EXOD245 The medieval Bible commentator Abarbanel found support for the ethical superiority of a nonmeat diet in the fact that this was the diet (manna) supplied by God to the Israelites in the desert. In the Torah, God refers to manna as "bread from the sky" (lechem min ha-shamayim; [this verse].). Abarbanel sees the manna diet as intended to teach Jews in all generations a lesson: "Meat is not an essential food, but is rather a matter of gluttony… In addition, meat generates cruel blood in human beings. This is why you find that the predatory carnivorous birds are cruel .... But sheep and cattle, chickens, turtle doves, and doves, which live on the grass of the field, have no cruelty or wickedness…" (commentary on Exodus 16:4).