Keluaran 16:16-21

16:16 “This is what ¹  the Lord has commanded: ²  ‘Each person is to gather ³  from it what he can eat, an omer ⁴  per person ⁵  according to the number ⁶  of your people; ⁷  each one will pick it up ⁸  for whoever lives ⁹  in his tent.’” 16:17 The Israelites did so, and they gathered – some more, some less. 16:18 When ¹⁰  they measured with an omer, the one who gathered much had nothing left over, and the one who gathered little lacked nothing; each one had gathered what he could eat.

16:19 Moses said to them, “No one ¹¹  is to keep any of it ¹²  until morning.” 16:20 But they did not listen to Moses; some ¹³  kept part of it until morning, and it was full ¹⁴  of worms and began to stink, and Moses was angry with them. 16:21 So they gathered it each morning, ¹⁵  each person according to what he could eat, and when the sun got hot, it would melt. ¹⁶ 

[16:16]  ¹ tn Heb “the thing that.”

[16:16]  ² tn The perfect tense could be taken as a definite past with Moses now reporting it. In this case a very recent past. But in declaring the word from Yahweh it could be instantaneous, and receive a present tense translation – “here and now he commands you.”

[16:16]  ³ tn The form is the plural imperative: “Gather [you] each man according to his eating.”

[16:16]  ⁴ sn The omer is an amount mentioned only in this chapter, and its size is unknown, except by comparison with the ephah (v. 36). A number of recent English versions approximate the omer as “two quarts” (cf. NCV, CEV, NLT); TEV “two litres.”

[16:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “for a head.”

[16:16]  ⁶ tn The word “number” is an accusative that defines more precisely how much was to be gathered (see GKC 374 §118.h).

[16:16]  ⁷ tn Traditionally “souls.”

[16:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “will take.”

[16:16]  ⁹ tn “lives” has been supplied.

[16:18]  ¹⁰ tn The preterite with the vav (ו) consecutive is subordinated here as a temporal clause.

[16:19]  ¹¹ tn The address now is for “man” (אִישׁ, ’ish), “each one”; here the instruction seems to be focused on the individual heads of the households.

[16:19]  ¹² tn Or “some of it,” “from it.”

[16:20]  ¹³ tn Heb “men”; this usage is designed to mean “some” (see GKC 447 §138.h, n. 1).

[16:20]  ¹⁴ tn The verb וַיָּרֻם (vayyarum) is equivalent to a passive – “it was changed” – to which “worms” is added as an accusative of result (GKC 388-89 §121.d, n. 2).

[16:21]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “morning by morning.” This is an example of the repetition of words to express the distributive sense; here the meaning is “every morning” (see GKC 388 §121.c).

[16:21]  ¹⁶ tn The perfect tenses here with vav (ו) consecutives have the frequentative sense; they function in a protasis-apodosis relationship (GKC 494 §159.g).