ויסעו מאלים...אל מדבר סין, this is what Jeremiah had in mind when he spoke of G’d remembering fondly how Israel had followed Him into the inhospitable desert (Jeremiah 2,2).

מי יתן מותנו...בשבתנו על סיר הבשר, they did not want to die. What they said was that if it had been G’d’s plan all along to let them die, why had He not arranged for them to die while they were still satiated from their last meal? A similar thought is expressed in Lamentations 4,9טובים היו חללי חרב מחללי רעב, “the ones killed by the sword were better off than the ones who died from hunger.”

והכינו את אשר יביאו והיה משנה, not literally: “bread,” but מזון, “food.”

למען אנסנו הילך בתורתי, if when receiving their food without effort they will take care to keep My commandments, seeing they will then not have any excuses not to. This idea has been formulated in the classic statement by our sages in the Mechilta, section ויסע chapter 2 “the Torah, as an instrument of profound study, has been given only to the generation who ate the manna.” [no other generation had so little to distract it from devoting time to Torah study. Ed.]

והכינו את אשר, even after having prepared the food from the raw manna it will still be twice the quantity it had been on the previous days. It will not shrink in the course of preparation. The reason G’d speaks of והכינו, “they will prepare it,” is to encourage the people to prepare for the Sabbath by observing it with delicacies, especially tasty food. They should concentrate on all this on the Sabbath eve.

ערב וידעתם, may it be G’d’s will that what He said about giving you food will be such that in the evening you will receive enough for that evening so that you will all know that He has taken you out of Egypt, totally and irrevocably. You have also exited from the political leaders of that country. True, you had been sitting near the fleshpots there, but you had never been given enough time to enjoy any of the meat in these pots. You had been treated like animals which have no fixed times when they eat. This is the meaning of the passage in Yuma 75 in which we are told that at the beginning of your history (of the enslavement) you were like hens that are only able to hastily pick at the kernels given them as food. They even had to look for it in the refuse heaps. Only after Moses, their redeemer, took over their affairs did they begin to enjoy regular meals at regular times.

ובוקר, in the morning you will have bread,

'וראיתם את כבוד ה, and may it be G’d’s will that you will see Hashem’s glory when He will set limits to various times of the day, so that you will know that your complaints addressed to Aaron and myself should really have been addressed to Him, seeing it is He who will remove the cause of these complaints.

ויאמר משה בתת ה' לכם, Moses said: as far as your prayer to G’d to give you food in the evening in a way which makes it plain that that G’d took you out of Egypt and not we, is that we had in mind בערב בשר לאכול, He will give you meat to eat in the evening; to eat, but not to satiate yourself on; unlike the Egyptians who are only concerned with the cravings of their bodies; therefore only בבקר לשובע only in the morning will G’d give you bread to satiate your body’s requirements. As to our having prayed that G’d would show you His glory, this referred to His answering your complaints.

בשמוע ה' את תלונותיכם, concerning our prayer that you will be able to see the glory of Hashem our intention was that you will realise from His reaction that your complaints were not addressed to us, or should not have been addressed to us, but to Him. Moreover, by providing, He has demonstrated that He has heard your complaints.

אמור אל כל עדת, seeing that Moses knew that their prayer had been accepted, as in the case of Rabbi Chanina who claimed that while praying for the sick he could feel if G’d responded positively.(Berachot 34).

'קרבו לפני ה, “come close to the proximity of Hashem,” Moses referred to the pillar of cloud which traveled in front of the Israelites and represented the presence of G’d.

ויפנו אל המדבר, seeing that the direction of that pillar was toward the desert, the direction in which the people had been marching.

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.

'זה הדבר אשר צוה ה, and in the morning you will eat bread (food) to satisfy yourselves. (compare verse 12)

לקטו ממנו, everyone to his heart’s desire. Some would take more, others less but איש לפי אכלו עומר לגלגלת, מספר נפשותיכם איש לאשר באהלו תקחו, it would not matter how much they would collect, for when they would measure it they would find that each one had exactly one omer per family member in his tent. Every Israelite would receive (ultimately) an equal share of the heavenly food G’d would provide. It would satisfy him in accordance with the amount of food he was used to consume regularly. If someone was in the habit of eating relatively little, he would not now be able to change his eating habits and gorge himself. On the other hand, if someone was a glutton, receiving heavenly food would not require him to downsize his appetite.

ויקצף עליהם משה, the reason that Moses was angry was that the leftover manna was not the result of it being more than the people could eat, but because it represented an attempt by the people to find out if what they had been warned of would really happen.

