Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Shimon used a vivid and startling metaphor to describe how the Israelites ate in the wilderness. They said Israel "stuffed themselves like horses" when the manna first arrived. The comparison is deliberately undignified, painting a picture of ravenous, unrestrained eating after the deprivation of the desert march.
But the rabbis did not stop at the image of horses gorging. They turned to (Psalms 78:25), which says "each man ate the bread of abirim." The word abirim conventionally means "mighty ones" or "angels," suggesting the Israelites ate angelic bread. Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Shimon, however, reread the word through a different voweling. Read it not "abirim" but "eivarim," meaning "limbs."
This changes everything. The manna was not just angelic food. It was bread that was absorbed directly into the limbs of the body. Unlike ordinary food, which must be digested and produces waste, the manna was so pure and so perfectly designed for human consumption that the body absorbed every particle of it. Nothing was left over. Nothing was expelled. The bread entered the body and became part of it entirely.
Moses himself confirmed this to the people. "This 'man' that you are eating is being absorbed by your limbs," he told them, using the Hebrew word for manna. The teaching reveals that the manna was not merely sustenance. It was a kind of perfect food, engineered by God to nourish without any residue, merging completely with the human body as though it had always been part of it.