¹² Did we not tell you this in Egypt, when we said, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? Far better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

³ The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our kettles of meat and ate our fill of bread! But you have led us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of famine!”

⁶² But many in Israel were determined and resolved in their hearts not to eat anything unclean; ⁶³ they preferred to die rather than to be defiled with food or to profane the holy covenant; and they did die.