Setting Out · Quail and Complaints

In context

Numbers 9–10 are Israel’s last days at Mount Sinai, where they had camped for about eleven months (Exodus 19:1; Numbers 10:11). They kept the Passover a year after leaving Egypt, with a second date a month later for anyone unclean or far away on a journey (Numbers 9:1–11). The cloud over the tabernacle, like fire by night, told them when to move and when to stay, “whether it was two days, or a month, or a year” (Numbers 9:15–22). Two silver trumpets called the people together and sounded the march (Numbers 10:1–10).

When the cloud lifted, Israel set out tribe by tribe for the wilderness of Paran, the dry country between Sinai and Canaan (Numbers 10:11–12). Then the complaining began. The people wept for the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic of Egypt (Numbers 11:4–6). Moses told the Lord the load of the people was “too heavy for me,” and the Lord took some of the Spirit on Moses and put it on seventy elders to share it (Numbers 11:14–17, 25). Quail came on the wind, and then a plague; the place was named Kibroth Hattaavah, which means graves of craving (Numbers 11:31–34).