Power and Leadership: Moses and the Manna Story

by DENNIS T. OLSONEXODUS 16

Dennis T. Olson is Professor of Old Testament at Princeton Seminary. He presented the daily Bible studies for the Seminary's Institute of Theology in June 2004. The overall topic was “Moses in the Wilderness: Lessons in Leadership.” The following essay is the second in the series of Bible studies that took up the following four themes: 1. Preparations for Leadership: Moses and His Call (Exodus 3-4), 2. Power and Leadership: Moses and the Manna Story (Exodus 16), 3. Polarities in Leadership: Moses and God (Exodus 32-34, Numbers 13-14), and 4. Provisional Realities and Leadership: Moses and His Death (Deuteronomy 34).

Exodus 16:1-3: Complaining in the Wilderness, Yearning for Egypt

We begin our study of Exodus 16 with verses 1-3. The Israelites are a ragtag band of former slaves trudging through a forbidding wilderness. Their number is large. Exodus 12:37 reports, “The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides children.” That is six hundred thousand men plus roughly an equal number of children plus a similar number of women. If you do the math, you have an enormous company of people. Scholars have questioned the historical veracity of this number. How could such a small clan of seventy Israelites at the beginning of the book of Exodus balloon into one or two million in such a relatively short time under the harsh conditions of slavery (Exodus 1:5)?¹ Whether historical or not, the present form of the story places the spotlight on God's wondrous blessing of Israel in multiplying their number in the midst of struggle and hardship. But this blessing of many children and large numbers itself creates its own challenges when you are traveling in a desolate desert. And so we come to Exodus 16 and one of those basic and primal challenges in preserving the life and spirit of this people of God.

The whole congregation of the Israelites set out from Elim; and Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (16:1-3)

At the beginning of his adult life, Moses had been unsuccessful in trying to arbitrate a dispute between two Hebrew slaves in the story of Moses killing the Egyptian foreman (2:11-15). Now Moses is faced with a dispute not with only two Hebrews but a dispute with a huge mob of angry Hebrews. All the congregation murmurs against Moses about the hardships of the wilderness. Living on distorted memories, the Israelites pine for the “good old days” of slavery back in Egypt when at least they had food to eat. They have already forgotten the forced slavery and abusive oppression of Egypt.

Israel had been camping for a brief time at Elim. Elim was an oasis “where there were twelve springs of waters and seventy palm trees” (15:27). But Moses was leading the Israelites on a journey to a far destination, and Israel could not stay in this place of comfort and security. Leadership is about movement, growth, change, and a journey to somewhere else. Moses commands the departure from Elim after a brief time of refreshment, a sabbath rest on the journey. The departure from Elim forces the people to face again their lack of adequate food, water, and life support square in the face. The crisis of the wilderness involves the material reality of basic human needs and the profound anxiety that results when there is no visible means by which these needs can be met.

So to whom does the congregation turn? Its leaders, of course! The people attack the leadership of Moses and Aaron who have chosen freedom for Israel. It is hard to try to urge people into a freedom they are not sure they want. In the people's minds, “if wilderness freedom is like this, we want to exercise our freedom and go back to Egyptian bondage.” They remember the “fleshpots” of Egypt, the clay pots of roasting meat. As slaves, they likely had little meat in their diet, but at least they remember the smell! At least they had bread, some basic kind of food in Egypt. Nowhere earlier in Exodus does it say the Israelites were ever hungry in Egypt. In contrast, the wilderness appears to these former slaves as a place of no meat, no bread, and thus seemingly no life. In their minds, desert and wilderness spell death and chaos.

The association of wilderness with death and chaos reflects a common ancient Near Eastern understanding. There are two basic images of chaos, evil, and death in the Old Testament and in the ancient Near East in general. One image of chaos is the wilderness. The desert is a place of threat, struggle, death, and chaos. So when Jesus in the beginning of Luke's Gospel was “led by the Spirit” to be tempted by the devil for forty days, we should not be surprised that the arena of this struggle with the forces of evil and chaos is “the wilderness” (Luke 4:1-2). To be in the desert is a metaphor for being at the front lines in battling the forces of chaos in the world. The ancient desert fathers lived in Christian communities in the wilderness. Some of them even lived alone as isolated hermits in the desert in a life of prayer and study of scripture. I have visited Coptic Christian desert monasteries and communities in Egypt. Even today, some of their members live alone in primitive huts out in the desert situated like distant satellites from the main community. They understand their vocation as fighting the forces of evil and temptation in the wilderness through their simple and solitary life of devotion and study of scripture.

