Manna and the Sabbath (Exod 16:22-30)

During New Zealand’s recent COVID-19 lockdown, some people experienced a period of enforced inactivity. At the same time, I suspect that this did not stop anxieties especially when it came to questions about the security of one’s job and how to make ends meet on potentially reduced salaries. In other words, stopping work does not equal rest. As God continues to teach the Israelites about His provision, He introduces the idea of a rest day, a concept unknown to them in Egypt where their hard labour was never-ending. It is unclear if the gathered manna miraculously doubled in quantity to cover what was needed for both Friday and Saturday,[1] or if the Israelites were commanded to collect twice as much (Exod 16:22). The point is, though, that by providing the extra resources needed and by keeping the saved-up manna from going bad (Exod 16:24) God enabled true rest from work and from the anxieties over living.

The Sabbath, however, is more than an absence of toil, struggle, even anxiety. It is holy, in other words, set apart ‘to the LORD’ (Exod 16:23). What does this mean? In the Mosaic law soon to be revealed, several festivals started and ended on a day of complete rest and involved a holy gathering together, (e.g. Lev 23:7-8, 35-36) so that the Sabbath became entwined with ideas of worship. The meaning in our reading though is less to do with any organised form of religious activity, rather it is a reorientation towards God. Abraham Joshua Heschel puts it beautifully in his book, The Sabbath.

He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.[2]

Our passage describes this experience as ‘restfulness’ or in the Hebrew ‘shabbaton’, a word derived from shabbat (Sabbath) and the concept behind the practice (v.23; NASB translates it here as ‘sabbath observance’). This is not simply a breather between days of work, so we are ready for the next onslaught of hard labour. Rather, it is the climax of work completed, just as God finished creation, delighted in what He had accomplished, then rested (Gen 2:2). Such rest sounds wonderful, yet it takes a mental shift and a change in attitude that involves – once again – trust.

For Israel, this practice did not come naturally. They have lived with a slave mentality for so long that taking on a new pattern of letting go of toil and resting in God’s provision was no easy feat and so we read that some went out to collect manna on the Sabbath (Exod 16:27-29). The challenge is acute for us too. It is not simply about not working (for us on a Sunday) or even of focusing on ‘religious’ activities like church or Bible reading. The day of rest is a symbol of a larger change that God’s people are initiated into, namely taking on an attitude of resting in God that spills into our workdays, our decisions about jobs, relationships and future direction in life.

---

[1] The same question applies to the daily collection of manna. Were the quantities miraculously evened out irrespective of how much a person gathered or was it pooled together and measured out to each person according to need? Commentators are divided on this. If it is a miraculous occurrence, then the emphasis is on God’s provision for all irrespective of the strengths of individuals to care for themselves, if there is human redistribution going on, then there is the added message of community responsibility for others. Both are valuable lessons to learn.

[2] Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 13.