Numbers 11–13

Chapter 11

The People Complain

¹Now the people became like ^athose who complain of adversity ^bin the hearing of the Lord; and when the Lord heard it, His anger was kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.

^2aThe people therefore cried out to Moses, and Moses prayed to the Lord and the fire ¹died out.

³So the name of that place was called ^1aTaberah, because the fire of the Lord burned among them.

⁴The ^arabble who were among them ¹had greedy desires; and also the sons of Israel wept again and said, “^bWho will give us ²meat to eat?

⁵“^aWe remember the fish which we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic,

⁶but now ^aour ¹appetite is gone. There is nothing at all ²to look at except this manna.”

^7aNow the manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance like that of ^bbdellium.

⁸The people would go about and gather it and grind it ¹between two millstones or beat it in the mortar, and boil it in the pot and make cakes with it; and its taste was as the taste of ²cakes baked with oil.

^9aWhen the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna would fall ¹with it.

The Complaint of Moses

¹⁰Now Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, each man at the doorway of his tent; and the anger of the Lord was kindled greatly, and ¹Moses was displeased.

^11aSo Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You ¹been so hard on Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all this people on me?

¹²“Was it I who conceived all this people? Was it I who brought them forth, that You should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom as a ^1anurse carries a nursing infant, to the land which ^bYou swore to their fathers’?

¹³“Where am I to get meat to give to ^aall this people? For they weep before me, saying, ‘Give us meat that we may eat!’

¹⁴“^aI alone am not able to carry all this people, because it is too ¹burdensome for me.

¹⁵“^aSo if You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once, if I have found favor in Your sight, and do not let me see my wretchedness.”

Seventy Elders to Assist

¹⁶The Lord therefore said to Moses, “Gather for Me ^aseventy men from the elders of Israel, ^bwhom you know to be the elders of the people and their officers and bring them to the tent of meeting, and let them take their stand there with you.

¹⁷“^aThen I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take of ^bthe Spirit who is upon you, and will put Him upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, so that you will not bear it all alone.

¹⁸“Say to the people, ‘^aConsecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept ^bin the ears of the Lord, saying, “Oh that someone would give us meat to eat! For we were well-off in Egypt.” Therefore the Lord will give you meat and you shall eat.

¹⁹‘You shall eat, not one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days,

²⁰¹but a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you; because ^ayou have rejected the Lord who is among you and have wept before Him, saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?” ’ ”

²¹But Moses said, “The people, among whom I am, are 600,000 on foot; yet You have said, ‘I will give them meat, so that they may eat for a whole month.’

²²“Should flocks and herds be slaughtered for them, to be sufficient for them? Or should all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to be sufficient for them?”

²³The Lord said to Moses, “Is ^athe Lord’s ¹power limited? Now you shall see whether ^bMy word will ²come true for you or not.”

²⁴So Moses went out and ^atold the people the words of the Lord. Also, he gathered seventy men of the elders of the people, and stationed them around the tent.

^25aThen the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him; and He took of the Spirit who was upon him and placed Him upon the seventy elders. And when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do it again.

²⁶But two men had remained in the camp; the name of one was Eldad and the name of the ¹other Medad. And ^athe Spirit rested upon them (now they were among those who had been registered, but had not gone out to the tent), and they prophesied in the camp.

²⁷So a young man ran and told Moses and said, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”

²⁸Then ^aJoshua the son of Nun, the attendant of Moses from his youth, said, “^bMoses, my lord, restrain them.”

²⁹But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? ^aWould that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!”

³⁰Then Moses ¹returned to the camp, both he and the elders of Israel.

The Quail and the Plague

^31aNow there went forth a wind from the Lord and it brought 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, all around the camp and ¹about two ²cubits deep on the surface of the ground.

³²The people ¹spent all day and all night and all the next day, and gathered the quail (he who gathered least gathered ten ^2ahomers) and they spread them out for themselves all around the camp.

^33aWhile the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord struck the people with a very severe plague.

³⁴So the name of that place was called ^1aKibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had been greedy.

³⁵From Kibroth-hattaavah ^athe people set out for Hazeroth, and they ¹remained at Hazeroth.

Chapter 12

The Murmuring of Miriam and Aaron

¹Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had married a ^aCushite woman);

^2aand they said, “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us as well?” And the Lord heard it.

³(Now the man Moses was ^avery humble, more than any man who was on the face of the earth.)

⁴Suddenly the Lord said to Moses and Aaron and to Miriam, “You three come out to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them came out.

^5aThen the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the doorway of the tent, and He called ¹Aaron and Miriam. When they had both come forward,

⁶He said,

“Hear now My words:

If there is a prophet among you,

I, the Lord, shall make Myself known to him in a ^avision.

I shall speak with him in a ^bdream.

⁷“Not so, with ^aMy servant Moses,

^bHe is faithful in all My household;

^8aWith him I speak mouth to mouth,

Even openly, and not in dark sayings,

And he beholds ^bthe form of the Lord.

Why then were you not afraid

To speak against My servant, against Moses?”

⁹So the anger of the Lord burned against them and ^aHe departed.

¹⁰But when the cloud had withdrawn from over the tent, behold, ^aMiriam was leprous, as ^bwhite as snow. As Aaron turned toward Miriam, behold, she was leprous.

¹¹Then Aaron said to Moses, “Oh, my lord, I beg you, ^ado not account this sin to us, in which we have acted foolishly and in which we have sinned.

¹²“Oh, do not let her be like one dead, whose flesh is half eaten away when he comes from his mother’s womb!”

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

¹⁴But the Lord said to Moses, “If her father had but ^aspit in her face, would she not bear her shame for seven days? Let her be shut up for seven days ^boutside the camp, and afterward she may be received again.”

¹⁵So ^aMiriam was shut up outside the camp for seven days, and the people did not move on until Miriam was received again.

¹⁶Afterward, however, the people moved out from Hazeroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran.

Chapter 13

Spies View the Land

¹Then ^athe Lord spoke to Moses saying,

²“^aSend out for yourself men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give to the sons of Israel; you shall send a man from each of their fathers’ tribes, every one a leader among them.”

³So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the ¹command of the Lord, all of them men who were heads of the sons of Israel.

⁴These then were their names: from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur;

⁵from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori;

⁶from the tribe of Judah, ^aCaleb the son of Jephunneh;

⁷from the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph;

⁸from the tribe of Ephraim, ^aHoshea the son of Nun;

⁹from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu;

¹⁰from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi;

¹¹from the tribe of Joseph, from the tribe of Manasseh, Gaddi the son of Susi;

¹²from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli;

¹³from the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael;

¹⁴from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi;

¹⁵from the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi.

¹⁶These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land; but Moses called ^aHoshea the son of Nun, Joshua.

¹⁷When Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, he said to them, “Go up ¹there into ^athe ²Negev; then go up into the hill country.

¹⁸“See what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many.

¹⁹“How is the land in which they live, is it good or bad? And how are the cities in which they live, are they ¹like open camps or with fortifications?

²⁰“^aHow is the land, is it fat or lean? Are there trees in it or not? ¹Make an ^beffort then to get some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes.

²¹So they went up and spied out the land from ^athe wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, ^1bat Lebo-hamath.

²²When they had gone up into ^athe Negev, ¹they came to Hebron where ^bAhiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the ²descendants of ^cAnak were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before ^dZoan in Egypt.)

²³Then they came to the ¹valley of ^2aEshcol and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes; and they carried it on a pole between two men, with some of the pomegranates and the figs.

²⁴That place was called the valley of ¹Eshcol, because of…