The second major image of chaos in the Bible and ancient Near East is the sea and its powerful, turbulent, and sometimes deadly waters of chaos and evil. It is these primeval waters of chaos that are in view in the creation story in Genesis 1:1-2 when the world was a “formless voice and darkness covered the face of the deep” and the ruakh (wind/spirit/breath) of God “swept over the face of the waters.” God's creating work in Genesis 1 involves taming, ordering, and setting boundaries to the primeval waters of chaos. Jewish scholar Jon Levenson notes in his book entitled Creation and the Persistence of Evil that these primeval waters do not disappear from God's created world but remain on the boundaries, above and below, always threatening humankind and the world.² The sea is also home to the mythic sea monster variously known as Leviathan or Rahab. In the cultural mind of the ancient world, this primeval dragon is seen as one of the sources and embodiments of the powers of evil, chaos, and destruction. At times in the Bible, these sea monsters are portrayed merely as tame creatures of God clearly under God's rule. So Genesis 1:21 simply says, “So God created the great sea monsters.” Psalm 104:26 testifies that God placed the sea dragon Leviathan in the great and wide sea “to sport in it.” One need not fear Leviathan; it is only God's little rubber ducky in the sea! But at a few other points in the Bible, the sea monster is more mythic, menacing, and in battle with God. Psalm 74:12-14 provides an alternate view of the role of the sea monsters in the creation of the world at odds with the more serene depiction in Genesis 1:

Yet God my King is from of old,
Working salvation in the earth.
You divided the sea by your might;
You broke the heads of the dragons in the waters.
You crushed the head of Leviathan;
You gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

In the prophetic literature, God's battle and defeat of the sea monster may refer not only to the beginning of time but also to a future eschatological battle of God with the forces of evil and empire: “On that day the LORD with his cruel and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and he will kill the Dragon that is in the sea” (Isa. 27:1).

These associations of chaos and evil with sea and sea monster continue into the New Testament in the Gospel stories of Jesus stilling the storm on the sea (Mark 4:35-41 and parallels) and the apocalyptic vision of Revelation with the death of the beast (Rev. 19:20) and the assurance in the vision of the new heaven and earth that “the sea was no more” (Rev. 21:1). This rich complex of motifs of evil and chaos associated with the sea and its monsters of imperial evil inform and animate one of the central stories of Exodus, the crossing of the Red Sea. In Exodus 14-15, God's ruakh blows over the waters, separates them, and creates the dry land on which the Israelites walk into new freedom and life (14:21). And as Pharaoh and the Egyptian army pursue Israel, God fights and defeats them by allowing the waters of chaos to come crashing down upon the imperial monster of Egyptian might (14:27-29; 15:3-10).

So the book of Exodus is about God and Moses leading Israel through these two primal images of chaos, death, and struggle: the sea in the Red Sea event and the wilderness in the desert journey from Egypt to Canaan. Thus, the people of Israel have a legitimate concern as they begin their journey in the wilderness. The Israelites can see the wilderness only as a place of hunger and death, without hope. By contrast, they remember Egypt as a place of pots of flesh, clay pots of roasting meat, and plenty of bread. They forget the abuse and horror of slavery and yearn to go back. They forget the distant hope of freedom and plenty in the promised land of Canaan in the face of the immediate crisis over the shortage of food.

We are reminded here of the twin brothers, the elder Esau and the younger Jacob, in the book of Genesis. Esau had been out hunting all day and came home famished. His younger twin brother Jacob was cooking a pot of stew. Ever the schemer, Jacob offered his hungry brother some stew in exchange for Esau's birthright as the elder son who would eventually inherit his parents' estate. Esau foolishly gives up his birthright and promise of inheritance for the immediate gratification of a bowl of stew (Gen. 25:29-34). Similarly, Israel seems ready to give up its hard-won freedom and the promise of Canaan for a whiff of meat and a lump of bread back in Egypt.

