The Children of Israel Complain

11 Now the people complained about their troubles in the hearing of the Lord. When the Lord heard it, His anger burned. The fire of the Lord burned among them, and destroyed some around the outer parts of the tents. ² Then the people cried to Moses and he prayed to the Lord, and the fire went out. ³ So the name of that place was called Taberah, because the fire of the Lord burned among them.

⁴ The mixed group of people among them had strong desires. The people of Israel cried again and said, “Who will give us meat to eat? ⁵ We remember all the fish we could eat free in Egypt, and all the fruit and vegetables and spices. ⁶ But now our strength is gone. There is nothing at all to look at except this bread from heaven.” ⁷ Now the bread from heaven was like coriander seed, and it looked like bdellium. ⁸ The people would go and gather it and beat it between stones. They boiled it in a pot or made bread with it. It tasted like bread made with oil. ⁹ When the grass became wet around the tents at night, the bread from heaven would fall.

¹⁰ Moses heard all the people crying in every family, each man at the door of his tent. The Lord became very angry with them and Moses was not pleased. ¹¹ So Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You been so hard on Your servant? Why have I not found favor in Your eyes, that You have laid the troubles of all these people on me? ¹² Did I give birth to all these people? Did I bring them out, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them close to your heart as a nurse carries a nursing baby, to the land You promised their fathers’? ¹³ Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? They cry in front of me, saying, ‘Give us meat so we may eat!’ ¹⁴ I am not able to carry all these people alone. The load is too heavy for me. ¹⁵ So if You are going to act this way toward me, I beg You to kill me now, if I have found favor in Your eyes. Do not let me see how bad off I am.”

The Seventy Leaders

¹⁶ The Lord said to Moses, “Gather for Me seventy men from the leaders of Israel, whom you know to be the leaders of the people, the men who rule over them. Bring them to the meeting tent and let them stand there with you. ¹⁷ Then I will come down and speak with you there. I will take of the Spirit Who is upon you, and will put Him upon them. Then they will carry the troubles of the people with you so you will not carry them all alone. ¹⁸ Say to the people, ‘Make yourselves holy for tomorrow, and you will eat meat. The Lord heard you when you cried and said, “If only someone would give us meat to eat! For it was well with us in Egypt.” So the Lord will give you meat and you will eat. ¹⁹ You will not eat it for only one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days. ²⁰ But you will eat it a whole month, until it comes out of your nose and you hate it, because you have turned away from the Lord Who is among you. You have cried before Him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”’” ²¹ But Moses said, “The people whom I am among are 600,000 on foot. And You have said, ‘I will give them meat so they may eat for a whole month.’ ²² Will enough flocks and cattle be killed to feed them? Or will enough fish be gathered from the sea to feed them?” ²³ The Lord said to Moses, “Is there an end to the Lord’s power? Now you will see if My Word will come true for you or not.”

²⁴ So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord. And he gathered seventy men from the leaders of the people, and had them stand around the meeting tent. ²⁵ Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him. He took of the Spirit Who was upon him and put Him upon the seventy leaders. When the Spirit rested upon them, they spoke the word of the Lord. But they did not do it again.

²⁶ But two men had stayed among the tents. Their names were Eldad and Medad, and the Spirit rested upon them. They were among those who had been chosen, but had not gone out to the meeting tent. So they spoke the word of the Lord among the tents. ²⁷ A young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are speaking the word of the Lord among the tents.” ²⁸ Then Joshua the son of Nun, the helper of Moses since he was young, said, “Moses, my lord, do not let them.” ²⁹ But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my good? If only all the Lord’s people would speak for God, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!” ³⁰ Then Moses and the leaders of Israel returned to the tents.

The Lord Sends Quails

³¹ Now a wind went out from the Lord. It brought quail from the sea, and let them fall beside the place where the tents were set up. They fell all around the tents, about as far on each side as it takes to travel in a day. They lay on the ground as deep as two cubits. ³² The people worked all day and all night and all the next day gathering the quail. He who gathered the least gathered enough to fill 110 baskets. And they spread them out for themselves all around the tents. ³³ While the meat was still between their teeth and not yet eaten, the Lord became angry with the people. The Lord sent a bad sickness upon the people. ³⁴ So the name of that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah. Because there they buried the people who had wanted meat to eat. ³⁵ The people left Kibroth-hattaavah and went to Hazeroth. And they stayed at Hazeroth.

