Numbers 11
1The people began complaining of hardship in Yahweh’s hearing. Yahweh heard, and his anger burned. Yahweh’s fire burned among them and consumed the edge of the camp.
2The people cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to Yahweh, and the fire died down.
3He named that place Taberah, because Yahweh’s fire had burned among them.
4The rabble among them craved intensely, and the sons of Israel also began weeping again. They said, “Who will give us meat to eat?
5We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic.
6But now our appetite has dried up. There is nothing at all to look at except this manna!”
7The manna was like coriander seed and had the appearance of bdellium.
8The people went about gathering it, ground it with handmills or pounded it in mortars, cooked it in a pot, and made it into cakes. It tasted like rich cakes made with oil.
9When dew fell on the camp at night, the manna fell with it.
10Moses heard the people weeping by their clans, each at the entrance of his tent. Yahweh’s anger burned intensely, and Moses was distressed.
11Moses said to Yahweh, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your eyes, that you lay the burden of all this people on me?
12Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your arms, as a nurse carries a nursing child, to the land you swore to their fathers’?
13Where can I get meat to give all this people? They keep weeping to me, ‘Give us meat to eat!’
14I cannot carry all this people by myself. It is too heavy for me.
15If this is how you are going to treat me, please kill me outright, if I have found favor in your eyes, and do not let me see my misery.”
16Yahweh said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy men from Israel’s elders whom you know to be elders and officers of the people. Bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them stand there with you.
17I will come down and speak with you there. I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them. They will carry the burden of the people with you, so that you do not carry it alone.
18Tell the people: Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you will eat meat. For you have wept in Yahweh’s hearing, saying, ‘Who will give us meat to eat? We were better off in Egypt!’ Yahweh will give you meat, and you will eat.
19You will eat not for one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days,
20but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes disgusting to you, because you have rejected Yahweh who is among you and wept before him, saying, ‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’”
21Moses said, “The people among whom I am number 600,000 on foot, yet you have said, ‘I will give them meat, and they will eat for a whole month’!
22If flocks and herds were slaughtered for them, would that be enough for them? If all the fish of the sea were gathered for them, would that be enough for them?”
23Yahweh said to Moses, “Is Yahweh’s hand too short? Now you will see whether my word comes true for you or not.”
24Moses went out and told the people Yahweh’s words. He gathered seventy men from the elders of the people and stationed them around the tent.
25Yahweh came down in the cloud and spoke to him. He took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. When the spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but they did not do so again.
26Two men had remained in the camp, one named Eldad and the other Medad. The spirit rested on them. They were among those listed, but had not gone out to the tent, and they prophesied in the camp.
27A young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp!”
28Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ attendant from his youth, responded, “My lord Moses, stop them!”
29Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? If only all Yahweh’s people were prophets, and Yahweh would put his spirit on them!”
30Moses returned to the camp, he and the elders of Israel.
31A wind went out from Yahweh and swept quail in from the sea. It let them fall beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and a day’s journey on that side, all around the camp, about two cubits above the ground.
32The people rose and gathered quail all that day, all night, and all the next day. Whoever gathered least gathered ten homers. They spread them out all around the camp.
33While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was consumed, Yahweh’s anger burned against the people, and Yahweh struck the people with a very great plague.
34He named that place Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had craved.
35From Kibroth-hattaavah the people set out for Hazeroth, and they stayed at Hazeroth.