<p>8:15 <i>As it is written: He that gathered much did not have too much, and he that gathered little had no lack</i>- The preceding verse has argued that Jewish Christian spiritual abundance should elicit material support from Gentile Christians. But that was not true to reality- for the Jerusalem Jewish Christians soon returned to Judaism, and were against Gentile Christians, being largely responsible for Paul's arrest when he arrived in Jerusalem with what had been collected, and probably behind much of the Judaist trouble making in the Christian churches he founded. And now he uses an argument which is not completely apposite to the case he is trying to make. In the wilderness, some families could collect more manna than others due to weak health or lack of opportunity. But they shared the manna collected in a collective way, according to Jewish tradition, so that nobody had too much or too less. Those who could collect more gave their abundance to those who could not gather enough. This posits a material giving of our superfluous material wealth to those in the community who have a deficit in material wealth, and in this way &quot;an equality&quot; is achieved. But :14 has argued differently- that Jerusalem's <i>spiritual </i>wealth should be matched by Gentile <i>material</i> giving. The argument from the Jewish manna tradition about the stronger sharing with the weaker (which is not Biblically attested) is therefore not completely relevant. The Biblical account is that each family should gather their own manna for their family; so that Jewish tradition may not even have been correct or historically actual in any case. I noted on :9 that Paul makes a similar poor argument and confusion of category concerning the wealth of the Lord Jesus. He confuses material and spiritual, in a way out of character for Paul the intellectual rabbi, whose arguments are usually logically tight, compelling and watertight. All this arose, I suggest, from a desperate desire to make things work out regarding the Poor Fund and his vision of Jewish-Gentile unity within the wider church. Many well intentioned Christian leaders have made similar mistakes when seeking to enforce a unity in practice upon believers who are simply not mature enough nor ready for it.</p><p>Paul pleads with Corinth to see the similarities between them and the ecclesia in the wilderness; he wants them to personalize it all. He sees their gathering and redistribution of wealth as exactly analogous to Israel&rsquo;s gathering of manna (2 Cor. 8:15)- and he so wishes his Corinthians to think themselves into Israel&rsquo;s shoes. For then they would realize that as Israel had to have a willing heart to give back to God the wealth of Egypt which He had given them, so they were to have a willing heart in being generous to their poorer brethren (Ex. 35:5 = 2 Cor. 8:12). And they would have realized that as &ldquo;last year&rdquo; they had made this offer (2 Cor. 8:10 Gk.), so the year before, Israel had received Egypt&rsquo;s wealth with a similar undertaking to use it for the Lord&rsquo;s cause. As Moses had to remind them a second time of their obligations in Ex. 35, so Paul had to bring it again before Corinth. And if they had seen these similarities, they would have got the sense of Paul&rsquo;s lament that there was not one wise hearted man amongst them- for the &ldquo;wise hearted&rdquo; were to convert Israel&rsquo;s gold and silver into tools for Yahweh&rsquo;s service (Ex. 35:10 = 1 Cor. 6:5; 2 Cor. 10:12). &nbsp;</p><p>They were fed with manna one day at a time- this is so stressed (Ex. 16:4,19,20). There was to be no hoarding of manna- anything extra was to be shared with others (Ex. 16:8; 2 Cor. 8:15). But we live in a world where the financial challenges of retirement, housing, small family size if any family at all... mean that there appears no other option but to 'hoard manna' for the future. To some extent this may be a reflection of the way that life in these very last days is indeed quite different to anything previously known in history; but all the same, we face a very real challenge. Are we going to hoard manna, for our retirement, for our unknown futures? Or will we rise up to the challenge to trust in God's day by day provision, and share what's left over? &quot;Give us this day our bread-for-today&quot; really needs to be prayed by us daily. Let's give full weight to the Lord's command to pray for only &quot;our daily bread&quot;, the daily rations granted to a soldier on active duty. It's almost impossible to translate this term adequately in English. In the former USSR and Communist East Germany (DDR), there was the idea that nobody in a Socialist state should go hungry. And so if you were hungry in a restaurant after eating, you had the right to ask for some food, beyond what you paid for. In the former East Germany, the term <i>S&auml;ttigungsbeilage </i>was used for this in restaurants- the portion of necessity. It's this food we should ask God for- the food to keep us alive, the food which a Socialist restaurant would give you for free. We shouldn't be thinking in terms of anything more than this. It's an eloquent essay in what our attitude to wealth, materialism and long term self-provision ought to be.</p>