The Manna That Ceased the Day After Moses Died

"And the manna ceased on the day after" (Joshua 5:12). As long as Moses was alive, the manna came down for them. When he died, what does it say? "And the manna ceased on the day after." Yet it was not that the manna depended on his life alone, but even in his death, for from the manna they had gathered on the seventh of Adar they ate thirty-nine days, until the sixteenth of Nisan, and they offered the omer at Gilgal, as it is said, "And the children of Israel ate the manna forty years" (Exodus 16:35). Since there is no need for the verse to say "until they came to an inhabited land," what does it teach by saying "until they came"? It teaches that had the manna not ceased, they would not have wished to eat from the produce of the land. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah offered a parable. To what is the matter like? To a king of flesh and blood who said to his servant, "Mix me hot water." The servant said, "I have no hot water." He said to him, "Then mix me cold water."