8511. Verses 28-31 And Jehovah said to Moses, How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My laws? See! Because Jehovah has given you the sabbath, therefore on the sixth day He gives you the bread of two days; rest, each of you in his place, ¹ let no one go out of his place on the seventh day. And the people rested on the seventh day. And the house of Israel called its name Man; ² and it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like that of a cake with honey.

'And Jehovah said to Moses' means that the appearance of the Divine had become obscured. 'How long do you refuse to keep My commandments and My laws?' means because their actions were not in keeping with Divine order. 'See!' means that they should pay attention and stop to reflect. 'Because Jehovah has given you the sabbath' means the joining together of goodness and truth by the Lord. 'Therefore on the sixth day He gives you the bread of two days' means that for this reason right at the end of the former state He imparts so great an amount of good through truth that the joining together takes place after that. 'Rest, each of you in his place' means a state of peace. 'Let no one go out of his place on the seventh day' means that they must now remain in that state. 'And the people rested on the seventh day' means that the joining together of goodness and truth in a state of peace was now represented. 'And the house of Israel called its name Man' means its essential nature among them. 'And it was like coriander seed, white' means the truth within it, that it was pure. 'And the taste of it was like that of a cake with honey' means that the good was delightful, like that which began as truth but was made into good by means of delight.

脚注:

8462. 'Man is it? because they did not know what it was' means owing to its not being known, that is to say, bewilderment owing to this. This is clear from the fact that Man in the original language is the interrogative word What? and so serves to indicate that something is not known. The reason therefore why the bread given to the children of Israel in the wilderness was called manna is that this bread means the good of charity which the truth of faith gives birth to, and this good remains completely unknown to a person before regeneration; not even the existence of it is known. Before regeneration a person supposes that apart from the delights born of self-love and love of the world, which he calls good, no good can possibly exist which does not arise in that way or is not by nature such. If anyone were to speak at that time of interior good which nobody can come to learn about and consequently know of as long as the delights belonging to self-love and love of the world reign, and to say that this good is what governs good spirits and angels, people would be bewildered as by something completely unknown or impossible. But in actual fact that good is immensely superior to the delights belonging to self-love and love of the world. For people ruled by self-love and love of the world do not know what charity and faith are, or what doing good without thought of reward is, or that one who does it has heaven within himself; and they think that if they are deprived of the delights belonging to those kinds of love no joy or life is left, when in fact that is just when heavenly joy begins, see 8037. From all this one may now see why the word 'man[na]' was used on account of its meaning What is it?