Psalm 78 is Asaph's long retelling of Israel's history, and right in the middle of it sits one of the most staggering lines in the Old Testament. When God fed his people in the desert, Asaph says, "he rained down on them manna to eat and gave them the grain of heaven. Man ate of the bread of the angels" (Psalm 78:24–25). Bread from heaven, food fit for angels, handed to a grumbling people in a wasteland. But the psalm won't let us stop at the miracle. These were the same people who had sneered, "Can God spread a table in the wilderness?" (78:19) — and after they ate their fill, they kept right on rebelling. Centuries later a crowd threw this very verse at Jesus: "Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat" (John 6:31). And Jesus told them the manna was never the point. "I am the bread of life" (John 6:35). The manna kept them alive for a day; he keeps them forever. This reading sits with the wonder of the bread of angels — and with the sobering truth that a person can eat heaven's bread and still miss the God who sent it.
