Exodus 16:11-21

International Standard Version

¹¹ The Lord told Moses, ¹² “I’ve heard the complaints of the Israelis. Tell them, ‘At twilight you are to eat meat and in the morning you are to be filled with bread, so you may know that I am the Lord your God.’”

¹³ Later that evening quail came up and covered the camp, and then in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. ¹⁴ When the layer of dew evaporated,^[a] on the surface of the desert a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost, appeared on the ground. ¹⁵ When the Israelis saw it, they asked one another, “What is it?”,^[b] because they did not know what it was.

Moses told them, “It’s the food that the Lord has given you to eat. ¹⁶ This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘You are to gather from it what each person is to eat,^[c] about one omer^[d] per person according to the number of your people, and one person is to gather for everyone in his tent.’”

¹⁷ The Israelis did this, some gathering much, some little. ¹⁸ When they measured it with a vessel the capacity of which was one omer,^[e] the one who gathered much did not have an excess, while the one who gathered little did not lack. They gathered exactly what each needed to eat.^[f]

¹⁹ Then Moses told them, “No one is to leave any of it until morning.” ²⁰ But they did not listen to Moses—some people left part of it until morning, and it produced maggots and smelled bad, so Moses got angry at them. ²¹ Every morning they gathered it, according to what each needed to eat; and when the sun became hot, it melted.