Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
Parallel translations
- WEB Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
- BSB Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died.
- NKJV Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead.
- NASB Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
- NLT Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, but they all died.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Jesus reminds them that their fathers ate manna in the wilderness and still died. The old bread could not give lasting life.
Overview
However miraculous, the manna only sustained physical life and could not conquer death. By recalling that the wilderness generation died, Jesus exposes the limits of what their fathers received. This prepares the contrast with the bread He offers, which secures eternal life and resurrection.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 7
- Jude 1:5I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not.
- Heb 3:17–19But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?
- 1 Cor 10:3–5And did all eat the same spiritual meat;
- John 6:31Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat.
- John 6:58This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.
- Zech 1:5Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever?
- Num 26:65For the LORD had said of them, They shall surely die in the wilderness. And there was not left a man of them, save Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
John declares him plainly: the eternal Word made flesh, the Lamb of God, the great 'I AM' — bread, light, door, shepherd, way, truth, life, resurrection — that you may believe and have life in his name.
How John 6:49 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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