Miriam and Aaron Spoke against Moses

12 Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of his Cushite wife, for he had married a Cushite woman. ² They said, “Is it true that the Lord has spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us also?” And the Lord heard it. ³ Now Moses was a man with no pride, more so than any man on the earth. ⁴ At once the Lord said to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, “You three come out to the meeting tent.” So the three of them came out. ⁵ Then the Lord came down in a cloud and stood at the door of the meeting tent, and called Aaron and Miriam. When both of them had come near, ⁶ the Lord said, “Now listen to Me. If there is a man who speaks for God among you, I the Lord will make Myself known to him in a special dream. I will speak with him in a dream. ⁷ Not so, with My servant Moses. He is faithful in all My house. ⁸ With him I speak face to face in ways he understands, and not in ways he does not understand. And he sees what the Lord is like. Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?”

⁹ The Lord was angry with them, and He left. ¹⁰ When the cloud lifted from over the meeting tent, Miriam had a very bad skin disease. She was as white as snow. Aaron turned toward Miriam and saw that she had a bad skin disease. ¹¹ Then Aaron said to Moses, “O, my lord, I beg you. Do not punish us because we have been foolish and have sinned. ¹² Let her not be like one who is dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he is born!”‘ ¹³ And Moses cried to the Lord, saying, “O God, heal her, I pray!” ¹⁴ But the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had only spit in her face, would she not carry her shame for seven days? Let her be shut up for seven days away from the tents. After that, she may be brought in again.” ¹⁵ So Miriam was shut up away from the tents for seven days. And the people did not travel on until Miriam was brought in again.

¹⁶ The people moved from Hazeroth after that. And they set up their tents in the desert of Paran.

Men Sent to Spy out the Land

13 The Lord said to Moses, ² “Send men to spy out the land of Canaan which I am going to give to the people of Israel. Send a man from each of their fathers’ families, every one a leader among them.” ³ So Moses sent them from the desert of Paran, as the Lord had told him. All of the men were heads of the people of Israel. ⁴ These were their names. There was Shammua the son of Zaccur from the family of Reuben, ⁵ Shaphat the son of Hori from the family of Simeon, ⁶ Caleb the son of Jephunneh from the family of Judah, ⁷ and Igal the son of Joseph from the family of Issachar. ⁸ There was Hoshea the son of Nun from the family of Ephraim, ⁹ Palti the son of Raphu from the family of Benjamin, ¹⁰ Gaddiel the son of Sodi from the family of Zebulun, ¹¹ and Gaddi the son of Susi from the family of Joseph, from the family of Manasseh. ¹² There was Ammiel the son of Gemalli from the family of Dan, ¹³ Sethur the son of Michael from the family of Asher, ¹⁴ Nahbi the son of Vophsi from the family of Naphtali, ¹⁵ and Geuel the son of Machi from the family of Gad. ¹⁶ These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land. But Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua.

¹⁷ Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan. He said to them, “Go up there into the Negev. Then go up into the hill country. ¹⁸ See what the land is like. See if the people who live in it are strong or weak, and if they are few or many. ¹⁹ Find out if the land they live in is good or bad. See if the cities they live in are open or if they have walls. ²⁰ Find out if the land is rich or poor, and if there are trees in it or not. Then try to get some of the fruit of the land.” Now this was the gathering time of the first grown grapes.

²¹ So they went up and spied out the land from the Desert of Zin as far as Rehob, at Lebo-hamath. ²² When they had gone up into the Negev, they came to Hebron. Anak’s sons Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai were there. (Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.)

²³ Then they came to the valley of Eshcol. They cut down a branch from there with some grapes on it. And they carried it on a long piece of wood between two men, with some pomegranates and figs. ²⁴ That place was called the valley of Eshcol, because of much fruit the men of Israel cut down from there.

²⁵ They returned from looking over the land after forty days. ²⁶ And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the people of Israel in the desert of Paran, at Kadesh. They brought news to them and to all the people, and showed them the fruit of the land. ²⁷ They told Moses, “We went to the land where you sent us. It does flow with milk and honey. This is its fruit. ²⁸ But the people who live in the land are strong. The cities have walls and are very large. And we saw the children of Anak there. ²⁹ Amalek is living in the land of the Negev. The Hittites and Jebusites and Amorites are living in the hill country. And the Canaanites are living by the sea and by the side of the Jordan.”

³⁰ Then Caleb told the people in front of Moses to be quiet. And he said, “Let us go up at once and take the land. For we are well able to take it in battle.” ³¹ But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go against the people. They are too strong for us.” ³² So they brought the people of Israel bad news about the land they had spied out, saying, “The land we have gone to spy out is a land that destroys those who go there to live. All the people we saw in it are very large. ³³ We saw the Nephilim there. (The sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim.) We looked like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”