As Heard From Rabbi Avigdor Miller ZT”L

“In order to cause you to know that not by bread alone does man live, but by all that comes forth from the mouth of Hashem does a man live.” (8:3)

If this lesson was the purpose of the forty years of Mann which deprived the nation of the pleasure of eating ordinary foods, then it is of the utmost urgency for us to study and to understand this principle.

Hashem denotes Being, and because His existence is the sole is the sole true existence, we understand that the existence of everything is the result of His will to cause things to exist. To believe that anything has existence of its own or even has power to cause others to exist is therefore a form of idolatry. That eating could transmit energy to a living person is a miracle of causing continued existence, and this miracle is solely the result of Hashem’s will.

Thus eating ordinary foods results in sustaining the life of the eaters solely by the will of Hashem that such should be the result. But the constant use of foods has caused men to err into believing that the food itself is the cause of life; and thereby they slip into a form of idolatry. And even if they thank Hashem for the food, they are merely thanking Him for making available a force for maintaining life which their confused minds consider a separate and independent force.

Therefore when they no longer had recourse to ordinary foods, but solely to the Mann to which the mind of man does not attribute any power of sustaining life, they gradually became accustomed to the lesson that not food sustains life, but it is solely Hashem’s decree that sustains life.

And although today we have gained a glimpse of the profoundly complicated cunning of the functions of life, it is again mere idolatry to credit these super-designed mechanisms with the power of sustaining life, both because of the immense wisdom which we perceive and which no power but Hashem could achieve, and also because of the need to recognize that all mechanisms could have been harmful rather than beneficial, in the countless steps and manners of their performance.

Now that we see that 40 years of sustained effort were expended by Hashem on inculcating this principle of Oneness of Hashem’s Power, then we can understand why this lesson became the most reiterated and most emphasized of all: “Hear Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One.”

Quoted from “Fortunate Nation” by Rabbi Avigdor Miller ZT”L

Shabbat Shalom

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