NOTES for Exo 15:22-16:36
Besides being a place of freedom, the wilderness is also a place of hope. Not only the hope that "dies last," but also that active hope in God which dies first as soon as one gives in to life's trials. A calm life beside the "pots of meat" seems far more attractive than the need to keep waiting for a miracle, even if that life with meat and bread is not life but slavery. But life, at least for the Jews who followed Moses to the land of their fathers, is arranged in such a way that, after leaving one's former life in warmth, satiety, and hopeless slavery, a person is forced to enter the realm of hope for a miracle - or rather, not even for a miracle, but for God. And the outcome of the journey depends only on this hope...