What is very interesting, however, is that Israel is not reprimanded in this narrative for its anxious concern for food in the wilderness. Instead, God responds immediately and positively to their complaint about the lack of food. In other words, there are some murmurings and grumblings that are legitimate in the Exodus journey. There are times when leaders need to listen to their people and respond to their complaints. There are two clusters of wilderness murmuring stories, one cluster recounted in the book of Exodus and another cluster of complaint stories narrated in the book of Numbers. Several similarities are evident between these two clusters (desire for water, food, yearning to go back to Egypt, attack on the human leaders, and the like). But there is one crucial difference. The murmuring stories in Exodus 15-17 that occur before the covenant is made at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19-31) and the breaking of that covenant in the golden calf story (Exodus 32) are all portrayed as legitimate complaints: the need for water, food, the desire for meat. In contrast, the murmuring stories that occur after the Sinai covenant and the golden calf incident in Numbers 11-21 are all narrated as illegitimate complaints that reflect a deepening failure to trust God. In these latter stories, Israel and God have bound themselves in covenant with one another. God has repeatedly demonstrated divine faithfulness and graciousness over time. The Israelites have ample basis for trusting in God's trustworthiness and provision in the wilderness. So complaint becomes, in these later stories in the book of Numbers, a sign of deepening unfaith, impatience, and unreasonableness. Leaders need to develop the wisdom to discern when complaints are legitimate and require positive response and when they are not legitimate and require reprimand and judgment.

At this early point in the wilderness journey in Exodus 16, Israel's complaint and yearning for food is a legitimate concern and does not require judgment or repentance. What is required is God's gracious response because the hunger is real, the wilderness is barren, and the recently freed slaves have little track record on which to rely to trust this God who has called them out into the desert.

Exodus 16:4-12: The Promise of Manna, the Appearance of God

God's positive response to the Israelites' complaint is direct and dramatic in Exodus 16:4-15. We begin with verses 4 and 5: “Then the Lord said to Moses, 'I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day; in that way I will test them whether they will follow my instruction or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.'…”

Each day the people will gather enough manna for the needs of that day and no more. But on the sixth day and only on the sixth day, they will be allowed to gather twice as much manna in order that they might keep some of the manna overnight and eat it on the sabbath or seventh day of the week. Thus, the Israelites will be able to rest from their labor of gathering manna on the sabbath day.

In verses 6-12, Moses and Aaron tell the Israelites that their complaint to Moses and Aaron about food is ultimately a theological matter. Where the most basic human needs for life are concerned, that is where God gets involved. The leaders assure the people with words that God has indeed heard their complaints (16:6-9). As further dramatic assurance, God's own glorious presence appears to the people, veiled in a cloud (16:10). So the people hear with their ears and see with their eyes that God has in fact heard their cries for help.

Exodus 16:13-15: The Promise Fulfilled, the Daily Gift Given

Immediately, God acts. In the evening, quail covers the camp and provides the people with the meat they had craved with their memories of the fleshpots of Egypt. In the morning as the dew lifted, the Israelites discovered on the ground “a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground” (16:14). When the Israelites saw it, they asked in Hebrew, man hu? which means, “What is it?” And so the Israelites call it manna, what-is-it food! Further in the chapter, the manna is described this way: “it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey” (16:31). Later in the book of Numbers, the taste of the manna is described quite differently: the taste of manna was “like the taste of cakes baked with oil” (Num. 11:8). So which is it, a sweet taste of honey or a baked taste of oil? The ancient Jewish rabbis puzzled over these varied descriptions of its taste and then concluded: manna tastes like whatever your own personal favorite food tastes. You like sweets? It tastes like sweets. You like bread? It tastes like bread. You like pizza? It tastes like pizza. Well, maybe not like pizza. But in any case, such is the wondrous food of God.³

Particularly since the nineteenth and early twentieth century, some scholars have sought to give a rational or naturalistic explanation for this biblical manna. Even in ancient times as with the Jewish historian Josephus, it was known that there was a natural substance found in the wilderness of northern Arabia and elsewhere that resembled the biblical manna. Modern scientific study offered some detail about a yellowish-white flake or ball that forms from the interaction of a plant lice or insect and the sap from the tamarisk tree that grows in the wilderness. This sweet-tasting substance congeals in the cool of the night but quickly melts and decays in the heat of the day, much like the biblical description of manna. Such naturalistic explanations are tantalizing, but they miss the larger theological meanings of the story that offer a paradigm for understanding human dependence on God, God's trustworthy generosity, the need for equity in the distribution of resources related to basic human needs such as food, and reassurance in the face of common human urges to hoard out of fear and anxiety for the future. If we focus only on whether this was a miracle or simply a natural phenomenon, we miss the more significant message that the biblical writers convey in this story.

