A Burden Shared and a Craving Buried

“Complained” renders a rare Hebrew form, kemitonenim, “like people lamenting misfortune”: they sound like mourners, and no grievance is named. The displeasure is literally “evil in the ears of the LORD”. The fire of the LORD recalls the fire that went out from the LORD against Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10:2.

The people cry to Moses, not to God, and Moses turns their cry into prayer. “Quenched” is shaqa, literally “sank down”, the word used elsewhere of water sinking into the ground: the fire subsides rather than being put out.

Taberah means “burning”, from baar. Chapter 33 does not list it as a station, moving straight from Sinai to Kibroth-hattaavah (33:16), so Taberah was probably a spot at the edge of that same encampment. Deuteronomy 9:22 remembers it among the places where Israel provoked the LORD.

“Mixt multitude” is asafsuf, a doubled form found only here, a rabble gathered up, the non-Israelites who left Egypt with them. “Fell a lusting” is literally “craved a craving”, hitavu taavah, the root that names Kibroth-hattaavah in verse 34. “Again” recalls the complaint for bread in Exodus 16:3.

Herodotus (2.125) reports an inscription on the Great Pyramid recording what was spent on radishes, onions and garlic for the builders. The Hebrew for melons, avattichim, lives on in the Arabic battikh. “Freely” is chinnam, “for nothing”, the word Laban uses in Genesis 29:15 when he will not have Jacob serve him “for nought”.

“Soul” is nefesh, which also means throat and appetite, so the complaint is almost physical: “our throat is dried up.” Manna is the only thing “before our eyes”, and the Hebrew makes it the object of a weary stare: nothing at all, except this manna.

Coriander seed is small, round and greyish white; Exodus 16:31 calls the manna “white”. Bdellium, bedolach, is named among the good things of Havilah in Genesis 2:12, probably a pale, translucent resin. The book describes how the food looked in the same breath as the people dismiss it.

“Went about” is shatu, ranged over the ground to gather. The mills are hand querns. “Fresh oil” translates leshad hashshemen, rare wording read as “a cake baked with oil” or “the richness of oil”; Exodus 16:31 compares the taste to “wafers made with honey”, the raw taste against the baked.

The order is dew first, then the manna upon it, so the food lay on a moist layer and not in the dust; Exodus 16:14 describes it from the morning side, when the dew had lifted. It fell “upon the camp”, at the door, not somewhere to be fetched from far away.

The weeping is public, at every tent door, where anyone passing would hear it. The LORD’s anger “was kindled greatly”, and the Hebrew for Moses’ displeasure is “in the eyes of Moses it was evil”, matching “evil in the ears of the LORD” in verse 1: ears for God, eyes for Moses.

“Afflicted” is hareota, “done evil to”, the same root as the evil of verse 10, now turned on God. Moses asks why he has not “found favour in thy sight”, the phrase the LORD himself used of him in Exodus 33:17, “thou hast found grace in my sight”.

“Nursing father” is omen, the masculine of the word for a nurse or guardian, from the root of amen, used in Esther 2:7 of Mordecai, who “brought up” Esther. The verbs Moses denies are a mother’s: conceiving and giving birth. “Sucking child” is an unweaned infant carried at the breast.

“Flesh” is basar, meat, the one word of the people’s demand. They weep, in the Hebrew, “upon me”, al, the complaint pressing down on him as a load. The question of supply is the one he will turn into arithmetic in verses 21 and 22.

“Too heavy” is kaved, the word of Exodus 18:18, where Jethro told Moses, “the thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.” Moses now says of himself what his father-in-law told him at Sinai, and the answer will again be shared government.

The pronoun “thou” is written in an unusual form, at, normally feminine, a trace of speech breaking under strain or a scribal oddity. “My wretchedness” is one of the passages Jewish scribal tradition lists as softened out of reverence: the original is said to have read “thy evil”, God’s evil treatment.

Seventy recalls the seventy elders who went up the mountain in Exodus 24:1 and 24:9 and saw the God of Israel. “Officers” is shoterim, the Israelite foremen beaten by Pharaoh’s taskmasters in Exodus 5:14, men already used to standing between a people and the demands laid on it.

