to pick up scattered items one by one, gathering them off the ground or a surface
At its heart this word describes the patient, piece-by-piece work of picking things up from where they lie. It is not the sweeping in of a whole harvest at once, but the bending down again and again to collect what is small and scattered: fallen grain, flakes of manna on the ground, loose stones, sticks for a fire, coins, blossoms in a garden.
Because it names such an ordinary action, the word takes its color from whatever is being gathered. In Israel's law it becomes the fixed term for gleaning, the right of the poor to follow the reapers and pick up the leftover stalks the harvesters deliberately leave behind. In the wilderness stories it is the daily gathering of manna. Elsewhere it is simply collecting whatever needs collecting, and once or twice it stretches to people, who are pictured as being gathered up one by one, or who band themselves together around a leader.
What holds these uses together is the image of many small things brought in through repeated, deliberate effort, rather than a single grand act of harvesting or heaping.