וימדו בעמר ולא העדיף המרבה והממעיט לא החסיר איש לפי אכלו לקטו ויאמר משה אלהם איש אל יותר ממנו עד בקר
“They measured it with an omer measure and those who took more didn’t attain more, and those who took less weren’t left with any less, each man according to his portion he got. Moshe told them, don’t leave any over until morning.” (Shemos 16:18-19)
Rav Yerucham Levovitz suggests that the laws governing the mon teach us several fundamental concepts regarding trust in Hashem and the efforts we must make to support ourselves. The Torah tells us that regardless of how much mon a person collected, upon returning home each person found himself with precisely one omer, not more and not less. This teaches us that a person’s income and success in business is not dependent or even related to the amount of effort he puts in. We must labor to support ourselves because this was one of the punishments decreed upon Adam and all his descendants (Bereishis 3:19), but the results of our efforts are completely independent of our choice of profession and the number of hours we put in, as evidenced by the mon.
Secondly, the Jews were prohibited from leaving over any of the mon from one day to the next. The Gemara in Yoma (76a) explains that this was done to make them feel constantly dependent on Hashem for their sustenance. We may derive from here the folly of the American dream of “financial security,” which is essentially the pursuit of a life full of trust in oneself and one’s bank account and free of trust in Hashem. In fact, it has been pointed out that although Americans ostensibly purport to have bitachon, as the currency itself says, “In G-d We Trust,” the ironic fallacy it is that they only proclaim their trust in Hashem after they already have the money in their wallet. (R’ Ozer Alport)
