The word manna itself, as Targum Pseudo-Jonathan tells it, was born from a question. The sons of Israel looked at the fine frost on the desert floor and said to one another Man Hu? — "What is it?"
This is the Hebrew pun the Torah itself records. The Targumist preserves the exchange but adds Moses's answer with unusual care: It is the bread which hath been laid up for you from the beginning in the heavens on high, and now the Lord will give it you to eat.
The phrase laid up from the beginning is the Targum's signature. We saw it in the previous chapter, and here it returns with emphasis. The manna was not a fresh production. It was a stored gift, set aside at creation, now being issued.
Think about what it must have felt like to be told this. You are hungry. You are grumbling. You are regretting Egypt. And Moses tells you that the bread on the ground has been waiting for you since the first Sabbath of <a href='/texts/bereshit-rabbah-1-1.html'>creation</a>. You are not improvising your way through the wilderness. You are eating what was reserved for you before the world had your name.
The Maggid finds in this a teaching about providence. The Hebrew word for providence, hashgachah, carries a double sense: watching over, and also provisioning ahead. The Holy One does not only watch. He also packs. When you finally need it, whatever it is, the provision has often been in the warehouse for longer than you have been alive.
Takeaway: the thing you did not know to ask for may already be stored up for you. The question Man Hu? is the start of every Jewish prayer of discovery. What is this? It is what was waiting.