The מן: Food of Angels

(25) Man did eat the bread of the mighty; He sent them provisions to the full.

(An excerpt)

The manna is an awesome topic. Our rabbis in Mesechet Yoma 75b say: "Man did eat the bread of the mighty" (Psalms 78:25). This is the bread that the ministering angels eat according to Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Yishmael said to Rabbi Akiva, "You are mistaken, for do ministering angels eat bread? Doesn't it say in Deuteronomy 9:9 "Bread I did not eat and water I did not drink"? Rather, you should read this as bread for the limbs- bread that is absorbed into the limbs (which leaves no waste product so Bnei Yisrael never needed to go to the bathroom). And what R' Akiva is saying is that the Brightness of the Shechina sustains the angels. And God kept all the people alive= מחיה- it can also be read as sustenance, מחיה. It is said that "Light is sweet" (Ecclesiastes 11:7) and if light is sweet it is pleasurable to be sustained off of it. The manna is somehow a second generation from the Ohr Elyon-primary light. Somehow this light took on a physicality so man could be sustained by this "Light Bread." So in the Midbar we and the angels are being sustained by the same sort of thing. And because its source was entirely spiritual, then obviously you could taste whatever you like- all you have to do is think. It was a pleasing thing for the Almighty to give us this.

(based on the Soncino)

It is written (Numbers 11:9) "And when the dew fell upon the camp at night [the Manna fell upon it]" and it's written (Exodus 16:4) "And the nation went out and gathered it" and it's written (Numbers 11:8) "The nation searched and gathered it."

Question: Which one was it- did it fall right outside their tent, did they have to go out to gather it or did they have to search and gather it?

Answer: The righteous tzadikkim had the Manna fall right outside their tents. The beinonim (in-betweeners, average people) had to go out and find it and the reshaim (wicked ones) had to search for it and gather it.

It's written "bread" and "cakes" and "and they ground it up." Question: So which is it- did the Manna fall in bread form, as a doughy cake or as something they had to grind up?

Answer: For the tzadikim it fell in its final form as bread. For the beinonim it was doughy cakes (seems like they still needed to be baked). For the reshaim, it was a substance that still needed to be ground up and then baked.

R' Yehuda says that Rav said in the name of R' Chama son of Chaninah that we can learn that women's cosmetics fell with the Manna because it says "and they ground up" while the Manna was baked (so it has to be something else that was being ground up).

R' Chama says that we can learn that necessities for cooking fell with the Manna. It says in Exodus 36:3 "And they would bring free-will offerings each day." R' Shmuel bar Nachmani says R' Yonatan says that each day precious stones would fall with their allotment of Manna and the princes (leaders of each tribe) brought the onyx Shoham stones (from their manna precious stone allotment). [...]

There is also a statement in Bamidbar that the taste of the Manna was like the taste of "shed hashemen" (something fried in oil). But you should read sheid like an infant who tastes many tastes in his mother's milk, so too the manna had many tastes (just like the sheid can transform into many colors).

​Cosmetics of Women- Fragrant spices that they would pound with a mortar and apply so that their scent would be pleasing to their husbands.

Necessities for (Cooking in) Pots-Spices for cooking

That precious stones fell for them-They would bring a free will offering from what they would find each morning when they would go out to gather the Manna as it says "And they would gather it morning by morning."

(14) והנה על פני המדבר, kernels in the shape and texture of very fine crystals as described in Numbers 11,7 כזרע גז הוא, similar to the seeds of Gad.

(Thanks Moshe Y. Gluck for helping me translate this)

A thin substance as thin as frost. It's important to understand that there was a lot that was wondrous about the collection of the Manna. Because an omer would fall for a grown man and also for a little child only three years old. So how was it possible that for each of them that quantity was equal? If you say that this is due to a miracle that the little child ate the same amount as the grown adult, how can a Baraita in Eruvin prove from the Manna that the definition of a Seudah is an omer? The eating over here was not like the eating of other things!

Additionally the language of the pasuk later on "Ish L'Ochlo" (each man according to what he would eat) is difficult according to our supposition because it suggests according to his ability to eat it would fall for him-however much he needed, a little bit or a lot of food. But the same amount of Manna fell for each person!

The answer to all this is that the manna was like a seed of Gad. It was like a seed that looked like a peapod and inside of it would be the manna. Some of these Manna-pods were full and some of them only had a little and some of them were empty with only the thin outer membrane able to be eaten. This is what the verse means "Dak Mechuspas"- that the thin "dak" membrane was like a box "chafisa" like Rashi explains. Some of them were Dak Kafkor, in which the inside is empty. The thin frost could fill as little as a fistful.

And it was by way of providence that it fell for each person according to his ability to eat and for the little child most of his pods were empty but each person still collected one omer worth of manna-pods. And since each person collected an omer, the Gemara's proof is good. Even the biggest recipient only received this measure which proves this is the right amount for a seudah.

(14) מחספס uncovered — and there is no other example of this word in the Scriptures. One may also explain מחספס as having the same meaning as המיסה in (Mishna Bava Metzia 1:8) חפיסה ודלוסקמא, “a valise and chest”, in Mishnaic Heberw, and the meaning would be, that when it became uncovered from the layer of dew they saw that there had been a thin object enclosed in it i. e. enclosed between the two layers of dew. Onkelos tranlates it by מקלף peeled (flaky), taking מחספס in the sense of, and from a similar root as, (Genesis 30:37) “peeling off (מחשף) the white”.

(15) ככפר AS HOAR FROST — כפר is old French gelide. The Targum renders דק by דעדק כגיר, the word גיר occurring in (Isaiah 27:9) “גיר-stones” — this is a kind of black colour — just as we enumerate amongst the kinds of earth which may be used for covering the blood of a wild animal or bird after it has been slaughtered “powdered chalk (גיר) and orpiment” (Chullin 88b). Onkelos renders the entire phrase by “powdered like גיר, like hoar-frost upon the ground”, meaning that it was as fine as גיר and lay congealed as frost in the ground. This is therefore the meaning of דק ככפור: “spread out fine but yet one atom hanging to another like hoar-frost”. דק is old French tenuis — meaning that it formed a thin incrustation on top. The word וכגיר which Onkelos has in his translation is an addition to the Hebrew text, there being no word corresponding to it in the verse.

(21) וחם השמש ונמס AND WHEN THE SUN WAXED HOT, IT MELTED — What was left in the field (outside the inhabited camp) melted and ran in streams; the harts and the roes drank therefrom, and the nations of the world hunted them and experienced through them the taste of the Manna, and thereby understood how great was Israel’s excellency (Mekhilta).