John 6:32,33 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Jesus said, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven It was not Moses who in ancient times gave the manna to your fathers, neither was the manna bread from heaven, though it be so called by the psalmist, on account of the thing which it typified: for it dropped from the air only; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven It was my Father that gave to your ancestors the manna, and he now giveth you the true spiritual, heavenly bread, of which the manna was only a symbolical representation, and which is sufficient to sustain, not a single nation only, but the whole world. For the bread of God The bread only worthy of that name; is he Or rather, is that which cometh down, as ο καταβαινων should here be rendered, being a participle, referring to ο αρτος, the bread, which is of the masculine gender: for it appears, from what follows, that our Lord did not intend at once to lay aside the veil, wherein he had wrapped his meaning: for the request made to him in the very next verse, Give us always this bread, shows that he was not yet understood as speaking of a person, which he must have been if his expression had been as explicit as that of our translation. From heaven Not from the aerial, but from the highest heavens; and giveth life unto the world Not that which preserveth a mere temporal life to one people only, but imparteth spiritual and eternal life to as many of the whole world as will be persuaded to partake of it; and that from generation to generation.