Quails - Numbers 11

For the lectures for chapter 11, the recording was not great and my hearing might be getting worse so I didn’t really hear everything that TB was trying to say but I think I’ll be able to muster through it. One thing that TB did point out is that the timeline from chapter 10 where the people were excited to move away from Mount Sinai for the first time to the time that they started complaining in chapter 11 was only 72 hours. Sure the move would have been difficult and dusty but that wasn’t very long and hearing things like this actually makes me feel pretty good about myself and my “enduring to the end” because I usually wait a little bit longer before I start complaining. That’s a lie, I complain loudly and immediately, but I guess I’m not alone in that, I have the Israelites doing that with me. TB notes, “Chapter 10 ends with this optimistic, prayerful, joyful poem, which expresses the mental and emotional state of the people of Israel as they begin to strike camp for their journey to the Promised Land… How much time passed between Numbers 10:36 and Number 11:1? How long did it take for their attitude and behavior to change rather radically? Three days!”

The first complaint was the difficulty of the journey, which is fair, and they took their complaints directly to God, who was angered and burned up the complainers with fire. It was then that the people turned to Moses and Moses prayed to God to stop burning the people up, and so God stopped. I don’t know if it was a chain of command issue that God had a problem with, that they complained directly to Him instead of going to Moses first. My guess is that it wasn’t that, my guess is that they were complaining to each other and that’s what made Him mad. I think that they took their frustrations and started being vocal about them and trying to discourage others. I imagine them saying to each other “it’s hot,” or “it’s dusty” but maybe what they said was “this is the worst idea, we never should have left Egypt, we should go back, I can’t believe we are following this God who would let us suffer so much.” That’s more than just disrespect because God can abide disrespect, but that is subversion, and that’s unacceptable in this large setting with people who already are only half convinced that they should be doing this journey.

Even though the first group of complainers got burned up, another group of people started complaining, this time about the food, which is also fair. What is interesting here is that the beginning of verse 4 indicates that it was “the mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting.” This is interesting because TB notes that the “mixed multitude” meant that the people complaining weren’t the Hebrews or even the gentiles who converted to Israel, these complainers were the gentiles who left Egypt with the Hebrews but who refused to convert to worshipping the God of Israel. This is an interesting concept because I’ve been recently talking to my brother about what it means to be part of a group and to support a groups goals on a societal scale, and this is a good example of a small minority of people who were not adherent to the group’s goals causing damage to their relationship with God, and it goes back to this subversion concept. And maybe this is one of the reasons why membership into Israel was so closely guarded in the future, because of instances like this.

What was this group complaining about? They were tired of eating manna, they wanted meat to eat and “the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick.” Maybe it’s because I like meat too that I’m like, “yeah that’s fair,” But it’s interesting to me that God was miraculously feeding all these people, in a way that they’ve probably never even heard throughout human history, and they were still like “not enough.” I’m not going to sit here all high and mighty and think that if I ate only manna for years at a time that I wouldn’t be asking the same questions, but not only did this complaining anger God, but Moses was “displeased” as well. And at this point, Moses is exhausted, he goes to God in prayer basically asking what he did to deserve to be in charge of all these terrible people, and asking for God to kill him instead of making him be the leader anymore.”

As the Father of us all, I can only imagine God’s exasperation with us, and I can understand Moses’ just being done with the whole thing. God gives Moses the solution and tells him to “gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel,” and bring them to the tabernacle and God says He’ll meet them there. These 70 men were to sanctify themselves and then when they got to the tabernacle, “the Lord came down in a cloud, and spake unto him, and took of the spirit that was upon him, and gave it unto the seventy elders: and it came to pass, that, when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied, and did not cease.” God made a plan for Moses to delegate some of his authority and responsibility to these other men to relieve some of the burden off of himself.

The Spirit of God was poured out on these 70 men, but not at the expense of the Spirit that accompanied Moses, but in addition to. TB noted that this was a precursor to when the Spirit of God was poured out upon all believers on the day of Pentecost after the resurrection. Apparently there were two men who didn’t go to the tabernacle but apparently God chose them to be a part of this group of elders because they were out about in camp and started prophesying as well. There was a man named Joshua who ran and told Moses what happened and to make them stop prophesying. Now I don’t blame Joshua for this because it could very easily have been construed that these men didn’t follow the rules and when not following God’s rules results in death so often, that is fair. And it’s also possible that Joshua wanted to make sure that these men weren’t engaging in priestcraft and trying to usurp power from Moses to corrupt the people and enrich themselves. So Joshua bringing this up isn’t a bad thing at all, but apparently Moses had a difficult understanding of the situation and he tells Joshua that.

Moses’ response to Joshua was that he “would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!” This is an interesting contrast to our day where all members of the Church have the Holy Ghost with them, which is exactly what Moses wishes would happen. It’s just interesting to contrast our time of apparent ease of accessing the Spirit with the limited access had by the people anciently. It’s also interesting to think that if having the Spirit allowed these men to prophesy to the same level of Moses, and this is the same Spirit granted to us, then does that mean that we could be able to be prophets as well? The IM says, “note that we live in a dispensation when all members of the congregation of the Lor may have the gift of prophecy, and other gifts, by virtue of the fact that all who are baptized are given the ‘Gift of the Holy Ghost.’ Probably some of us do not exercise it however.” So is this a concept where we all have access to the same Spirit that grants prophecy and that we just have to work our way up to it spiritually? It’s an interesting concept to think about because if that’s the case then we are all prophets, and truly I think that we have the gift and ability to “prophesy” in whatever capacity we are called to do, whether it be in our own families, or in our callings, etc. but only when we are spiritual mature enough to handle that responsibility? I think it's also a condition of like, “the people equipped to be the best leaders don’t want to be,” those who are best prepared to utilize the full extent of the Spirit won’t seek to do so and usually have to be prompted by God to do so. We look at prophets and church leadership in such an abstract view, like that they have some magical power that the rest of us don’t and I think that this demonstrates that that is not true, they have the same access to God’s power that the rest of us do, they just do different things with it. I don’t think it could be something like where we think “I want to be a prophet so I’m going to work really hard on my spirituality so that I can be a prophet someday.” Instead it would be like “I want to have the same relationship with and faith in God that the prophets have, therefore I will work on my spirituality to attain that,” and then in the process the person is sanctified enough to have that relationship with God and might be called to perform certain jobs because God needs people He can work through to further His work. I hope all that made sense.

Finally, the man are called and God decides to give the people what they are asking for, meat to eat, and sends quails. God sends so many quails that the IM says that the smallest collection of birds for meat was 100 bushels, that’s a lot of meat. The people didn’t just take what they could eat, they ate so much beyond what they needed that “the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague.” One thing that I think is important to note here is that unlike the manna that was just bread-like stuff that was collected, these birds had to be killed to be eaten, and eating more than they needed meant that lots of innocent, unnecessary bird lives were needlessly sacrificed. I don’t have a comment here because I’m definitely guilty of eating more than I need, meat included so I feel very called out my this actually. But the word “lust” is used to describe this event in a couple of verses, so it goes beyond just eating something different. TB talked a lot about the bread of life (manna) vs lusting after the flesh (quail). At first I didn’t think that it was that serious, but now having read the whole thing I see that this was very much the point being driven home. These people wanted more than what God gave them, and they wanted this extra stuff to the extreme that it cost animal lives, I’m going to think about this a lot today.