Commentaria in Exodum
Secondly, Oleaster renders man numerous: for the root mana signifies to number: whence mane, thekel, phares, Daniel chap. 5, verse 25; for manna rained down in great number and abundance, like snow.
Calvin wanders further and goes astray, who renders man prepared; and Aben Ezra, who will have man to be a word not Hebrew but Arabic; for it was not by the Arabs but by the Hebrews here in the desert that it was called man.
But the Septuagint, the Chaldee and our version, Philo, Josephus, Origen, Theodoret, Cyril, book 3 on John, chap. 34, and passim both ancients and moderns, render man hu best and most genuinely: What is this? for a thing so unusual excited wonder among the Hebrews, so that they asked: What is this? and what follows shows it: “For they knew not what it was”; where for “what it was” the Hebrew has a paragogic nun. A like paragoge of the letter lamed in the same interrogative ma is in Isaias chap. 3, verse 15: mallachem, what is it to you? But paragogic nun is more usual; for nun is everywhere added to Hebrew nouns, as appears in corban, tschon, sulchan, nechustan. Finally the Chaldees say man for ma, that is, who, what, what thing, as appears Daniel chaps. 3 and 4. So also the Hebrews for euphony use man for ma, as appears Psalm 60, verse 8. The answer of Moses proves the same. For to the Hebrews asking man hu, that is, “what is this?” Moses answers: “This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat.”
[each one,] who feeds on bread and solid food: for neither sucklings nor those at the breast ate manna. So Cajetan.
A GOMOR FOR EVERY MAN.—“Gomor” is a choenix, that is, a measure which suffices each for a day’s food; whence it is called gomer, as it were a handful, that is, of the daily food, says Arias Montanus; or, as Vilalpando says in Apparatus of the Temple, part 2, book 3, chap. 12, gomor is the same as usual, from the root amar, that is, to use some service, because for forty years in the desert this measure gomor was chiefly in use for measuring manna. A gomor was the tenth part of an ephi (as is said in verse 36), or epha, that is, of three modii; and an ephi was the tenth part of a cor, or homer (homer is different from gomor; for gomor is written with ain, homer with chet), as appears Ezech. 45:11; and a cor, or homer, contained 30 modii: for so our Interpreter renders it, Levit. 27:16, and elsewhere. So also the Septuagint, who in Ezech. chap. 45 for homer render six artabas: and an artaba, according to Galen, book On Measures, holds 5 modii, that is, Italian measures; six artabas therefore are 30 modii.
Note here in passing: Three amphorae, three modii, three measures, three sata, one bath, one ephi, all these are one and the same, says Lipomanus. Josephus calls the gomor assaron, that is, a tenth, so that these three, namely gomor, assaron and tenth, are the same. Now assaron, as Josephus says, book 3 Antiquities, chap. 9, contained seven cotylae; and a cotyla contained 9 ounces among the Attics, says Thucydides in Athenaeus book 11: by which reckoning a gomor would have been a measure containing 63 ounces, that is, five pounds and three ounces; but at the end of the book, in the treatise On Measures, I shall show that a gomor contained 8 pounds, or 96 ounces. Which indeed was a huge portion, and, to any stomach however greedy and voracious, even in that ancient and robust age, sufficient for the daily food. But, as Vilalpando notes, manna was of lighter substance, but of greater bulk than wheat: whence he thinks that a gomor full of manna furnished as much bread as a cab full of wheat: and a cab contained 4 sextarii, of which at the end of the book. So then a gomor of manna was about 4 pounds.
Note: God here gives six precepts about manna and assigns as many miracles. The first precept is in this verse, whereby he commands that the Hebrews gather for each head every day of the manna the measure of a gomor, that is, as much as they think probably sufficient to fill a gomor; whence some gathered more than others, thinking they had not yet gathered a gomor: others gathered less, thinking they had gathered a gomor when they had not yet gathered it whole.
Some think (which Abulensis also deems probable) that what is here said, about gathering a gomor for each, is not a precept given, but an ordinance concerning the manna itself, that it should furnish one gomor: for they think that the Hebrews, according as they were more or less greedy, gathered more or less of the manna, for example, he for whom half a gomor sufficed gathered half a gomor; he who needed one or two gomors gathered one or two: but when each afterwards measured what he had gathered, all found only one gomor, because to those who had gathered less God thickened what they had gathered and raised it that it might fill the gomor; but to those who had gathered more than a gomor he condensed and compressed it that it might not exceed a gomor.
This opinion, as to its latter part concerning the rarefaction and condensation of the manna, is in part true, as I shall presently say; but to its former part, that some purposely gathered only half a gomor, others two gomors, the words of Scripture in this verse seem opposed: “Let every one of you gather of it,” he says, “as much as is sufficient to eat: a gomor for every man.” Where “let him gather” is the word of one commanding, and pertains to the gomor: he commands therefore to gather for each a gomor, not more or less. Whence he adds: “So shall you take of it,” namely a gomor for every head. Each therefore had to gather daily as much as he thought would suffice to fill a gomor: but on the sixth day, for that day and for the sabbath, two gomors were to be gathered for each to the measure of a gomor: “neither he that had gathered more, had more: nor he that had provided less, found less.”
Dionysius the Carthusian and Emmanuel Sa think that overseers were appointed from among the Hebrews, who measured the manna gathered by each, and measured out to each a gomor of it, so that to him who had gathered more than a gomor they took away the excess, and gave it to him who had gathered less than a gomor.
But this is little probable: for no mention is made here of overseers; and they, in discharging this office, by taking from the Hebrews, especially the more tenacious, a great part of what they had gathered, would have given great cause of murmuring and strife. Moreover Scripture expressly says that he who had provided less found no less, as if secretly, or by chance, and not as though some addition were given him by judges and overseers; otherwise it would have said: To him who had provided less the overseers supplied and completed his gomor. I say therefore that this is the first and a vast miracle in the manna, namely that so great an abundance rained down daily as sufficed to feed three millions of men, and that each, when they came home and measured the manna gathered by them, whether they had gathered more or less, found all the same one gomor: an angel invisibly adding if they had gathered less than a gomor, taking away if more: for this the express and explicit words of Scripture here require, and St. Paul, 2 Cor. 8, citing these words from the Septuagint: “That there may be equality, as it is written: He that had much, had nothing over; and he that had little, had no lack.”
Hence it follows that all then daily ate of the manna by measure one gomor, and consequently one and the same measure of food, namely a gomor, was for infants, men, women, the robust, the old, and all the Hebrews: for God in the stomach and body of each so digested and distributed his manna and his gomor, that he tempered it to the nutritive power and nutrition and strength of each, that it equally satisfied all; and on the other hand supplied whatever was wanting to anyone’s natural heat and nutritive power for consuming the gomor; or at least would bring it about that manna in a weak stomach should be light and of easy digestion, in a stronger stomach stronger: for thus, as we shall see later, manna varied its savour for each; for each tasted in manna what he wished. In like manner therefore God seems to have made manna taste and act in a strong stomach like robust flesh, pork, beef, etc.; but in a weak one to taste and act like veal, lamb, or like the flesh of fish, like eggs, like milk, etc.
So Nyssen, Lyranus, Abulensis, Oleaster, Cajetan, Vatablus, St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, Anselm on 2 Cor. chap. 8, verse 15. Moreover the Hebrews also, according to Genebrard on Psalm 77:29, relate that manna was a corporeal food which was digested in the very members (not merely in the stomach); whence it did not burden the stomach with heaviness, nor the head with fumes, created no excrement, and was of easy digestion, and therefore was a type of the food of the just in the world to come.