Texts in Conversation
Exodus 16 describes manna that appears after the morning dew as food for the Israelites. Philo identifies the food with God’s Word, which spreads like dew through the soul and leaves no part of it unfed.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 16:15
Hebrew Bible
13 In the evening the quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning a layer of dew was all around the camp. 14 When the layer of dew had evaporated, there on the surface of the wilderness was a thin flaky substance, thin like frost on the earth. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” because they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you for food. 16 “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Each person is to gather from it what he can eat, an omer per person according to the number of your people; each one will pick it up for whoever lives in his tent.’”
Philo Allegorical Interpretation 3.169
Classical
He gives a further elucidation of this point, when he says, “‘ in the early morning when the dew ceased it appeared all round the camp, and there, upon the face of the wilderness a fine thing as it were coriander seed, white like hoar-frost on the ground. And when they saw it, they said one to another, ‘What is this?’ for they knew not what it was. And Moses said to them, ‘This bread, which the Lord has given us to eat, is this word, which the Lord has prescribed’” (Exod. xvi. 13 ff.). You see of what sort the soul’s food is. It is a word of God, continuous, resembling dew, embracing all the soul and leaving. no portion without part in itself. But not everywhere does this word show itself, but on the wilderness of passions and wickednesses, and it is fine and delicate both to conceive and be conceived, and surpassingly clear and transparent to behold, and it is as it were coriander seed. Tillers of the soil say that if you cut a coriander seed and divide it into countless pieces, each of the portions into which you cut it, if sown, grows exactly as the whole seed could have done. Such too is the word of God, able to confer benefits both as a whole and by means of every part, yes any part you light upon. It is possible that a resemblance between the word of God and the pupil* of the eye, is also intended. For as the pupil of the eye is a very small part of it and sees the zones of the universe in their completeness, and the boundless ocean, and the vast expanse of air and of the infinite heaven, all that is bounded by the rising and the setting sun, so the word of God also has keenest sight, and is able to survey all things, . . . by which they shall clearly see all that is worth beholding. Accordingly it is also white ; for what could be brighter or more farshining than the divine word, by communion with which even other things dispel their mist and their gloom, eagerly desiring to become sharers in the light of the soul ?
Date: 20-50 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... "You see of what sort the soul's food is. It is a word of God, continuous, resembling
dew, embracing all the soul and leaving no portion without part in itself* (Alleg. Interp.
3,169, see even 162-172).
The same thought appears with small variations:162 Manna is the heavenly
food God gives to the soul (Fug. 138; Mut. 259-260; Deus 155),163 and the
erring people, of course, prefer "the onions and the garlic, which give great
pain and trouble to their eyes and make them close, or the other ill-
smelling things" of Egypt to it (Her. 79-80). Manna means the heavenly
wisdom that God gives to people who seek virtue, and as seen above, Philo
is clearly aware of a broad tradition interpreting the biblical story about
manna.164 ...”
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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