How long the pot of manna was preserved in the ark of the covenant can not be known definitely. We have the fact that the Lord directed its preservation there (Ex. 16: 32–34); and the further fact that when the ark was placed in the new temple of Solomon there was nothing in it save the two tables of stone (1 Kings 8: 9). It was doubtless kept long enough to subserve all the valuable purposes of a memorial to the generations of Israel. It has been embalmed in the Christian consciousness of the Christian age by its symbolical use in the teachings of our Lord in which it represents his flesh which he gave for the life of the world――the far more real bread of life from heaven (John 6: 31–35, 47–58). _Water Supplied by Miracle._ The subsistence of the Israelites during forty years in the desert of Arabia involved not only a supply of bread but of _water_ also. On two distinct occasions――the first at Rephidim, close to Horeb, during the last half of the second month from Egypt; and the second at Kadesh, in the northern border of the great desert, and during the first month of the fortieth year from Egypt,[38] water was supplied them by miracle. So great a multitude of people, including their animals, must have required a large supply of water. Nothing therefore is more probable than that the supply should often be short, and sometimes utterly fail. At Rephidim the people most unreasonably chode with Moses as if he alone was responsible for bringing them out of Egypt and for the lack of water, and as if their sufferings were so great as altogether to eclipse all the blessings of that great deliverance. Moses had no help but in the Lord his God. In answer to prayer the Lord provided for a miracle, to be well attested by the presence of a body of the elders of the people. “Take them with thee,” saith the Lord, “and take also thy rod wherewith thou smitest the river” (the Nile) “and go. I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it that the people may drink.”――――The names given were significant――“Massah” of their _tempting_ the Lord by their unbelief; Meribah, of their _chiding_ and _strife_ as to Moses.