Quails - Exodus 16:9-13

16:9-13 - God, as always, is merciful to the people, even if they are getting out of hand with their complaining, and tells Moses to tell Aaron to tell the people, “Come near before the Lord: for he hath heard your murmurings.” This is God saying, “I know your needs and of course I’m going to take care of you.” This might be one of the ways in which God demonstrates his versatile nature, he’s able to defeat the Egyptian army single handedly, but he’s also going to make sure that everyone is fed and cared for. Additionally, the people are reminded of God’s care and presence when “they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.”

TB notes the significance of the people looking around them and seeing the presence of God when he asked, “why did Moses have to tell these people to stop, look up, and come-near to God’s presence? Because, while God’s presence is available to us, we must choose to ‘come-near’ to Him… Israel had either taken their eyes off of the cloud of God’s Glory or not fully recognized that the cloud WAS the presence of God; and so they became disheartened and disoriented. Same exact thing happens to Us. We get to used to the idea of Yeshua within us, guiding us, such that He becomes like an old piece of furniture, or just another feature of the landscape… and so He goes unnoticed in our lives. God’s presence had never left Israel; the people just quit looking upon it.” I know I do this, a lot. I need to be more cognizant of God’s hand in my life, talk to him more about it.

I had always thought that the people just ate the manna that came in the morning, then when they complained that they wanted something else, then God sent the quails. This was an interesting thought experiment for me because I recognize how boring it would get just eating bread frost every day, but it’s also something that I don’t know if I would ask for. I don’t know it’s just kind of a weird situation. But in the evening, “quails came up, and covered the camp.” TB teaches, “Yehoveh uses the quail in a supernatural way to bless HIS people. Quail migrating across the Sinai and Arabian Peninsulas at that time of year is normal. That they would swoop down for a rest, en masse, having grown exhausted from their long flight was a not uncommon occurrent. That they would do so at God’s command, in such a vast quantity, at the exact spot needed, was the supernatural aspect of this miracle.”