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

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

Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its color was like the color of gum resin.(D) 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. When the dew fell on the camp in the night, the manna would fall with it.(E)

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