Exodus 16:16-30: Daily Bread and the Sabbath

Apart from the provision of the manna itself, the other major theme in Exodus 16 is the sabbath day of rest. The bread, the manna given on the sixth day is doubled and so is enough for the seventh day as well. This theme of sabbath weaves throughout this narrative concerning free bread from God. In regard to instructions about resting on the sabbath, God says that “I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not” (16:4). Will Israel be prepared to receive bread and life under entirely new terms and completely changed conditions from those of Egypt and its slavery?

The ways of receiving bread in Egypt do not apply here in the wilderness. Israel will be under scrutiny to see if the old ways of receiving bread in Egypt under the condition of anxiety, oppression, and hoarding can be resisted. Here in the wilderness is a different way. The Israelites can confidently go out each morning and know that the gift of manna will be there: “morning by morning they gathered it, as much as each needed” (16:21). But Moses lays out the conditions for how the manna is to be gathered.

This is what the Lord has commanded: “Gather as much of it as each of you needs, an omer to a person, according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.” The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed. And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over until morning.” But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning and it bred worms and become foul. And Moses was angry with them. (16:16-20)

These are the two conditions for gathering bread. 1) The people should harvest just enough bread as needed for the one day. 2) Any manna that is stored or hoarded as surplus will become foul and useless.

Provision for the bread becomes a model for right distribution of food, a paradigm for a properly organized covenant community that is centered around God's unfailing generosity. The wondrous reality about the distribution of this bread is that this non-competitive and non-hoarding practice can really work, and it can work for everyone in the community. The ones who gathered much do not have too much; the ones who gathered a little have no lack. The bread has a way of being where it is needed with everyone having enough. God is faithful and trustworthy. The people of God, however, find it very hard to trust God in this way. Some seek to store up the bread in violation of Moses' warning. People in the wilderness immediately try to replicate the old ways of Egypt by storing up and hoarding out of anxiety and greed. Recall back in Exodus, chapter 1, one of the projects that the Israelite slaves were building in Egypt was supply cities and storehouses for Pharaoh (1:11). The Israelites try to replicate such hoarding practices with the manna in the wilderness, but stored, hoarded, and surplus bread simply breeds worms, turns sour, and melts away (16:20-21).

The sabbath principle is a critical part of how this leveling and equity of basic human resources is understood. Verses 22-26 continue God's instructions concerning the manna and the sabbath:

On the sixth day they gathered twice as much food, two omers apiece. When all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: 'Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy sabbath to the LORD; bake what you want to bake and boil want you want to boil, and all that is left over put it aside to be kept until morning.'…” So they put it aside until morning, as Moses commanded them; and it did not become foul, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a sabbath to the LORD; today you will not find it in the field. Six days you shall gather it; but on the seventh day, which is a sabbath, there will be none.” (16:22-26)

This special practice is permitted on the sixth day to provide food for the sabbath that follows. Once again, however, Israel disobeys. In verse 27, some overly anxious people go out on the sabbath, but they find no manna, no bread from heaven. God's kitchen is closed for the sabbath, too. We are reminded here of the seventh day of creation in Genesis, chapter 2 when God joins the rest of creation in resting on the sabbath (Gen. 2:1-3). Later in Exodus, God concludes the instructions for the work of building the holy Tabernacle with another reminder to Israel to refrain from work on the sabbath because the sabbath “is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed” (31:17). Even God needed rest and refreshment, and so the human created in the image of God likewise needs regular rest on the sabbath. The lowliest worker to the most important of leaders (including God!) is not exempt from this friendly command to rest on the sabbath.

Exodus 16:31-36: Dusting Off the Old Clay Jar

The end of the chapter contains an interesting command that gives a clear indication of the ongoing importance of this manna story. God commands Moses to place some of the manna in a clay jar for safekeeping. The clay jar is a kind of safe-deposit box that is to be displayed in the place of worship “throughout your generations.” This preservation and display of the manna for future generations is a way of saying that the meaning of the manna is not just something for this transitional period in the wilderness. The manna story is meant to define and shape individuals and lives for all future generations. If that is the case, then every time we place this manna story before us and examine our lives in light of it, we are symbolically dusting off the old clay jar with the manna inside. We read the story and use the jar to jog our memories, reorient our priorities, and shape our life and faith again to God's ways, not our ways.

