Nu. 11: God Mad; Quail & Manna

I read the eleventh chapter of Numbers, and thought I had already read this part. The Israelites complaining about the food, and wishing they had been back in Egypt, because the food was better, and then Moses dumping it on God. I mostly had read all this. Exodus 16 is a prime example, and here the Israelites are, having been eating manna for about 2 years, and decided it was time to gripe.

But I don’t want to skip over the first three crazy verses in chapter 11. The people were complaining, and then God’s anger was aroused. The Bible says that the fire burned among the people on the outskirts of the camp. They cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed and the fire died down. I don’t know if people died, the Bible doesn’t say. I assume, by the language, that people did. I don’t want to believe it was just because people were whiny, but God’s love has never been separate from his holiness. And here, the Bible says the God’s anger was aroused. It shows me that God is not “an angry being.” He is, however, capable of anger. Anger is a part of Him that can be aroused. It doesn’t merely define who He is.

So the Israelites are griping about how great it was back in Egypt, and Moses has to have another heart-to-heart with God. Moses, whether his attitude is right or wrong, lays it all out before God. I imagine he must have felt like a babysitter during this time, as he offers the idea that he conceived and bore them as a single mother. He can’t take the burden any more, and he tells God. He doesn’t have to hide who he is before God, He doesn’t sugar coat his words before God. There is passion in his speech, in his words, in his metaphors.

So God has Moses gather up seventy elders from Israel, and tells him God will put His Spirit on them, and that they will prophesy. This will be a group of people who will be sort of Moses’ assistants. God doesn’t give these elders more power, or their own power, he takes some from Moses and puts it on them. This caused some controversy in the camp, as two of the men who didn’t go to the meeting were still given this prophetic power. See, they didn’t have to go to some stuffy church. But I wonder what it is exactly these men prophesied about? Did they basically do whatever Moses was going to do? At any rate, they seemed to lighten the load.

In a case of “Be careful what you wish for,” God tells Moses that the people will eat meat for a month straight, so much so that they will be sick of it, and it “comes out of your nostrils.” Oy. Reminds me of when Homer Simpson is eating that steak in a contest against Reliable Red Barclay, and he says “My sinuses are packed with meat” and “There’s still food on my plate, but I don’t want it.”

Moses thinks like a person, wondering just how many animals are going to have to be slaughtered to feed these hundreds of thousands of people, and in his mind, is doing all this math to see just how much cattle will be needed to get this much meat. God says, “Is the arm of the LORD too short? (Which is probably where that rap group got its name)” And God covers the ground 3 feet deep with quail.

The people, while they were still chewing the meat, evidently, managed to make God mad enough to send a plague and kill some people. Complaining while being fed is what I imagine their offense was.