Some kinds of generosity come in a single burst and then exhaust themselves. The Tabernacle campaign was not that kind. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 36:3 notes the strange rhythm: they still brought to him the voluntary gift, morning after morning from their possessions.
The Targum's phrase — morning after morning — is doing serious work. The initial offering had already been received. The artisans had already begun. And yet the people kept showing up at dawn with more. Gold, silver, yarn, skins. The giving had developed its own momentum.
The rabbis noticed something peculiar here. Usually in Jewish history, the opposite problem shows up. Moses pleads with Israel; Israel resists. Joshua warns Israel; Israel drifts. The prophets scold, the judges rebuke. But here, in the Tabernacle moment, the people have to be stopped. Moses will, a few verses later (Exodus 36:6), literally issue a proclamation telling the people to bring no more.
Midrash Tanchuma (Vayakhel 7) treats this as one of the highest moments in the history of Israel — a moment when the wilderness generation, having just failed catastrophically with the golden calf, demonstrated that they had truly repented. Real teshuvah, the rabbis said, is not just stopping the bad behavior. It is developing an opposite appetite. The same people who had melted down their gold to make an idol now could not stop bringing gold to build the sanctuary.
The takeaway: repentance at its deepest level is not subtraction. It is substitution. You do not merely stop doing wrong. You find that you cannot stop doing right. Morning after morning, the gift keeps coming.