Manna Principles of Leadership

Given our topic for these Bible studies on Moses and leadership, what might this clay jar of manna say to us about the nature and practice of leadership in our communities today? What are some “manna principles of leadership” that can guide us as we reflect on our roles as leaders of God's people journeying through our particular wildernesses toward what we hope is a better promised land?

1) When you are in the wilderness, expect murmurings. Wilderness is an anxiety-generating environment, a scary place that often creates fear and dysfunction. Whenever a community is in transition and in the wilderness, it can become a threatening place of chaos. When a community is in such transition, be sure that complaints and murmurings will arise. People will yearn for the good old days, however distorted their memories of those days may be. Parts and members of the organization will often resist change. Do not be surprised by such resistance and attacks against leaders. Expect it, and try not to take it too personally. That may be difficult to do; it was for Moses. In complex human systems in chaos or crisis, people will act out all kinds of anxiety, try to triangulate, find scapegoats, and set up allegiances of one against the other.

Some years ago Michael Walzer wrote a fascinating book entitled Exodus and Revolution.⁴ As a political scientist, Walzer was interested in how the image of the ancient Israel's political liberation from oppression and exodus out of Egypt has been used and reinterpreted in political revolutions and uprising against oppressive regimes in the whole history of the Western world even into the modern period. Walzer examines numerous examples of resistance groups that used the Exodus as a guiding paradigm, including the English Puritans, Latin American liberation movements, and African Americans who fought against the oppression and enslavement of their people. Walzer dedicates a whole chapter entitled “Murmurings: Slaves in the Wilderness” to the inevitable struggles of a people in the aftermath of their initial liberation and the frequent chaos, anxiety, yearning for the old days, and infighting that may emerge in tumultuous times of change and transition.

2) Discern the difference between legitimate complaints and illegitimate murmurings. As a leader and especially in times of conflict, learn to know the difference between those murmurings that are legitimate and require immediate attention and those that do not. As we noted, the wilderness stories portray some complaints and concerns as entirely reasonable and so God responds positively. Do not take every complaint as a personal attack on you. Sometimes the complaints express legitimate needs that require resolution and remedy. Other murmurings, as in the book of Numbers, may not be legitimate but are instead judged by God and Israel's leaders as examples of unfaith, rebellion, envy, and greed. As leaders, learn to know the difference between a legitimate gripe and a complaint masking another illegitimate agenda.

3) Share the burden of leadership. Do not go it alone. In Exodus 16, Moses and Aaron are faced with a legitimate but seemingly impossible need: food for hundreds of thousands of people in a desolate wilderness. They rightly turn to God because the crisis exceeds their individual capacities to address it. Another murmuring story follows the manna story in Exodus 17, and this time the need is even more urgent than the need for food. Israel needs water. Moses rightly cries out to God for assistance, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me” (17:4). God wisely instructs Moses to ask some others to join him: “take some of the elders of Israel with you” and strike the rock from which water comes gushing forth for all Israel (17:5). In the same chapter, Moses leads the Israelites in a defensive battle against the attacking Amalekites. As long as Moses' arms are raised up, the battle goes well. But Moses grows weary and so “Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side” and so Israel is victorious (17:8-13). Moses could not do it alone. Take others with you. Ask for help. Distribute authority and responsibility.

Interestingly, that continues to be precisely the lesson learned in the next chapter after the manna story in Exodus, chapter 18. Moses' father-in-law Jethro observes an overworked and burned-out Moses who sits alone and judges disputes among the Israelites from sunrise to sunset. Jethro tells Moses, “What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out, both you and these people with you. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone” (18:17-18). Thus, Jethro suggests that Moses raise up leaders and judges to adjudicate all minor cases, thereby freeing Moses to spend his limited time dealing with the most important cases and issues. “So,” says Jethro to his son-in-law, “it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden for you” (18:22). Leaders need to share power in order that they may focus on what is the core of their calling and what responsibilities and ministries can be shared with the whole people of God.

