with bread and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God." The whole immense company had now had a sufficient meal, and were in the pleasant, satisfactory condition of people in whom a ravenous appetite has been fully gratified. But in the morning they were to have a full sufficiency of bread also; and many queries were started among them, and many conjectures hazarded, as to the manner in which it would appear. So they lay down that night in a truly comfortable state for the present, but impatient for the morrow to bring its solution to their questions respecting the other new supply. The silence by night in those deserts of Arabia is so profound that it is said by travellers that they can hear their own hearts beating there. Eastward of the camp were those solemn old mountains, teaching evermore a lesson of strength and firmness and deep repose. On the west was the sea, an unbroken level, far outspread. Above them shone now, as always, that terious pillar of light in its strange, solitary companionship with them, alone in its brightness though many stars were glittering far above. Through the night, a dew descended upon the camp; and watchers there might have noticed, also gently and quietly descending, a small substance of a singular and unknown character, which before morning formed a perceptible stratum upon the ground.

mys

When people waked up in the early dawn their eyes were greeted by this wonderful sight. Moses spoke to them, "This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat."

The substance was in small, white grains, of the size of coriander seed, hard and pleasant to the taste. As the dew exhaled they gathered it into heaps, and found that it would make quite a sufficiency of bread for every individual of their company. They "ground it in mills, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it; and the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil." In another

' Num. xi. 8.

place we are informed that "the taste of it was like wafers made with honey." They called it Manna.2

According to the direction of Moses, they were to gather it at the rate of an omer (a little more than five pints, or more precisely five and one-tenth pints) for every individual; and no attempt was to be made to lay it up in store for the next day, except on the sixth; each morning would furnish its own supply, except the latter, which was to give a double quantity, so that there need be no gathering on the seventh or the Sabbath. On the sixth they were not only to gather but to bake for the following day. During the earlier part of the day, as the heat of the sun increased, the substance melted and disappeared. Some of the people disregarded the direction of their leader not to store any away, but to depend on a daily supply from heaven; and fearful

Ex. xvi. 31.

2 The original in Ex. xvi. 15, is : and if we give to the latter word its meaning in times long subsequent to this, the two will signify what this? Commentators therefore generally attribute the name manna to an exclamation by the wondering and querying multitude. But this use of (man) who or what, occurs only in Chaldaic, and is not found till the times of Ezra and Daniel. (See Ezra v. 3, 4, 9; Dan. iii. 15.) Such explanation of commentators seems therefore to be unauthorized and indeed appears, at first sight, to be fanciful. Perhaps it is best not to attempt any,

but to take the word simply as it is.

At the present day a gum found in that country is sold to visitors under the name of Manna. It is found on the twigs and branches of a tamarisk shrub, (Tamarix Gallica mannifera), from which it exudes in consequence of the puncture of an insect of the Coccus kind (Coccus manniparus). "It has," says Robinson, "the appearance of gum, is of a sweetish taste and melts when exposed to the sun or to a fire. The Arabs consider it a great delicacy and the pilgrims prize it highly." It is said not to be procured every year, sometimes only after five or six years. It can be preserved by boiling, and is sold at from four to five dollars the pound. Except in name and partly in taste, it of course bears no analogy to the manna afforded to the Israelites.

3 Here we have the institution of the Sabbath before the Decalogue was given.

probably for the future, attempted to accumulate; but what they laid by became wormy and offensive before the next morning. On the seventh day, some also went out for a gathering; but they found none, and received a Divine reprimand through Moses for their disregard of the heavenly ordinance for the observance of this day. It is worthy of note here, how upon these ignorant and obtuse people, moral commands had to be laid through their senses, as well as by words directed to their reason.

as easy

It has been estimated that the omer per day would amount to about 15,000,000 pounds for each week. During the forty years of their wanderings in the wilderness, the supply never failed. The vastness of the miracle sometimes startles the readers of God's Book: but why? It was just for God to send the manna upon the camp as to send the dew. The latter comes to us by what we call natural causes, that is, by evaporation through heat, and next by condensation through cold. But what is heat? how caused? whence its original source? We come here at once into the inexplicable; and the case of manna presents us only one or two links shorter than that of the other. Then again, as to our usual supply of food: how does grain grow? Why does it give its nourishment to us more than do stones? The fact is, that the wisest of men see through a glass darkly," and then see but a little way.

