Complaining in the Desert

11 Now when the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes, the Lord heard it, and his anger was kindled. Then the fire of the Lord burned against them and consumed some outlying parts of the camp.^{(A) 2} But the people cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire abated.^{(B) 3} So that place was called Taberah,^[a] because the fire of the Lord burned against them.

⁴ The camp followers with them had a strong craving, and the Israelites also wept again and said, “If only we had meat to eat!^{(C) 5} We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic,^{(D) 6} but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”^(E)

⁷ Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its color was like the color of gum resin.^{(F) 8} The people went around and gathered it, ground it in mills or beat it in mortars, then boiled it in pots and made cakes of it, and the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil. ⁹ When the dew fell on the camp in the night, the manna would fall with it.^(G)

¹⁰ Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, all at the entrances of their tents. Then the Lord became very angry, and Moses was displeased.^{(H) 11} So Moses said to the Lord, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? ¹² Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a wet nurse carries a nursing child, to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors’?^{(I) 13} Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me, saying, ‘Give us meat to eat!’^{(J) 14} I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.^{(K) 15} If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once—if I have found favor in your sight—and do not let me see my misery.”^(L)

¹¹ At the end of forty days and forty nights the Lord gave me the two stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant. ¹² Then the Lord said to me, ‘Get up; go down quickly from here, for your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly. They have been quick to turn from the way that I commanded them; they have cast an image for themselves.’^{(A) 13} Furthermore, the Lord said to me, ‘I have seen that this people is indeed a stubborn people.^{(B) 14} Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven, and I will make of you a nation mightier and more numerous than they.’^(C)

¹⁵ “So I turned and went down from the mountain, while the mountain was ablaze; the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.^{(D) 16} Then I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God, by casting for yourselves an image;^[a] you had been quick to turn from the way that the Lord had commanded you.^{(E) 17} So I took hold of the two tablets and flung them from my two hands, smashing them before your eyes. ¹⁸ Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all the sin you had committed, provoking the Lord by doing what was evil in his sight.^{(F) 19} For I was afraid that the anger that the Lord bore against you was so fierce that he would destroy you. But the Lord listened to me that time also.^{(G) 20} The Lord was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him, but I interceded also on behalf of Aaron at that same time. ²¹ Then I took the sinful thing you had made, the calf, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it thoroughly, until it was reduced to dust, and I threw the dust into the stream that runs down the mountain.^(H)

²² “At Taberah also, and at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah, you provoked the Lord to wrath.^{(I) 23} And when the Lord sent you from Kadesh-barnea, saying, ‘Go up and occupy the land that I have given you,’ you rebelled against the command of the Lord your God, neither trusting him nor obeying him. ²⁴ You have been rebellious against the Lord as long as he has^[b] known you.^(J)