When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.
15. And when the children of Israel saw. The Israelites manifested some appearance of gratitude in calling the food given them from heaven, Man, מן, Man. If this word be referred to the root מנן, it may mean a prepared thing; if to the root מנה, it would mean an assigned portion; but in Syriac and Chaldee man is incontestably what, and the LXX.
Now they begin to be provided for by the immediate hand of God. I. He makes them a feast, at night, of delicate fowl, feathered fowl (Psa 78:27), therefore not locusts, as some think; quails, or pheasants, or some wild fowl, came up, and covered the camp, so tame that they might take up as many of them as they pleased.
Commenting on Exodus 16:13-21
And when the children of Israel saw it,.... As they could not but observe it, it being spread over the face of the wilderness; and besides, as they were told, that in the morning they should have bread to the full, they were up early to look after it: they said one to another, it is manna; not such as is known by that name...