Komentarz do Wyjścia 16:21

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 d'Rabbi Yishmael 16:21).

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.”

וילקטו אותו בבקר בבקר, “they collected it morning after morning.” Had the word בקר been written only once it would have meant two hours after sunrise. The repetition of the word בקר means that it could be collected until he end of four hours after sunrise. After that time the words: “when the sun was hot it would melt” would apply. Anyone who had failed to collect the manna by that time had to receive it as a charitable gift from people who had collected their share on time. A great miracle occurred in connection with the manna. Just as it was the function of the prophet to reveal to people matters otherwise concealed from them, so the manna served as a source of information (Yuma 75). If someone’s slave had fled and was found in some other household, and the householder claimed that the first owner had sold the slave to him, whereas the first householder claimed that the slave in question had fled from him, the number of omers of manna in the two households would reveal who had spoken the truth. If the first household wound up with an extra omer of manna it was evident that the slave had escaped from that household and had not been sold. If an extra portion of manna was found in the second household however, it was proof that the owner of that household had bought the slave, that he had not run away from the first household. The same would apply to a woman who had run away from her husband. If she were to claim that her husband had kicked her out and she would demand her כתובה, financial settlement, whereas her husband declared her guilty of the kind of infidelity by which she forfeits her כתובה, the presence or absence of an extra portion of manna would help to determine whose claim was true. Moses would announce that on the following morning when the husband went out to collect the daily manna ration for the family the truth would become evident. This is how the sages in Yuma 75 describe the judicial help which the manna represented. They base this on the wording of Numbers 11,7 that the manna כזרע גד הוא, “was like the seed of gad;” the Hebrew word גד being similar to מגיד, “telling, revealing.” It revealed many matters which had previously been hidden.

That which remained in the field. . . I.e., it was not the manna they gathered that melted. For if so, what would they eat?

(16:21) "And they gathered it baboker, baboker": in the morning time. The expounders of metaphors said: From here we see that (Genesis 3:19) "In the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread" applied to the manna (too). "and when the sun was hot (i.e., strong), it melted: in the fourth hour (of the day). You say, in the fourth hour; but perhaps (the intent is) in the sixth hour? (This is not so, for) "when the sun was hot" implies when the sun (i.e., an unshaded spot) was hot and the shade was cool — the fourth hour (and not the sixth.) "and it melted": When the sun shone upon it, it melted and streams formed from it which led to the Great Sea (the Mediterranean), where harts, roebuck, fallow-deer, and other beasts came to them and drank from them, after which they were hunted by the (peoples of the) nations, who ate them and tasted the taste of the manna which descended to Israel.

וילקטו אותו בבקר בבקר, “they collected it morning after morning.” They rose to collect the manna before it started melting when the sun became hot. At that time it was impossible to collect it.

ונמס Onkelos translates by פָּשָׁר, having the same meaning as פושרים, tepid waters: through the sun it became warm and turned into tepid water; old French détemperer. An example of it (פשר) occurs in Treatise Sanhedrin at the end of the chapter that begins, ארבע מיתות‎ (Sanhedrin 67b).

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.

פשר is from פושרים — lukewarm water. Onkelos translates נמס as פושרין because the sun turns it into lukewarm water.