“Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.”
The Jews had all kinds of wild fantasies about the manna: “in the manna were all kinds of tastes, and every one of the Israelites tasted all that he desired; for so it is written in Deut 2:7, ‘these forty years the Lord thy God hath been with thee, thou hast lacked nothing,’ or ‘not wanted any thing’; what is any thing? when he desired to eat any thing, and said with his mouth, O that I had fat to eat, immediately there was in his mouth the taste of fat.—Young men tasted the taste of bread, old men the taste of honey, and children the taste of oil.’
Yea, they say {l},
‘whoever desired flesh, he tasted it, and whoever desired fish, he tasted it, and whoever desired fowl, chicken, pheasant, or pea hen, so he tasted whatever he desired.’” (qt’d in Gill)
Like the woman at the well, the Jews wanted the bread of God, but their request, like hers, is ironical; they don’t really believe that He can give it to them. As Calvin says, “Thus unhappy men are not satisfied simply with the sin of rejecting God’s promises, but throw the guilt of their unbelief on Christ.” Little do men change throughout the centuries.