Complaints about Food

⁴ 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? ⁵ We remember the free fish we ate in Egypt,^(C) along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. ⁶ But now our appetite is gone;^[b] there’s nothing to look at but this manna!”

⁷ The manna^(D) resembled coriander seed, and its appearance was like that of bdellium.^{[c] 8} 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. ⁹ When the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna would fall with it.^(E)