Beginning

Complaints in the Desert

11 Now when the people complained openly before the Lord, the Lord heard, and His anger burned. Then the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed the outskirts of the camp. ² And the people cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire was quenched. ³ He called the name of the place Taberah because the fire of the Lord burned among them.

⁴ The mixed multitude that was among them lusted, and the children of Israel wept again and said, “Who will give us meat to eat? ⁵ We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for free, the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. ⁶ But now our life is dried up. There is nothing at all except this manna before our eyes.”

⁷ The manna was as coriander seed, and it looked like bdellium. ⁸ The people went about and gathered it, and ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar, and boiled it in pots, and made cakes of it, and the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked in oil. ⁹ When the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna fell on it.

¹⁰ Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families, every man in the opening of his tent, and the anger of the Lord burned greatly. Moses was also displeased. ¹¹ Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You hurt Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your eyes, that You lay the burden of all this people on me? ¹² Have I conceived all this people? Have I given them birth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse bears the nursing child,’ to the land which You swore to their fathers? ¹³ Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For they weep to me, saying, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.’ ¹⁴ I am not able to bear all these people alone, because the burden is too heavy for me. ¹⁵ If You do this to me, please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your eyes, and do not let me see my misery.”

The Seventy Elders

¹⁶ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people, and officers over them, and bring them to the tent of meeting, that they may take a stand there with you. ¹⁷ And I will come down, and I will speak with you there, and I will take of the Spirit which is on you and will put it on them, and they will bear the burden of the people with you, and you will not bear it by yourself.

¹⁸ “And say to the people: Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat, for you have wept in the hearing of the Lord, saying, ‘Who will give us meat to eat? For it was better for us in Egypt.’ Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat. ¹⁹ You shall eat, not one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, ²⁰ but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils, and it will be nauseating to you because you rejected the Lord who is among you and have wept before Him, saying, ‘Why did we come out of Egypt?’ ”

²¹ And Moses said, “The people I am with number six hundred thousand foot soldiers, and You have said, ‘I will give them meat that they may eat a whole month.’ ²² Will the flocks and the herds be slaughtered for them, to satisfy them? Or will all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to satisfy them?”

²³ And the Lord said to Moses, “Is the hand of the Lord shortened? Now you will see if My word will happen to you or not.”

²⁴ Moses went out, and he spoke to the people the words of the Lord and gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people and set them around the tabernacle. ²⁵ And the Lord came down in a cloud, and spoke to him, and took of the Spirit that was on him, and gave it to the seventy elders, and when the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but did not do it again.

²⁶ But two men remained in the camp. The name of one was Eldad, and the name of the other, Medad. And the Spirit rested on them. They were among those listed, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. ²⁷ And a young man ran and told Moses and said, “Eldad and Medad prophesy in the camp.”

²⁸ Then Joshua the son of Nun, the assistant of Moses from his youth, answered and said, “My lord Moses, forbid them.”

²⁹ Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Oh, that all the people of the Lord were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!” ³⁰ And Moses returned to the camp, he and the elders of Israel.

The Lord Sends Quail

³¹ Now a wind from the Lord started up, and it swept quail from the sea and let them fall beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and a day’s journey on the other side, around the camp, and about two cubits^[a] above the ground. ³² And the people stayed up all that day, all night, and all the next day, and gathered the quail. Those who gathered least gathered ten homers.^[b] And they spread them out for themselves all around the camp. ³³ While the meat was between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the Lord burned against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very great slaughter. ³⁴ And he called the name of that place Kibroth Hattaavah because there they buried the people who had the craving.

³⁵ The people journeyed from Kibroth Hattaavah to Hazeroth, and they camped at Hazeroth.

Miriam and Aaron Oppose Moses

12 And Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he married, for he had married a Cushite woman. ² They said, “Has the Lord spoken only by Moses? Has He not spoken also by us?” And the Lord heard it.

³ (Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all the men on the face of the earth.)

⁴ And the Lord spoke at once to Moses and to Aaron and to Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting.” And those three came out. ⁵ The Lord came down in a pillar of cloud, and stood in the opening of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forward. ⁶ He said, “Hear now My word.

⁹ And the anger of the Lord burned against them, and He set out.

¹⁰ When the cloud went away from over the tabernacle, Miriam became leprous as snow, and Aaron turned toward Miriam and saw that she was leprous. ¹¹ Aaron said to Moses, “Alas, my lord, do not lay the sin on us, which we have done foolishly, and which we have sinned. ¹² Do not let her be as dead, who when he goes out of his mother’s womb half his flesh is eaten.”

¹³ And Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, “O God, heal her, I pray!”

¹⁴ But the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, would she not be ashamed seven days? Let her be shut out of the camp seven days, and afterward she may be received again.” ¹⁵ Miriam was shut out from the camp seven days, and the people did not set out until Miriam was brought in again.

¹⁶ Afterward the people set out from Hazeroth and camped in the Wilderness of Paran.

Spying in Canaan

13 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Send men that they may explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the children of Israel. Of every tribe of their fathers you will send a man, each one a chief among them.”

³ And Moses sent them from the Wilderness of Paran according to the Lord. All those men were heads of the children of Israel. ⁴ These were their names:

¹⁶ These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to explore the land. And Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun Joshua.

¹⁷ Moses sent them to explore the land of Canaan and said to them, “Go up to this southland, and go up into the mountain. ¹⁸ And see what the land is, and the people that dwell in it, whether they are strong or weak, few or many; ¹⁹ and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it is good or bad, and what cities are that they dwell in, whether in tents, or in fortifications; ²⁰ and what the land is, whether it is fat or lean, whether there is wood in it or not. And you be courageous and bring some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes.

²¹ So they went up and explored the land from the Wilderness of Zin to Rehob, near Lebo Hamath. ²² They went up by the Negev and came to Hebron where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were (now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt). ²³ And they came to the Valley of Eshkol, and cut down from there a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them, and they brought some of the pomegranates and of the figs. ²⁴ The place was called the Valley of Eshkol because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from there. ²⁵ They returned from exploring the land after forty days.

The Spies’ Report

²⁶ And they returned and came to Moses and to Aaron and to all the assembly of the children of Israel, to the Wilderness of Paran, to Kadesh, and brought back word to them and to the entire assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. ²⁷ They reported to him and said, “We came to the land where you sent us, and surely it flows with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it. ²⁸ However, the people are strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are fortified and very great, and also we saw the children of Anak there. ²⁹ The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negev, and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea and by the edge of the Jordan.”

³⁰ Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are able to overcome it.”

³¹ But the men that went up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people because they are stronger than we.” ³² They gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. ³³ And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come from the giants, and in our eyes we were like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.”