Getting What They Demanded

 Even to Moses, feeding more than two million people at one time in the middle of a desert area seemed like an impossible feat, and he had questioned where God could get all that food, in Numbers 11:21-22.  “And Moses said, The people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand footmen; and thou hast said, I will give them flesh, that they may eat a whole month.  Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them, to suffice them? or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to suffice them?”   Moses had six hundred thousand men between the ages o twenty and fifty.  That does not include their wives and children or older people.  If they averaged just a wife and two children each there would be two million four hundred thousand people.  It would take about fifteen hundred cows a day just give each one a quarter pounder every day.   

 

It seemed impossible even for God to come up with that much food, but God was not concerned.   He had created the world, and everything in it, and he still had that same power, as he pointed out in Numbers 11:23.  “And the LORD said unto Moses, Is the LORD'S hand waxed short? thou shalt see now whether my word shall come to pass unto thee or not.”  Six hundred thousand pounds of meat was nothing to the God who created the universe.

 

After selecting the seventy elders to help him, Moses returned to the camp, where God delivered the meat he had promised, in Numbers 11:30-31.  “And Moses gat him into the camp, he and the elders of Israel.  And there went forth a wind from the LORD, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth.” 

 

This must have been something like the accounts of the huge flocks of passenger pigeons in early America.  The huge flocks would block out the sun for hours, wiping out entire crops of grain when they stopped to eat, and breaking limbs off trees when they tried to perch.  Hundreds would be crushed by the weight of those landing on top of them.  People would take clubs and kill as many as they could in an effort to save their crops and fruit trees. 

 

The Israelites responded much like the early settlers, killing vast numbers of the quail, according to Numbers 11:32.  “And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least gathered ten homers: and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp.”  A homer was about six bushels or forty eight gallons, so everyone killed eight or ten barrels of quail during the two days the swarm lasted.  They spread the meat out to dry all around the camp. 

 

They had more quail than they could possibly eat in a month, fore it was gone, thousands of people died, probably from eating improperly dried meat that God caused to spoil, as Numbers 11:33-34 describes.  “And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD smote the people with a very great plague.  And he called the name of that place Kibrothhattaavah: because there they buried the people that lusted.”    They had gotten what they demanded, and God had warned them they would be sick of the meat before they got it eaten, and that they would be puking it up.    They named that place the graves of the longing or lusting, and left as soon as the dead were buried and the survivors had recovered.  For the rest of the time in the wilderness they would receive quail every night and manna every morning, as described in Exodus 16:8.  “And Moses said, This shall be, when the LORD shall give you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full; for that the LORD heareth your murmurings which ye murmur against him: and what are we? your murmurings are not against us, but against the LORD.” 

 

Real faith trusts God to do what is best for us without demanding our own way.  Sometimes when we demand our own way, he lets us have what we demanded to learn that some things are not good for us.  If things are not exactly the way we want them we need to trust God instead of demanding our way because he knows what is best for us.  When we demand our own way, we are not trusting him, and as Romans 14:23 tells us, “…whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”