Some years later in the wilderness in the book of Numbers, we stumble again on an Israelite murmuring episode involving quail and manna. This time it is God and not the foreign Midianite priest Jethro who suggests a similar remedy to Moses about sharing leadership responsibilities. A distraught Moses has forgotten the lesson of Exodus 18. Again he has burned himself out trying to lead Israel through the wilderness. Moses has come to the end of his rope, and Moses screams at God in desperation: “I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once………and do not let me see my misery!” (Num. 11:15). God calms Moses down and appoints seventy elders to assist Moses in his leadership responsibilities. Leaders need to remember that they do not need to carry the whole world on their shoulders alone. Even leaders, indeed even God who is Lord of Lords, must find sabbath ways to rest and be refreshed in the arduous work of leading God's people (31:17). Leaders, created in the image of God, need to do the same.

4) Provide realistic assurance that God is faithful and will provide the resources necessary to endure. The leader of God's people seeks to encourage trust and hope in the God of the exodus, a God who has been faithful in the past and will be faithful on into a future not yet seen. It may be that all that can be promised at the moment is that God will provide enough of the resources to make it through another day. But that is enough. With that, we can take one more small step toward God's promised future. The Old Testament story of manna was likely a key origin for that petition in the Lord's Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Our daily manna, our daily bread—that is all for which we need ask for that is all that we need for the moment.

5) Keep the community pointed away from the old Egypt and toward God's new future. Communities in crisis frequently have a tendency to yearn for an old bankrupt vision of an idealized past that never really was. The temptation of wilderness communities is to hedge their bets and serve two masters: God and some form of Pharaoh's old Egypt. Trust God maybe a little, but hang on to some of the old securities, too. The temptation is to play both sides of the street. But Jesus reminded his hearers: “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). Elsewhere, Jesus says, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). Once on the way, leaders must keep themselves and their communities focused on God and God's unfolding mission and future for God's people.

It is important to note that once freed from working for Pharaoh, the Israelites are not thereby freed just to work for themselves as self-serving free agents. They transform their identity from oppressed servants of Pharaoh to become free servants of the LORD. Interestingly in Exodus, the Hebrew root used to describe the Israelites as “slaves” or “servants” of Pharaoh in Egypt ('abad—5:15-16, 6:5) is the very same root for the verb used elsewhere for Israel's “serving/worshipping” God after their liberation out of Egypt (10:3, 7, 24). God's exodus liberates Israel from one slavery into another, from harsh Egyptian bondage into the freeing servanthood of trust and obedience in God. This “freedom slavery” under God's gracious rule is intended to be singular and exclusive. The first of the Ten Commandments is the most important: “you shall have no other gods before me.” This exclusive devotion to God means living under a different economic framework and polity from that in Egypt. And once God has set us on that trail toward the promised land, the good leader reminds the community that there is no looking back, no hankering for the old fleshpots of Egypt.

6) The sabbath is essential to leading God's people in the chaos and challenges of the wilderness. The manna story in Exodus 18 already assumes that sabbath rest on the seventh day of each week should be observed, even though the formal sabbath commandment does not appear until two chapters later in the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:8-11. We remember that the sabbath is commanded earlier and even before the manna story all the way back in the creation story in Genesis 2:1-3. There the sabbath is engineered into the fabric of creation and built into us as human beings from the very beginning. We are created with the need regularly to take every seventh day off to be refreshed, reoriented, and renewed.

But the manna story tells us something deeper about the meaning of sabbath. The sabbath is a way of contrasting faithful sojourning in the wilderness with oppressive slave labor in Egypt. It is a contrast in economies, in how goods and resources are distributed. Egypt's bread is given out with reluctance and only for labor that serves the empire and its interests. Egypt's bread is a readily revoked and stingy reward for human productivity and efficiency, a bread received always with anxiety and fear. In contrast, the gift of sabbath and manna (“the bread of heaven”) is an invitation to break with the old destructive politics and economics of fear, exploitation, abuse, and anxiety. God has another way, the way of gift, the way of sharing, the way of trust, the way of sabbath rest and manna sufficiency. God does require important work from the people along the way. The people do have to go out and gather manna every day. But God also requires and demands rest. God's sabbath economy is a world of joyful trust and restful assurance. God's sabbath economy is a way of finding the rhythm and balance of creative work and regenerating rest.

Some clear New Testament echoes to this manna story come to mind. One is the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with only five loaves of bread and two fish. We bring what little we can to contribute to the cause, and somehow God uses it to provide sufficiency for the rest. In the Gospel of John, Jesus reaches back into the Exodus manna story when he proclaims that “it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven” (John 6:32). Then a few verses later, Jesus re-describes the Exodus manna, the bread from heaven, as now taking a new form. “I am the bread,” says Jesus, “that came down from heaven.” Jesus is the new life-giving manna from God that sustains us in the wilderness.

