Immediately after the miraculous events of the Red Sea crossing, the people camped in Mara. The Torah relates (Shemos 15:25): “There [God] made for them a fixed rule; there they were put to the test.” As Rashi explains (based on Sanhedrin 56b), the “fixed rule” refers to the fundamentals of dinim – monetary laws, whose revelation began at that time, even before Matan Torah.
Subsequently, the entire Jewish people were fed by the miraculous food they called man. The Torah tells us that each person was entitled to an identical portion of a single omer of man, and that this was exactly what each person obtained after gathering the man. Chazal (Rashi, Shemos 16:17) confirm that the Torah implies the amount gathered did not depend in any way on the effort invested in gathering.
These seemingly unrelated events actually embody an identical lesson: God’s providence ultimately decides what material possessions are appropriate for each person; the scope of these possessions is defined by the mitzvos, with particular emphasis on the monetary laws. Appropriating property beyond what is accessible by adhering to Torah law is parallel to trying to hoard more than the decreed portion of man. The Torah tells of the brazen individuals who did this (Shemos 16:20): “But they paid no attention to Moshe; some of them left of it until morning, and it became infested with maggots and stank. And Moshe was angry with them.” Such a person loses twice: the supposed excess becomes useless and repulsive to him, and he is condemned by the Torah and the Sages.
The same message is hinted at in the commandment to have just measures (Devarim 25 14:16): “You shall not have in your pouch alternate weights, larger and smaller. You shall not have in your house alternate measures, a larger and a smaller. You must have completely honest weights and completely honest measures.” The Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 15:6), cited by Rashi, learns: “You shall not have” wealth – if you have “in your pouch alternate weights.” “You must [will] have” wealth – if you have “honest weights.”
Likewise, when the Sages condemned excessive efforts to limit competition, they did not say that a business person is obligated to allow others to make a living at his expense. Rather, they emphasized that ultimately his subsistence is not harmed at all (Yoma 38 a-b). “Ben Azzai said: by your name they shall call you, and in your place they shall seat you, and from your own they shall give you. No person may touch that which is prepared for another [by God].”
“For the Benefit of Future Generations”
Our tradition takes the admonition of this Midrash quite seriously and literally, and this ethical lesson from the Midrash and the Aggada is often cited in halachic literature. One famous example is the Beer HaGolah (SA, CM 348, s.k. 5). After citing what he considers the authoritative ruling – forbidding taking advantage of a non-Jew’s mistake in almost all instances, he adds: “I write this for the benefit of future generations, for I have seen many people who [at first] gained success from misleading non-Jews, but [ultimately] failed to succeed and their wealth collapsed.” The saying of Ben Azzai about the futility of trying to limit competition in opposition to Torah law is likewise cited in several responsa dealing with competition (Chatam Sofer 5:22, Binyamin Zev 296, and others).
We explained that the connection between the monetary laws and the man is hinted at by the fact that they are in nearby passages in the Torah. The Bechor Shor goes further and shows that this connection is actually implied in the above verse about the commandments received at Mara: the word chok, which we translated as a “rule” and which Rashi identifies with the monetary mitzvos, is also used by the Torah to mean a fixed portion of food, here referring to the man.
