Here’s a question. What if everything you and your family needed to live was provided for you?
Think of it. You would never have to think of food, water, clothing, shelter. You, your family, your community would not want for anything.
Take a moment. How would that feel? What kind of security would that give you? Or how about this. The Mega Millions lottery this past week had a grand prize of a billion dollars. Imagine that kind of prosperity just…given to you, freely. How would that change your life?
More to the point, how would that change your faith?
This week, we read a fascinating passage about the challenge this kind of providence had on the Israelites. In Eikev they are getting ready to enter the land, but, of course, Moses is giving them a warning and a sermon first.
Deuteronomy 8:2-6 — Remember the long way that your God יהוה has made you travel in the wilderness these past forty years, in order to test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep the divine commandments or not. [God] subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever known, in order to teach you that a human being does not live on bread alone, but that one may live on anything that יהוה decrees. The clothes upon you did not wear out, nor did your feet swell these forty years. Bear in mind that your God יהוה disciplines you just as a householder disciplines his son. Therefore keep the commandments of your God יהוה: walk in God’s ways and show reverence.
Wait a second. We were taught that manna was simply…a miracle, right? Food was provided every day and then a double portion given on Friday so that no one had to collect it on Shabbat. How could this sustenance—this miracle—be a test? What was being tested and why? And did they pass?
This test of Manna has been interpreted in many ways.
For the commentator Ibn Ezra, the test had to do with the special energy, or Koach, of the manna. You know the line. “Man does not live by bread alone.” This manna had no characteristics of physical food. It melted each day. They were not sustained by the bread, they lived on the spiritual essence. Of course, this was part of the miracle.
Our sages teach that every food we eat has a spiritual element for the soul. This is based on the fact that vegetation was created before Man. It therefore has a deeper connection to what is called the Tohu. the mystical wellspring of the creative energy of the world.
Tohu comes from an earlier stage and order of creation in which the flow of G‑d’s involvement and presence was so intense that the created reality was unable to receive and digest it. Physical food carries this koach. Now, if spiritual food can sustain the body, how much the moreso can regular bread from Tohu sustain our souls when the manna disappears.
Manna comes to teach us that our physical bodies can live on a spiritual plane— but we need the mitzvot to sustain us. The suffering was to help us understand that we should keep the mitzvot when we enter the land because God took care of us in the desert and sustains our spirits when we follow his ways.
For Ramban, the suffering was a little more concrete. Yes, you had food to eat, but just enough. And there was no way to store it! There were no jars, pantries, or refrigerators full of food to give you comfort and security—talk about suffering! In addition, your fathers never heard of this stuff—you had no such tradition and didn’t even know if it would work! This was a test that even Abraham didn’t undergo.
Through this trial, they learned that God could physically sustain them with a spiritual essence. And by deduction, when they entered the land, the spiritual would then be sustained through the physical.
These tests helped them achieve their potential, because once everything was provided, their needs met, their health and sustenance assured, they STILL chose to follow Adonai. In a time of plenty, in a time of abundance, in a time of beneficence—in a time when it’s easiest to relax, to forget, to turn away—they continued on the path of mitzvot.
So many of us look around and see our material achievements and think, “I did this. I worked hard and I achieved this.” The Torah rejects this idea. Everything you have and everything you think you earned was—like the manna in the desert—given to you from God. Remembering this is maybe our test.
We read in verse 18:
וְזָֽכַרְתָּ֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ כִּ֣י ה֗וּא הַנֹּתֵ֥ן לְךָ֛ כֹּ֖חַ לַעֲשׂ֣וֹת חָ֑יִל לְמַ֨עַן הָקִ֧ים אֶת־בְּרִית֛וֹ אֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּ֥ע לַאֲבֹתֶ֖יךָ כַּיּ֥וֹם הַזֶּֽה׃
Remember that it is your God יהוה who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant made on oath with your fathers, as is still the case.
Ibn Ezra comments on this verse. This means if the thought My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth should enter your mind, then remember the One who gave you power, who made it possible.
Why couldn’t we just go into the Land of Promise directly after Sinai. Why 40 years of suffering? Our faith had to be tested, tried in fire, and tempered so that when we entered the good Land, the land of milk and honey, the land of vineyards and oil—when we reached the land of abundance—we would think back to the manna and remember the lessons.
So. Remember the manna. Remember the desert. Remember that even when everything was given to us, our hearts followed God’s ways. Look at the goodness we have. Look at our abundance, our own and our community’s. Look at the blessings all around us falling like manna on a dewy morning.
Look—and remember, all of it can evaporate just as quickly.
Forged in the desert, thriving in a land of plenty, our challenge is to remember, to consider, and to thank the Source of all Blessing and walk in His ways.
May we all merit blessings, renewal, and peace this Sabbath and always.