Food, Water, and a Desert

July 5, 2009, 7:00 am by dc-agape.

Exodus 16:1-36

The Israelites have been traveling for a month, with their children and herds towards Mt Sinai.  Now both Moses and Aaron know the way, because both of them were at the base of the mountain:

Exodus 4:27 The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the desert to met Moses.”  So he met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him.

Both men had travelled this way round trip.  They would have known were to get food and water.  But the problem was the number of people and animals in their community.

We also know that there were over 600,000 men that came out of Egypt (Numbers 1:44-46). 

Considering that most societies have a 1:1 ratio, there would be that many women as well.  To add to that there were children from the age of birth to 20.  And we cannot forget about the livestock!  That is for approximate numbering of mouths to fill…over 3,000,000 people and animals in a desert.  Two things come immediately to mind: food and water.

It is reported that 2.5L of water is a daily requirement for human life.  So daily the Israelites would need at least 6,000,000L of water…in a desert!  And no they weren’t hardier than today.  Even if they were they were in a desert!  This is a place where rain falls only 33mm – 200mm/year.   That’s about .2L of water in an entire year.  A liter of water weighs 2.2 lbs (1 kg).  Daily the Israelites would have had to find 6,000,000,000 grams of water.  In no way, shape or form could the Israelites carry enough water with them.  I do believe we have the beginnings of another Tall Tale.

Just as important is food.  On the first day of the second month of travel the Israelites begin to complain about hunger.  Here again, we must truly wonder if they were slaves in Egypt:

Exodus 16:3 the Israelites said to him, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt!  There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

This is the second time they have complained (Exodus 14:11-12) and even YHWH was worried they might want to return if they had to fight the Philistines (Exodus 13:17).  This is the third time that Egypt did not look so bad. And how many slaves do you know that owned livestock (Exodus 9:7)?  Just look at the size of the community that was slowly traveling through the Desert of the Sinai Peninsula.  Well, YHWH takes care of the food problem.  Once in 40 years he gives them quail but the rest of the time he gives them manna.  To be exact he gives them an omer per person per day.  An omer is 2.11 liters.  Doing the math again this would mean that over 6,000,000 liters of manna would have to be gathered each day.  Manna was described in the Word of God as:

Exodus 16:14 When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor.

Let’s be generous (very) and say that this manna was 0.5 cm thick…a cubic cm is one milliliter.  So these 6,000,000 liters of manna would have covered 12,000,000,000 cm² or 1.2 km².  And on the day before the Sabbath it would have to cover 2.4km².  That is doable, except that the manna could not be collected within the confines of the encampment…animal and human traffic and excrement, that kind of stuff.  The act of scrapping this off the desert floor without gathering too much dirt/sand would have been a time consuming activity.  This is somewhat reasonable until you think about the size of the camp that the Israelites had to make each night.  3,000,000 living beings would require a camp of at least 12 km² just for sleeping.  I would imagine that, since they did have cooking capabilities (Exodus 16:23) the camp had to be at least 24 km².  The people in the center of camp would have to travel up to 12 km just to get breakfast and then the whole group would move on to another spot.  I do believe we have a Tall Tale.

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