MANNA — the bread from heaven, named by a pun the text stages on itself. ⚠ When Israel first sees it, they ask one another MAN HU? (v15) — and the verse immediately glosses its own question with the ordinary Hebrew word for 'what,' explaining 'for they did not know MAH it was.' Man is not the standard interrogative; it behaves more like an archaic or Aramaic-flavored 'who/what,' unusual enough that the narrator seems to translate it in the same breath. Whatever the people were actually asking, the word they used becomes, sixteen verses later, the substance's own name (v31) and the thing set aside in a jar before the Testimony (v33) — a question hardening into a noun before the chapter is over. → first discussed at Exod 16:15