יהושע, פרק ה׳, פסוק י״ב

A dramatic shift occurs in the life of the nation as they enter the land. The era of open miracles in the desert comes to a close, making way for a natural existence of farming and working the earth. The heavenly food that sustained the Israelites for forty years is replaced by the natural harvest of the land in a precise changing of the guard. The appearance of the manna stops completely [מצודת ציון], and the people begin eating the local crops [מצודת דוד]. Specifically, they consume the new grain that had just grown and ripened at that very time [מלבי״ם, ביאור שטיינזלץ].

There is a fascinating discussion regarding the exact moment the manna stopped falling. The primary approach among commentators is that the heavenly bread actually ceased on the seventh of Adar, the day Moses died, because such a massive miracle depended on his merit. However, God performed an additional miracle for the people: the manna they gathered on that final day was preserved in their containers, sustaining them for another thirty-nine days until they began eating the land's produce [מצודת דוד, צאינה וראינה]. In contrast, others maintain that the manna continued to fall from the sky every single day until the morning they ate the local harvest, serving as a direct continuation of the miracle of Moses [רלב״ג].

The timing of this transition was not accidental. God orchestrated a seamless sequence, much like the continuous shift between the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire in the desert. He wanted the Israelites to move directly from one holy experience to another—from miraculous heavenly food straight to the holy produce of the Land of Israel, without having to rely on ordinary grain from the plains of Moab in the meantime [אלשיך]. Practically, this transition happened in stages. On the fifteenth of Nisan, the Israelites ate unleavened bread made from old grain they had found, but this limited supply was not enough, and they still relied on the manna. It was only the next day, on the sixteenth of Nisan, after bringing the Omer sacrifice which permitted them to eat the new crop of the year, that they had an abundance of food. At that exact moment, the manna stopped entirely [רד״ק, מלבי״ם, צאינה וראינה].

Ultimately, the Israelites ate the produce of the land only because they no longer had any manna left. This detail highlights a basic reality of human nature: the manna was convenient and effortless to obtain. Had it not disappeared completely, the people would have preferred to keep relying on it rather than putting in the hard work required to harvest and prepare the land's produce. This dynamic is compared to a young child who will only eat simple barley bread because fine wheat bread is nowhere to be found [רש״י].