Q:
How do you understand when it says in Koheles, there’s nothing new underneath the sun if the mann came down? Isn’t that something new, the neis of the mann?
A:
אין כל חדש תחת השמש. There’s still nothing new because the mann is nothing but a different aspect of the production of food from the materials that are available in the world.
How does food grow? It was explained just before, the plant absorbs carbon dioxide from the air and transforms it into starches, right?
So for the mann to be created Hashem gave a command that the air should get busy combining its own carbon dioxide in ways that it should become nourishing to people.
Now just as the miracle of the mann was a method of creating from the carbon dioxide in the air food that is fit for people to eat and gain nourishment, the same miracle is in the earth. If the earth produces food, it’s no different at all; it’s exactly the same thing as the mann. The only difference is this: This is a miracle that happened only once in the midbar, and this is a miracle that happens all the time in the world. That’s the only difference.
And therefore when Shlomo said that אין כל חדש, that nothing is new, it’s true; everything is the same. Of course the way it happened was a neis – it was a giluy Shechina. But b’etzem, everything is the same process.
(February 1994)