בבקר בבקר, each morning; the syntax is similar to that in Genesis 39,10 where the words כדברה אל יוסף יום יום mean: “when she spoke to him (thus) each and every day.” We also have a similar line in Exodus 30,7 when the Torah speaks about the daily procedure of cleaning the candelabra, writing בבקר בבקר בהיטיבו את הנרות, “every morning when he would clean out the lamps, etc.”

וחם השמש ונמס, this was the reason that the people would gather it up early in the morning so that it did not yet have a chance to melt from the heat.

את אשר תאפו, the portion of each day’s ration which they would bake in an oven. The subject has been referred to again in Numbers 11,8 as ועשו אותו עוגות “they would make it into cakes.”

אפו!, now, on the Sabbath eve.

ואת אשר תבשלו, and the portion of it which you want to prepare boiled, parallel to what is described in the corresponding chapter in Numbers as ובשלו בפרד, “they boiled it in a pot.”

אכלוהו היום, at fixed times, from this date onward.

'כי שבת היום לה, this entire day is a Sabbath in honour of G’d. It was permitted to eat any manna left over from Friday on the entire Sabbath. However, if any was left over after the Sabbath it could not be eaten anymore.

היום לא תמצאוהו, on the entire Sabbath you will not find any manna on the ground anywhere just as you did not on this Sabbath.

יצאו מן העם, from their camp to the area where during the week the manna had been falling. These people thought that they would find some manna, possibly outside the usual parameter. This was a demonstration of lack of faith in the word of G’d.

ללקוט, this would have been an outright desecration of the Sabbath. Even carrying their containers was a desecration of the Sabbath. The Talmud Shabbat 107 states that even something only peripherally attached to the ground, i.e. something which had not actually had grown in the earth, had roots, is nonetheless considered halachically as if it had been uprooted from the soil.

עד אנה מאנתם לשמור, the rebuke included Moses; although Moses, of course, had not gone out to look for manna on the Sabbbath, who is held co-responsible for the people going out as he had withheld information concerning the Sabbath given to him already at the beginning of the week. During the intervening days Moses should have used the time to teach the people the laws concerning the Sabbath. Moses’ specific error is recorded by the Torah in verse 26 when he told the people “you will gather it for six days and on the seventh day there will not be any.” He had not told the people that they must not go out looking for it. The people did not so much rebel against G’d as against the instructions they had received from Moses, when they did not believe him, assuming that he merely did not want them to waste their time looking for something that was not there. Moses should have taught the people that even gathering up manna was considered a forbidden activity on the Sabbath, that the one doing this was considered as if he had harvested it, cut it, on the Sabbath. Not only that, he would also become guilty for transporting it from the public domain to the private domain, another one of the 39 categories of activities on the Sabbath which are disallowed.

ותורותי, the general tenor of Sabbath observance and the reward and punishment associated with proper Sabbath observance.

ראו!, “try and understand!”

כי ה' נתן לכם השבת, the Sabbath regulations are not merely prohibitions, etc, but first and foremost the Sabbath is a gift from G’d to you, a gift for you exclusively, something G’d did not give to any other nation. The Talmud Shabbat 10 phrases it thus: “I have a precious gift in my treasure chamber, its name is “Sabbath.” I want to give it to the people of Israel.” Based on this concept of what the Sabbath is all about, the sages who formulated the Sabbath morning prayer, עמידה, emphasised that “You did not give it to the nations of the world, in fact they are not even allowed, being uncircumcised, to partake in the מנוחה, “the constructive rest, which is so characteristic of the Sabbath.” This is also echoed in Exodus 31,16 ושמרו בני ישרל את השבת לעשות את השבת לדוררותם. “The Children of Israel are to observe the Sabbath to constructively make of it the Sabbath throughout their generations.” The implication is that proper observance of the Sabbath, its concept, will ensure that we will be around throughout the generations, will partake in the redemption.

אכלו את המן, in lieu of bread made from wheat or other cereals. The Israelites themselves testified to this in Numbers 11,6 when they said (complainingly) בלתי אל המן עינינו, “all we have to look at is the manna.”

עד בואם אל ארץ נושבת, inhabited countries, i.e. the lands conquered from Sichon and Og on the east bank of the Jordan river. Once they had taken over these lands they also ate regular bread. [a period of possibly six months before they crossed the Jordan. Ed.]

את המן אכלו עד בואם אל קצה ארץ כנען, the word את, meaning “with, in addition,” alludes to the fact that they no longer ate manna exclusively. We find further confirmation of this in Joshua 5,11-12 ויאכלו מעבור הארץ ממחרת הפסח...וישבות המן ממחרת, “they ate from the produce of the land, etc.,…the manna stopped on the morrow after the Passover.”