This is Moses speaking to the children of Israel about their
experiences in the wilderness:
And he humbled thee, and suffered
thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did
thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread
only, but by every word that proceedeth out of
the mouth of the Lord doth man live. (Deuteronomy
8:3)
We recognize that the Savior paraphrased this verse when
tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread after He fasted 40 days. It is
possible Christ took the first part “he humbled thee, and suffered thee to
hunger” as instruction that He had to endure hunger like other people and be
humbled. Satan probably wanted
Christ to focus more on the part, “he…fed thee with manna, which thou knewest
not” in order to tempt Christ to turn the stones into bread.
But returning to the children of Israel, how was the miracle
of manna supposed to teach them to live by the word of God and not just by
bread?
I think it was because of the instructions and commandments
associated with gathering the manna.
There were instructions about how much they should gather and when to
gather it. There were instructions about not saving it beyond one day. There
were even instructions about when they should not expect to gather it—during
the Sabbath—and how to compensate for that.
To eat every day, they had to follow those instructions. If
they didn’t, they would start to starve. If they persisted in disobedience,
they would die. Every instruction had a purpose, and not a single instruction
could be neglected without consequences. I suppose it is always so with the commandments.
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