“Take of” is atsal, to set aside or withhold a portion, the verb of Genesis 27:36 where Esau asks, “Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me?” The spirit on Moses is not moved off him but a portion is drawn from it, as a later Jewish image put it, like lamps lit from one lamp.

“Sanctify yourselves” is the preparation commanded before Sinai in Exodus 19:10, now with an edge: they are made ready for a feast that will become a judgment. “Against to morrow” means “for tomorrow”. They wept “in the ears of the LORD”, the phrase of verse 1 again.

The numbers climb, one, two, five, ten, twenty, each ruled out in turn. The counting refuses the hope that a day or two of meat would satisfy: the craving is to be answered far past its own measure.

“Nostrils” is af, the nose. “Loathsome” is zara, a word found only here, something that turns the stomach. The quoted cry, “Why came we forth out of Egypt?”, is the sound of the exodus itself being taken back, which is why a demand for meat is judged as it is.

Six hundred thousand is the round figure of Exodus 12:37 for those who left Egypt; the count of 1:46 was 603,550. “Among whom I am” sets Moses inside the number he is being asked to feed, one mouth among the multitude.

The flocks and herds were real: Exodus 12:38 says they left with “very much cattle”. Moses’ second question reaches for the sea, a long way off, and it is from the sea that the quails come in verse 31.

A short hand is a weak one, a hand that cannot reach. Isaiah 50:2 and 59:1 take up the same image, “Is my hand shortened at all”. “Now thou shalt see” answers Moses on the spot: the question is settled by what happens, not by argument.

Moses goes out from the tent to the people and delivers both halves of the promise, the elders and the meat, before the seventy are gathered. They are set “round about the tabernacle”, in a ring, where the cloud will come down in the next verse.

“Prophesied” is the reflexive verb hitnabbe, the form used of Saul among the prophets in 1 Samuel 10:10, speech under a visible compulsion rather than a message delivered. The cloud comes down as promised in verse 17, and the portion of spirit is given exactly as announced.

Eldad and Medad share a root, dod, “beloved”: “God has loved” and something close to “beloved”. “Written” shows the seventy were a list set down in writing, not a crowd. A lost Jewish book called the Prophecy of Eldad and Modad was quoted in the second century Shepherd of Hermas.

“A young man” is hannaar, with the article, “the lad”, and Jewish tradition guessed he was Gershom, Moses’ son. He runs: the report comes as an emergency, prophecy in the wrong place.

Joshua is introduced by his office, Moses’ attendant from his youth, or “one of his chosen men”, since the Hebrew mibbechurav can be read either way. In Exodus 32:17 he also misjudged a sound in the camp, taking singing for the noise of war.

“Enviest” is qanna, jealous or zealous, the word 25:11 uses of Phinehas, who was “zealous for my sake”, God’s. Joshua is zealous for Moses; Moses wants the gift spread wider, and names it “his spirit”, the LORD’s own, not his.

“Gat him” is the old past tense of get: he took himself off, went. Moses and the elders go back into the camp, where Eldad and Medad were prophesying, and the next thing to fall on that camp is the quails.

“Wind” is ruach, the word used for the spirit put on the elders in verses 17 and 25: the chapter has one word for both gifts. Quail cross the Sinai on their spring migration flying low and exhausted. The KJV’s “two cubits high” is about three feet.

A homer is the largest dry measure, a donkey’s load, and ten homers was the least anyone gathered. “Spread them all abroad” describes laying meat out to dry; Herodotus (2.77) says the Egyptians salted quail and ate them uncooked.

“Chewed” is yikkaret, literally “cut off”, read either as bitten through or as the supply running out. Psalm 78:30–31 retells the moment: “while their meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them”.

Kibroth-hattaavah is “the graves of the craving”, the taavah of verse 4, so the place keeps the people’s own word. The itinerary in 33:16 lists it as the first camp after the wilderness of Sinai.

Hazeroth means “enclosures” or “settlements”, a site with courts or pens. “Abode” matters: the camp stays put, which is why the whole people can wait there through Miriam’s seven days outside the camp in 12:15.