In the case of the Israelites, God was teaching a nation who were to be a demonstration for him before the world then, and through all subsequent history. He was helping us to see him in all nature and in all history; and he was doing it in the best way for them and us, and especially in a way best suited to act on their dark minds, not given to deductions from reason, but to judging by the senses. We cavil most unreasonably when we do so about the extent or the minuteness of a miracle. Vast or small, both are alike to him, and are as easy also to him as are the operations of what we call natural laws.

THAT

CHAPTER XXXV.

TOWARD SINAI.

HAT mysterious leader and guide, the pillar of cloud above their heads, was again in motion. They moved with it; but we are no longer able to trace their course with that distinctness which we have hitherto been able to gain. We are informed of but three stations between this spot by the sea and that at Sinai-namely, at Dophkah, at Alush, and Rephidim; and we know that they were a month in making the journey from this encampment to that mountain as to the position of those intermediate stations we are left only to conjecture, and have scarcely even the means for that.

The nature of the ground would admit of several routes after leaving the encampment by the sea, namely, along the sandy shore for fifty-five miles to a valley (No. 20 on map), where, turning to the left at nearly a right angle, they would have a shorter distance among the mountains than by any other; or they could turn immediately by Wady Shellal (13), to Wady Mukatteb (14), and so to Feiran; or, at a distance of twenty miles along the shore, then at once into Wady Feiran (15). The second of these is the shortest, and was evidently the most used in the ancient times; for Wady Mukatteb," Written Valley," takes its name from the great abundance of what are called Sinaitic inscriptions, here crowded on almost every rock, and often at such altitudes as almost to require a ladder to reach them. They commence here, and are thence scattered thickly along Wady Feiran, and, onward, more sparingly to Sinai, and in yet fewer numbers about that mountain.

2

1 Num. xxxiii. 12-14. Compare Ex. xvi. 1 with ib. xix. 1.

The Israelites, it is generally believed, took the route along Wady Feiran either by way of its outlet at the sandy shore, or through Wady Shellal and Mukatteb. If by Mukatteb, they would (supposing the natural scenery to be then as now), soon after entering Wady Feiran, come to a spot "where," says a recent traveller, "at a turn of the road, the scene burst upon us more like the dream of a poet, than any reality in this arid wilderness. The cliffs on either hand still towered bare and perpendicular, to an immense height; but instead of a gravelly valley, collecting and condensing the fiery rays of the sun, arose, as by enchantment, tufted groves of palm and fruit trees, producing on my mind a more vivid impression of romantic luxuriance than had been left by anything I had yet seen in the East."1 Proceeding onward, this rich vegetation almost ceases; and then at the distance of about a mile, we come upon the greatest of marvels in that country, "a stream of running water purling through an overhanging covert" of trees. "On the edge of this palm-forest," says the same writer, “nature had already prepared a halting-place for the lonely and worn visitor of her most hidden haunts, and among the infinite variety of her fanciful creations, few could be found more wild or marvellous than this. . . . The palms beneath which I encamped were not the solitary ornament of a small oasis; but the outskirts of a dense grove extending for miles up the narrow valley. On stepping out of my tent, I was at once in the midst of an almost tropical wilderness. In the palm-groves of Egypt the stems are trimmed and straight, and placed generally at regular intervals; but here this most graceful of trees is half untended, its boughs spring direct from the earth, and form tufts and avenues and dense overarching thickets of the most luxuriant growth, through which the sunlight falls tremblingly upon the shaded turf.

'Bartlett's "Forty Days."