It was, that all should prepare victuals [cibaria]. But what victuals? There are four opinions. The first, of certain Rabbis (which they repeat as if from the school of Elias the prophet, in the tractate on peregrine cult [Avodah Zarah] ch. 1): [that it was] penitence for a life led before, and true piety toward God. For the rain of the manna was still daily to them, so that there was no need at all to prepare any bodily foods. But that [is] a tropological rather than historical exposition. For how would that penitence and piety then be obscurely indicated? Who from the people would understand this? — whereas nonetheless the promulgation of this preparation ought to be made to the whole crowd of the whole multitude, [through] all the camps. The second is R. Solomon’s [Rashi’s]: [that] not foods are signified, but other things — whatever were necessary for the journey and the war — so that “to prepare victuals” is, as it were, “to collect vessels [gear]”; or, as Josephus says bk. 5 ch. 1, [that it means] the whole multitude [being] prepared for battle. But the Hebrew word here placed, tsedah [צֵדָה], always elsewhere signifies food [esca]. How then, or why, would it here shed that signification? Or, [if] one is led from “hunting” [venari], the opinion would be [that] the hunting [was] made ready. But how many people then would have attended to the collection of baggage-packs? The third is Procopius’s opinion: [that] the manna indeed rained on individual days, but that now more abundant [manna] is bidden to be collected for the journey, and to be prepared with the usual pounding and cooking, of which [it was] said in Exodus. The fourth [is] of Masius, and before him Abulensis (q. 31 and following, up to 39), and before both, R. David Kimchi: [that it was] foods [obsonia]. For the manna they had in the manner of bread among the Israelites; but now it is commanded that they join other foods to it. — Into the third opinion I go [incline] more willingly. 1. Because, since the manna had every savor of sweetness, and supplied the place of all foods [as] delicacies (as in Exodus I was affirming), and so abundantly sufficed for all necessity, and also for pleasure — it seems not very likely [that] Joshua ordered other foods by public voice of criers and by edict. For although the Israelites themselves sometimes joined others [foods] (as is gathered from Deut. 2:28), yet it was not commanded them, but was indulged [permitted]. 2. That Hebrew word tsedah is never taken for other edibles [in such a way] that bread ought to be excluded [from its meaning]; but it is taken generally, and signifies both this [bread] and that [other food] — Gen. 24:25 & ch. 45:27, Exod. 12:39, and below indeed clearly v. 5 [Josh. 1:11], Judges 7:8, where ours frequently [renders it] “victuals” [cibaria], sometimes “pottage” [pulmentum], or “provision for the way” [viaticum]; the 70 always render [it] ἐπισιτισμὸν [episitismon]. Why then, from this place, should bread — or manna — be cast out, so that only other foods should be commanded to the people to be provisioned? 3. If commonly, and as it were by law, they had already begun to use other viands than the manna, the manna would surely have failed them before the 15th day of the first month. For we see it thus done below ch. 5 v. 12, when they began to be fed with the fruits of the land. — Abulensis’s two [replies] answer q. 38. First, [that] they were not going to remain in the land of the Amorites, and therefore the manna ought not to be subtracted from them there. Second, [that] the new crops had not yet matured, so that they could be a certain and solid nutriment to them. But easily the former is first rejected. First, because that preparation — even if it was to be made in the Amorite land across the Jordan — was nonetheless not [made] for that [land], or so that in it the prepared food should be eaten, but [that] they should be carried across the Jordan; and their use would be for some days. Then, what would meanwhile happen [that they should]
(col. 296 [printed 297])
remain [manna-fed] in that land, [rather] than that they could sustain themselves with manna commonly, and by law [as staple], and had willed [so]? But the latter [reply] is nowise firmer. For of the old crops in the Amorite [land] so great abundance was supplying, that when the inhabitants were destroyed, it could suffice for the sustenance of the Israelites, as Abulensis himself proves q. 35. And of Canaan, into which they were going, who could doubt the same? Yet he objects against that opinion — the same author, q. 31 — two [things]: First, the Manna, [when] kept to the following day, putrefied. Second, on individual days it fell [afresh]; therefore to make a preparation of it [in advance] would have been superfluous. To the first I respond: [that] God was wont to preserve the manna which had been collected on the sixth day [feria sexta] immune from putridity on the Sabbath day; and so at this time [he] did [it] for some days — and this Joshua understood [to be] divinely premonished. Nay, and in the ark, the manna which was there for the sake of a monument was for very many years subject to no putridity at all. To the second, [it] will be said in the following question — and perhaps elsewhere — when it will be disputed whether in Canaan, after the crossing of the Jordan, any manna fell.