Complaints about Food

The riffraff[a] among them(A) had a strong craving(B) for other food. The Israelites wept again and said, “Who will feed us meat? We remember the free fish we ate in Egypt,(C) along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our appetite is gone;[b] there’s nothing to look at but this manna!”

The manna(D) resembled coriander seed, and its appearance was like that of bdellium.[c] The people walked around and gathered it. They ground it on a pair of grinding stones or crushed it in a mortar, then boiled it in a cooking pot and shaped it into cakes. It tasted like a pastry cooked with the finest oil. When the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna would fall with it.(E)

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Footnotes

  1. 11:4 Or The mixed multitude; Hb obscure
  2. 11:6 Or our lives are wasting away, or our throat is dry
  3. 11:7 A yellowish, transparent gum resin

Now the (A)rabble who were among them [a]had greedy cravings; and the sons of Israel also wept again and said, “(B)Who will give us [b]meat to eat? (C)We remember the fish which we used to eat for free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now (D)our [c]appetite is gone. There is nothing at all [d]to look at except this manna!”

(E)Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of [e](F)bdellium. The people would roam about and gather it and grind it [f]between two millstones, or pound it in the mortar, and boil it in the pot and make loaves with it; and its taste was like the taste of [g]cake baked with oil. (G)When the dew came down on the camp at night, the manna would come down [h]with it.

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Footnotes

  1. Numbers 11:4 Lit desired a desire
  2. Numbers 11:4 Lit flesh, and so throughout the ch
  3. Numbers 11:6 Lit soul has dried up
  4. Numbers 11:6 Lit for our eyes
  5. Numbers 11:7 I.e., a tree gum
  6. Numbers 11:8 Lit with
  7. Numbers 11:8 Lit juice of oil
  8. Numbers 11:9 Lit on