The Torah describes how the Israelites gathered manna each morning in the wilderness with a doubled expression: "baboker, baboker," literally "morning, morning" (Exodus 16:21). The Mekhilta explains this simply means they gathered it in the morning time. But the expounders of metaphors, the darshei reshumot, drew a deeper lesson from this daily ritual.
They connected the morning gathering of manna to the curse pronounced upon Adam after his expulsion from the Garden of Eden: "In the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread" (Genesis 3:19). According to these interpreters, even the miraculous manna that fell from Heaven was not exempt from Adam's curse. The Israelites still had to labor for it.
This is a striking claim. The manna was a direct divine gift, bread from the sky, food that required no plowing, no sowing, no harvesting. Yet the rabbis insisted that it still demanded effort. The Israelites had to wake early, go out into the field, and gather it before the sun grew hot and melted it away. They had to measure it carefully, collecting exactly one omer per person. This was their "sweat of the brow."
The teaching carries a powerful implication. There is no escaping the fundamental human condition that God established after Eden. Even miracles come with labor attached. Even when bread literally falls from Heaven, human beings must still work to receive it. The curse upon Adam was not merely a punishment but a permanent feature of human existence, one that even divine generosity does not override.