaining can quickly sour relationships and provoke the leader to regret
that he or she took the group away in the first place.
The complaining is loud and clear in this Exodus passage. Moses, Aaron and God get an
earful. For us as readers, it is tempting to adopt the position of story outsider and treat the
complaining as whiners, condemning the Israelites as faithless.
No one likes listening to complaint. Individuals in power or in the majority can often
choose to ignore a complaint, dismiss it as mere whining, or punish the complainant. In
contrast, to listen to a complaint involves seeing the world from another's position and
hearing a call to act.
Thus, to condemn the Israelites for complaining in Exodus 16 would be to introduce a
judgment that the text itself does not make, sending the message that complaint has no
place in life with God.
This, of course, is not true. The laments in the Book of Psalms give voice to the human
experience of abandonment, suffering, fear, and danger. The laments call upon God to see,
arise, and act (e.g., Psalm 10, 13, 89). In the Book of Job, Job rejects an attitude of
resignation toward his suffering. Instead, he unleashes a lengthy and detailed complaint
against God's treatment of the righteous and God's management of the world. From the
cross, Jesus cries out in anguish, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark
15:34; Psalm 22:1).
At its core, complaint is a turning to God -- not away -- trusting that God the Almighty does
not ignore, dismiss or punish those who call out in fear, anger, suffering, and need.
In Exodus 16, the Israelites are beginning their second month of wilderness walking (16:1)
following their deliverance from Egypt. The dangers of the wilderness are real -- the
Israelites have already faced thirst (Exodus 15:22-25), now hunger, and later they will face
attack (Exodus 17:8-13). They do not exaggerate their predicament. They are no longer part
of the system of labor that fed them in the past. They cannot supply their own needs.
They are hungry. Their situation is dire and there is no visible way out.

The complaint that there is no food, the fear of the present, and the longing to be back in an
earlier time are not constrained to the pages of Exodus. The situation is the same for the
world's poor today, and they are joined by increasing numbers of people losing homes,
jobs, health care, pensions, dignity, property, and savings in the wake of global economic
turbulence.
Exodus 16 offers the assurance that the wilderness of want is not a God-forsaken time or
place. As Moses instructs Aaron to say to the Israelites: "Draw near to the LORD, for he
has heard your complaining" (16:9).
It must be acknowledged that a complaint does not always contain the best solution. In their
complaining, the Israelites declare it would have been better to have died in Egypt than be
facing hunger in the wilderness. In recalling Egypt, they think not of death but of food,
specifically meat and bread. In their complaint, Egypt sounds like the good life as they
remember how they "sat by the fleshpots and ate [their] fill of bread" (16:3). In their real
fear for the future, the Israelites look back to Egypt as the way of life that sustained them.
The wilderness is a place of danger and want. It is also a space for learning new ways of
relating that are not based on the identity the Israelites had and the life they lived in Egypt.
In Egypt, the Israelites' lives and service benefitted Pharaoh. In the wilderness, their lives
begin to be reordered. In the Sinai Covenant (Exodus 20:1-17) the loyalty of the Israelites is
redirected from Pharaoh to Yahweh. Their service no longer benefits Pharaoh but goes
towards building a community characterized by integrity, honor, care and compassion.
The wilderness is also the place where the Israelites come to know the God who has
demanded and accomplished their release from slavery. In the dispute with Pharaoh,
Yahweh claims the Israelites as Yahweh's own ("Let my people go so that they may
worship me" Exodus 9:13). God demonstrates power over humans in defeating Pharaoh and
power over creation in delivering the Israelites.
What is unknown as the Israelites exit Egypt is how this powerful God will relate to them
in the future. Exodus 16 offers a glimpse of this emerging relationship.
God hears the complaining of the Israelites. God recognizes not only their need for
sustenance -- daily bread -- but their desire for a life beyond scarcity -- meat.
God responds by sending quail for meat and manna for bread. God proves to be a different
type of lord than Pharaoh.
What an awesome scene as the dew lifts and the sun rises: the wilderness ground is covered
with a "flaky substance, as fine as frost" (16:14). It is unfamiliar to the Israelites and they
are puzzled, perhaps even fearful, as they ask each other: "What is it?" (16:15).

It is, Moses explains, bread from Yahweh given to them. As the Israelites move into their
wilderness journey God has found new ways to provide for them. The manna supplied to
the Israelites may offer hope to people today that God can and does provide in new and
fitting ways in changed and uncharted conditions.
There is another amazing surprise in this passage. As the people "looked toward the
wilderness...the glory of the LORD appeared" (16:10). It is not just on a mountaintop or
just to Moses and Aaron that God appears.
God is near and listening to those whom we might be tempted to call faithless: those who
complain to God because they are hungry, anxious, dislocated, in unfamiliar territory and
without a clear plan for the future. There God is present. For them the glory of the LORD is
revealed in daily bread...and meat.