The Manna and Miriam's Well
In the wilderness the people receive daily bread from heaven and a travelling source of water, and learn to live without stores beyond tomorrow.
A month after leaving Egypt the food ran out and the people complained: in Egypt we sat by pots of meat and ate bread to the full. The answer was the manna, fine as frost on the ground, falling every morning six days a week. The rules were strict and strange: gather exactly one omer per person, leave nothing for the next day — what was left bred worms; on Friday gather a double portion, which miraculously kept for the Sabbath; on the Sabbath none fell. Whoever gathered more found he had no more than the one who gathered little. For forty years the people lived without stores, fields or markets. Water came from a rock, and tradition speaks of Miriam's well, a spring that travelled with the camp in the merit of the prophetess; when she died the water stopped. A jar of manna was kept in the Tabernacle as a reminder for later generations.