Why Israel Ate the Land's Crops Only When the Manna Ran Out

Another interpretation. A proverb says to a person: Why do you eat barley bread? Because I have no wheat bread. Why do you eat carobs? Because I have no dried figs. So too, had Israel still held even that single handful which they had gathered on the day Moses died, they would not have wished to eat from the produce of the land of Canaan. And in that year that they went out from the land of Egypt, the manna came down for them on the sixteenth of Iyar, and it ceased on the seventh of Adar, and it was finished in their hands on the sixteenth of Sivan, as it is said, "And they ate of the produce of the land of Canaan in that year" (Joshua 5:12).