During their travels in the wilderness, a group of complainers began to protest the Manna that they were forced to eat day after day. They wailed that they missed the succulent meat they ate in Mitzrayim, and now they had nothing to look forward to except Manna. Hashem responded by sending them an abundance of meat.
The Torah records that the people spent an entire day, night, and the following day gathering the meat. The person who gathered the least meat had 10 chomers. The Vilna Gaon beautifully explains the mathematics behind this statistic. The Torah relates (11:31) that the meat fell around the perimeter of the Jewish camp. It stands to reason that those on the outside of the camp were closest to it and were able to make the most trips and gather the most meat. The people who collected the least lived in the middle of the camp and therefore had the longest journeys.
The Gemara in Pesachim (93b) teaches that an average person can walk 10 parsa’os in a day. The Gemara in Berachos (54b) teaches that the size of the entire Jewish camp was three parsa’os by three parsa’os. A person walking from the middle of the camp to the edge and back to his tent would traverse three parsa’os.
Since they gathered for two days and one night, each person could walk a total of 30 parsa’os. Given that each round trip for a person living in the middle of the camp was three parsa’os, he could make 10 round trips. Since an average person can carry one chomer, those who lived in the middle of the camp and gathered the least ended up with exactly 10 chomers.
However, the Ostrovtzer Rebbe questions this computation, as Rashi writes that those who collected the least meat were the lazy and lame, who were certainly unable to walk 10 round trips. Instead, he brilliantly explains the precise calculation based on the Gemara’s teaching (Bava Metzia 10a) that a person can acquire ownerless objects located in the four amos [cubits] around him (6-8 feet).
The Gemara rules (Pesachim 109b) that a kosher mikvah must contain at least 40 se’ah (approximately 150-200 gallons) of water, which is the amount found in an area one amah wide, one amah long, and three amos high. Thus, an area of three cubic amos (1 x 1 x 3) contains 40 se’ah, in which case 30 cubic amos contains 400 se’ah.
If a person acquires items located within four amos, he has ownership over 16 square amos (4 x 4). Since he is standing in the middle of this area and takes up one square amah (Succah 8a), this leaves him 15 square amos. The Torah says (11:31) that the meat was two amos above the ground, which means that each person acquired all the meat located in the 30 cubic amos (15 x 2) around him, which is 400 se’ah.
However, the Shita Mekubetzes maintains that the 4-amah space that a person owns is circular, not square, in which case the area in which he acquired meat was only 300 se’ah, not 400. Rashi writes (Menachos 77a) that there are 30 se’ah in one chomer, in which case even a lame person who could not walk at all and merely collected the meat in the four amos around him still received 300 se’ah, which is exactly 10 chomers.
(R’ Ozer Alport)
