When the Righteous Demand Signs and the Manna Jar Is Set Aside

Midrash Tanchuma preserves two passages, Vaera 3 and Beshalach 21, that both address how divine power is verified across time. The first defends Pharaoh's right to demand a sign before believing Moses. The second describes the jar of manna that Moses commanded be set aside for future generations to see.

Even the Righteous Demanded Signs

The Vaera passage opens with Exodus 7:9, the divine instruction that when Pharaoh asks Moses and Aaron to show a wonder, they will be making a reasonable request. Tanchuma's gloss is striking. Pharaoh's demand is treated as legitimate.

The passage builds a precedent list of righteous figures who themselves demanded signs. Noah, after the flood, was told neither shall there be any more a flood, and Noah still demanded a sign. God answered with the rainbow, I have set my bow in the cloud, Genesis 9:13. Hezekiah, sick and dying, was told by Isaiah that he would be healed and would go up to the house of the Lord on the third day, citing 2 Kings 20:5. Hezekiah still asked, What shall be the sign?, 2 Kings 20:8. God answered with a choice: should the shadow on the sundial go forward ten degrees or backward ten? Joshua the high priest in Zechariah 3:8 is told they are men that are a sign, meaning the very prophets of his generation served as walking confirmations.

The midrash then draws the inference. If the righteous demanded signs, how much more was the wicked Pharaoh entitled to demand one? The verse in Exodus 7:9 records Pharaoh's right to ask, and Aaron's rod becoming a serpent in Exodus 7:10 records God's response.

The passage closes with Pharaoh's reaction. Pharaoh dismissed the sign as common stagecraft, calling in young Egyptian children of four and five years old to throw down their rods and produce the same effect. The midrash here is not defending the sufficiency of Aaron's wonder. It is establishing the principle that the request for one was not, by itself, an act of disbelief.

The Jar of Manna for the Messianic Era

The Beshalach passage opens with Exodus 16:33, the command to take a jar and place an omer of manna in it. The midrash first inspects the Hebrew word tzintzenet used for the jar. The word, the passage explains, suggests a vessel that keeps its contents cooler than other materials. The only material that fits the description is glazed earthen clay. The jar was a clay vessel.

The midrash then asks why the manna was preserved at all. Rabbi Eleazar held it was stored for future generations to see. Rabbi Eliezer specified the messianic era as the moment for which it was being kept. The passage then narrates what happens when the jar is finally produced.

In the future, when Israel asks Jeremiah why they should devote themselves to Torah study if doing so would leave them without livelihood, the jar of manna is brought forth. Jeremiah cites Jeremiah 2:31, O generation, see the word of the Lord: have I been a wilderness unto Israel? The teaching the prophet delivers from the jar is concrete. Your fathers occupied themselves with the Law, and see how they were fed; concern yourselves with the Law, and I shall feed you from this jar.

The jar of manna is then identified as one of three things Elijah will restore to Israel in the future: the jar of manna, the bottle of anointing oil, and the bottle of sprinkling water. Some authorities add Aaron's rod with its almonds and blossoms, citing Numbers 17:25 where the rod is placed before the testimony as a token against rebellious children.

The Pattern the Compilers Built

The two passages of Tanchuma address signs across different time-scales. Vaera 3 treats the sign as an immediate verification given to a specific person in the present moment. Beshalach 21 treats the sign as an object set aside now for production at a future moment, the messianic era when Israel will need to be convinced that Torah study is worth pursuing.

Both passages assume that divine assurance is not a private interior experience. It is an external object or event that satisfies a request. Noah got a rainbow. Hezekiah got a moving shadow. Pharaoh got a rod-serpent. Future Israel will get a clay jar produced by Elijah containing manna that was sealed away in the desert.

What the Compilers Wanted Preserved

The compilers of Tanchuma assembled this material to establish the legitimacy of the religious demand for evidence. The Vaera passage normalizes the request. The Beshalach passage describes the object God has already set aside for the final fulfillment of such a request. The jar of manna, preserved in clay for an unspecified future audience, is the rabbinic image of how divine power maintains its evidentiary record across centuries.

What Tanchuma preserves, by placing both passages in the wilderness narratives, is the rabbinic conviction that the religious life rests on visible signs and that those signs are not finished. The rainbow still arcs. The shadow's reversal is recorded. The clay jar with its omer of manna waits in the divine storehouse for the prophet who will produce it in the era when Israel needs to be reminded what occupation with Torah once fed.