Moses said, "This is what the LORD has commanded: 'Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.'" And Moses said to Aaron, "Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the LORD to be kept throughout your generations." As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept. The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan. (An omer is the tenth part of an ephah.)
Exodus 16:32-36
These verses must surely belong to a later date than the rest of the chapter which they conclude, as they assume the existence of the Tabernacle and the Ark of Testimony (34). They complete the story of the provision of manna, with the twofold indication that an omer of it was preserved down the generations as a perpetual memorial, and that it continued throughout the forty years of Israel's pilgrimage until they reached the borders of the Promised Land. The spiritual message here is surely plain: it is that right at the heart of Israel's worship - the Tabernacle, and the Ark of the Covenant - there was this reminder of God's bountiful provision for the needs of His people. So also, at the heart of Christian worship there is the Lord's Table with its reminder of an all-sufficient provision for our salvation, in the symbols of Christ's broken Body and shed blood. But we may also see a further symbolism here: the Ark of the Testimony was so called because it contained the tables of the Law, the words of God's covenant with His people, and the association of ideas as between the manna and the law is deeply suggestive. It is in fact the Word of God that is the bread of life to those who believe in Him, and it is through the Word, by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit, that the sufficiency of Christ's atoning work is mediated to us in such a way that our souls are fed and nourished. This is something that we also must never forget, but keep as a perpetual memorial before us. When we do, we shall prove, as Israel did, that the supply will never fail us, but will sustain us every day and all the days until we ourselves reach the Promised Land.