Perhaps my favorite New Testament echo of the Exodus manna story is Jesus' parable of the laborers in the vineyards in Matthew chapter 20. “For the kingdom of heaven is like a householder,” says Jesus, “who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day [a fair wage for a day's work in ancient times], he sent them into his vineyard.” It is 6 a.m., and these first laborers are hard at work with twelve hours of hard labor until 6 p.m. Some workers show up later at 9 a.m., and they set to work in the vineyard for the day. Other workers begin work only at noon, and still others at 3 p.m. Finally, some workers start only at 5 p.m. and work for just one hour until the six o'clock quitting time. When evening came, the owner of the vineyard tells the foreman to call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last workers, the latecomers, and proceeding to the first workers, the ones who labored a full twelve hours. Those hired at the end of day who had worked only for an hour each received one full day's pay, one denarius. When the first workers who had been there the whole day for twelve hours saw what the others were paid, they thought they were going to receive a nice big bonus. But Jesus says each of them also received just one denarius, the same as the others. When receiving their pay, these all-day laborers grumbled at the householder. It was a grumbling not unlike the lament of the responsible elder son who, in the parable of the prodigal son, complained when the father welcomed the prodigal son home with a lavish feast. The laborers murmur and grumble at the generosity of the householder toward these last ones, these lazy and undeserving latecomers who worked for only one lousy hour: “you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day in the scorching heat.” And the householder replies, “…'Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?' So the last will be first and the first last” (Matt. 20:1-16). Equal pay for unequal work!

I remember getting a little taste of how offensive this story is to those parts of us that follow only the economy of Egypt and Pharaoh. As a young seminarian doing a year-long internship as a student pastor, I preached on this parable of the laborers and the vineyard. I remember being accosted after the service by a prominent and well-to-do member of the congregation who was a major businessman in the community. With a reddish flush rising in his face, he thumped my chest with his finger and said, “Young man, that is not the way the real world works. If I did that in my business, I would lose my best workers and be out of business in no time.” “Well,” I said, “I understand you do not feel that you could do business that way. But that is the way that God does business.”

It is a manna principle of leadership that recognizes that in the deepest realities of the “really real” world in which God is in charge, the sabbath economy of manna, grace, gift, equality, and trust will have the final say over the economy of Egypt and the Pharaohs of the world. Given such a sabbath economy, leadership involves helping and encouraging people to share the burden, to contribute what they are able. We do our own part as well as we can with resources and abilities that are always inadequate and never enough. In the end, we trust God's grace to provide whatever more is needed to make it sufficient for the day. And along the way, God commands us to take regular time out to rest, to worship, and simply to enjoy the wondrous gifts of life, love and even the wilderness with all its wildness and challenge.

I conclude this study with words from a writer named Edward Abbey. I first encountered these words as wise counsel shared by a senior professor to a younger colleague who had just been promoted to a tenured position. Edward Abbey was eccentric and not always politically correct, but he spent his life writing novels and essays in passionate defense of maintaining the open space and wilderness of the American West. He rebelled against the forces of development, greed, and overambitious capitalism that threatened to swallow up the wild forests, deserts, and other natural landscapes that he loved. This is the recommendation he made to his readers on how to live their lives. The spirit of his words fits with the spirit of these manna principles of leadership.

One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out.

Be as I am—a reluctant enthusiast … a part-time crusader, a half-…hearted fanatic.
Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.
It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.
While you can. While it's still here.
So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends,
ramble out yonder and explore the forests,
climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers,
breathe deep of that sweet and lucid air,
sit quietly for a while and contemplate the
precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.
Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head
and your head firmly attached to your body,
the body active and alive, and I promise you this much:
I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies,
over those deskbound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit …box,
and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators.
I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.⁵

¹Citations to passages from Exodus will be included in parentheses in the text without reference to the book.
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²…Jon Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988).
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³…James Kugel, Traditions of the Bible: A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 618-19. The reference is to Mekhilta deR. Ishmael, Amaleq 1.
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⁴…Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
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⁵…Edward Abbey, “Quotations,” found at the following Internet URL: http://www. wordiq.com/definition/Edward_Abbey#Selected_Quotes (accessed October 19, 2004).
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  © 2004 THEOLOGY TODAY ISSN 0040-5736.