MANNA — Of human greed and God Economics!
By: Orapelang J Sekiwa
Tags: Zimbabwe, Religion, Africa, Economics, Politics

In November, I spent a 2 hour session with my beloved dad, Bishop Jeff, going through the scriptures concerning the miracles of “manna” and the “quails” that the Israelites received on their journey to the promised land. It always amazes me how he picks the not so obvious stuff from the scriptures and his attention to detail… Last time out, we were touching on the increasingly fanatic “mountain dwelling Christians” https://ojsekiwa.medium.com/diary-of-a-zimbo-painful-truth-african-christian-story-mountain-dwellers-14e783c505c5 .

Surprise!! From your childhood pictorial bibles or bible literature, or even the preachers who have preached to you concerning manna, the image in your head once you think about manna, is that manna was some tasty, fluffy, candy floss like buns that fell from heaven that you would just pick up and eat! I’m sorry to ruin your childhood memories, but the manna was nothing like that. According to Numbers 11:7, Exodus 16:31, manna was some kind of small seeds, that would be ground into a flour then baked or boiled to one’s liking!

Now that I’m done ruining your childhood memories, I can go into the serious adulthood matters. Some may wonder where the word, economics, is coming from, on a blog which started with mainly scriptural matters. It is my foremost belief that God, would never put people in a land, where there are not enough resources to cater for them. What human beings are mandated to do, is to ensure the fair and equitable allocation of such resources.

Exodus 16 chronicles a semblance of an “economic system” that the Israelites were mandated to follow , in the utilization of their miracle resource, “manna” in a way that would ensure production efficiency and remove wastage! The head of the house was requested to collect just enough of the “manna seed” in the morning, that would be adequate to cater for their family during the day. The interesting part was that, if a household became greedy and collected what was beyond their needs, worms would mysteriously vanquish the excess lot! Interesting, how worms can appear in a day to eat a seed like stuff, that would ordinarily be ground and made into dough! Interestingly also, the scriptures also say, if a household head collected manna that was not adequate for their household, they would miraculously suffer no lack!!

Another miracle was that on the day before the Sabbath day, God provided manna that was a “long life” sterilized manna, lasting for 2 days! Such attention to detail whilst performing a miracle.

Interestingly also, the God economy, notably had no middlemen, nor government interference, and hence no corruption in the allocation of resources! GREED and speculation also seem to be a human theme! Despite the assurance from God himself that they would find manna waiting for them daily, the naughty Israelites found it fit to collect more manna than they needed, for speculative(storage) purposes!

Maybe, if our business leaders and governments could take a leaf out of the God economy, we would eradicate much of the poverty that Zimbabwe and Africa suffers. Humanity needs to be taught to utilize God given resources with allocative efficiency, there is enough cake for all of us if we tried to share what we have equitably!