Exodus Pt 5

 

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Manna, Water, and the

Father-in-Law Chimes In

or

What is an Omer?

Welcome back. I hope you had a good holiday weekend and took time to remember what Memorial Day is all about. Now back to Moses and Aaron and the other million or so Israelites on their journey to the Land of Milk and Honey.

     When last we checked in with the travelers, at the end of Chapter 15, they were lounging around the oasis at Elim, enjoying all that a dozen springs and seventy palm trees could provide in the way of rest and refreshment. Chapter 16 finds them in the Wilderness of Sin (sounds ominous), which is located somewhere between Elim and Sinai, and once again everyone is getting anxious about provisions.

    Moses turns to God for guidance and God has a solution that, as always, has a catch or three attached. God will arrange for bread in the morning and meat in the evening, but the Israelites must make sure they only take what they need for one day and not stash any away for later, except on the sixth day when they should gather enough for two days, because on the seventh day they're not supposed to do any gathering as that should be set aside as a "day of solemn rest".

    Although God promises both bread and meat, most of the material presented is devoted to the bread, or as it came to be known, Manna. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason the protein isn't mentioned more often in this familiar story is because, well, here's what it does say...

Verse 13: In the evening quails came up and covered the camp

    Share that with a Sunday School class of adolescent girls and the reaction is bound to be one of absolute horror. "They ate quail? But they mate for life and they're soooooo cute!!!"

    Back to the bread. Verses 13 and 14 continue with...

and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.  14When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground.

    That fine flaky substance is, of course, what is destined to be the carb part of the Israelites complete and balanced diet for a good long time. But when it is first presented to them they have no idea what to do with it. Moses has to explain that it "is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat". In other words this manna from heaven shows up not as something fresh out of the oven, ready for a dab of butter and some berry preserves, but as an unfamiliar raw material to be scraped up off the ground and then worried into some sort of recognizably edible form. Kind of like the extreme cooking version of a technical challenge on the Great British Baking Show. While the people are standing around, eyeballing what must have looked like the grounds outside a King Arthur flour factory after an explosion, Moses also spells out God's Ration Card Plan. They will be allowed one omer of fine and flaky per person per day, except on the sixth day when two omers is the ration.

    There is no mention about any limitations on the number of quail to be served up each evening. For all we know it is simply "See what you can catch." Like Mrs. Lovett and the neighborhood cats.

    But at this point I just want to know what an omer is. So I keep reading, and sure enough, at the end of the chapter I get the answer.

36 An omer is a tenth of an ephah.

    Which should have satisfied me, but I found I was handicapped with a lack of knowledge concerning ephahs. And so...

    Today I have devoted my five minutes of research to the terms "omer" and "ephah". Here is what my five minutes rendered.

According to Wikipedia an omer is:

• A unit of dry measure also known as an isaron. Okay. Let's keep going.
• An omer is one tenth of a ephah. Already knew that from previous reading. However, it is nice to know that...
• An ephah is the same as 72 logs. Well, that doesn't really clear things up for me.
• A log is the same as a Sumerian mina. Good lord.
• A mina is 1/60th of a maris. I am beginning to think Wikipedia is not going to be my go-to source.
• Ah! an omer is the same as 12/100ths of a maris. No, that doesn't get me anywhere.
• But then we factor in the notion that a maris is the same in dry measurement as the quantity of water which is equal in weight to a light royal talent, or 8.0 US gallons, whichever comes first. And we're still in the dark about what size bucket the Israelites needed to haul their manna.
• But it does mean that an omer, which if you'll recall is what we're really interested in here, is the same as 0.98 US gallons. Now we're getting somewhere!
• Unless you look in the Jewish Study Bible of 2014, where it is 0.61 US gallons. That's a pretty big difference, percentage-wise.
• To sum it all up, Wikipedia also says that the Traditional Jewish definition of an omer is the equivalent of 43.2 chicken eggs.
• And my five minutes is up. An omer is an omer is an omer. Let's just leave it at that. Sometimes five minutes of research just makes things more confusing.

    Back to our story and the heck with the bothersomely vague details. The people are hungry, God arranges for regular deliveries of Bisquick and small poultry provided the people abide by his rules and regulations concerning gathering, consumption and storage.
There are attempts by some to circumvent the rules, which makes God angry, which makes Moses angry, which results in a stern warning to all involved. Everyone gets with the program and the march continues.

    In Verse 31 we do get an interesting additional bit of info about this manna. Just another one of those tangents we should be getting used to by now.

...it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.

    Which does make it sound more appealing than the "fine and flaky" description given earlier.

    And then we end the chapter with...

35 The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a habitable land; they ate manna, until they came to the border of the land of Canaan.  36 An omer is a tenth of an ephah.

    Think about that. Forty years wandering around, most likely in circles because why else would it take so long to travel something under four hundred miles? Maybe we'll find out later, because after Exodus we have three more books that, as far as I can tell, take place during this forty year span. I'm just stuck on the idea that for forty years those folks had a diet of nothing but coriander flatbread and quail. That may have something to do with their unimpressive pace.

    I know we already looked at verse 36, but I wanted to put it in context for you. As if that would help either of us.

    Let's move on to the next chapter, shall we?

    Chapter 17 is pretty short and deals with just a couple of unrelated incidents. In one, there is another water shortage and this time Moses solves it by making water come out of a rock. In the other, someone or some group (it's not made clear) called Amalek attacks the wanderers and Moses sends Joshua out to fight him/them. Moses, along with Aaron and a buddy by the name of Hur, is watching the fight from the top of a hill and he is obliged to hold his staff up high in order for Joshua to get some sort of home court advantage. That's what it says. Problem is, the staff gets a bit heavy after a while, and so Aaron and Hur come to the rescue by getting Moses a rock to sit on and they each grab a hand to help him keep the staff aloft, so it all turns out okay. We are, however, left with this rather troubling bit at the end of the chapter...

The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.

    Kinda makes a person curious to know more about this Amalek person/tribe/benevolent society, doesn't it? Should we be looking out for him in our own neighborhood?

    But now we turn in Chapter 18 to Jethro, father of Zipporah, father-in-law to Moses, grandfather to Gershom and Eliezer. Zipporah and the kids have been sent to live with grandpa while Moses is on his camping trip, but apparently the invitation isn't for an open ended sort of stay and Jethro shows up at the Israelite camp with daughter and grandsons in tow to deliver them back into Moses' care. While he is there, Jethro notices that everyone brings every concern, every grievance, every little complaint directly to Moses and it is beginning to wear the man down. So before he leaves, Jethro advises Moses to choose some reliable men, give them authority over not so major sorts of issues, and focus his attention on the Big Picture. Like why it's taking them forty years to cover a relatively modest amount of ground.

*A photo from our trip to Alaska way back in I forget what year.