Context No. 3998 of 4322 · Exodus

Exodus 16:29-36: in context

29Behold, because the LORD has given you the Sabbath, therefore he gives you on the sixth day the bread of two days. Everyone stay in his place. Let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” 30So the people rested on the seventh day. 31The house of Israel called its name “Manna”, and it was like coriander seed, white; and its taste was like wafers with honey. 32Moses said, “This is the thing which the LORD has commanded, ‘Let an omer-full of it be kept throughout your generations, that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” 33Moses said to Aaron, “Take a pot, and put an omer-full of manna in it, and lay it up before the LORD, to be kept throughout your generations.” 34As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept. 35The children of Israel ate the manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land. They ate the manna until they came to the borders of the land of Canaan. 36Now an omer is one tenth of an ephah.

After describing the manna that God gave Israel in the wilderness, this passage records a striking command: keep a jar of it, an omer-full, to be preserved for future generations, that they may see the bread with which God fed his people in the wilderness. A portion of the daily provision was to be set aside and kept, not to be eaten, but to be remembered.

There is wisdom in this. God knew how quickly his people would forget his provision. The manna fell every day for forty years, and yet, without a memorial, later generations might never grasp what God had done. So a jar was kept, a tangible reminder of the God who fed his people day by day when they had nothing. There is a lesson here about the value of remembering God's provision. It is easy to forget how God has provided for us, to take his daily faithfulness for granted or let it fade from memory. Keeping some memorial of God's goodness, a written record, a marked date, a token that recalls a specific provision, helps us and those who come after us to remember what God has done.

Do I keep some memorial of how God has faithfully provided for me, so that I and those who come after me do not forget his goodness but remember the God who has fed us day by day?

Sources

Exodus 16:32: "Let an omer-full of it be kept throughout your generations, that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness."
Exodus 16:33: "Take a pot, and put an omer-full of manna in it, and lay it up before the LORD, to be kept throughout your generations."
Exodus 16:35: "The children of Israel ate the manna forty years, until they came to an inhabited land."