1 The people took to complaining bitterly in the ears of the LORD. When the LORD heard it, his anger blazed, and fire from the LORD burned among them and consumed the outskirts of the camp.
2 The people cried out to Moses; Moses prayed to the LORD, and the fire sank down.
3 So that place was named Taberah, because fire from the LORD had burned among them.
4 The riffraff among them gave way to craving, and the children of Israel too began weeping again, saying, "If only someone would give us meat to eat!
5 We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt at no cost, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.
6 But now our appetite has dried up; there is nothing at all to look at but this manna."
7 The manna was like coriander seed, and it looked like bdellium.
8 The people would go around gathering it, grind it with millstones or pound it in a mortar, boil it in a pot, and make it into cakes; it tasted like something baked with oil.
9 When the dew came down on the camp at night, the manna came down with it.
10 Moses heard the people weeping clan by clan, each man at the entrance of his tent. The LORD's anger burned hot, and Moses too was troubled.
11 Moses said to the LORD, "Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? Why have I not found favor with you, that you put the burden of this whole people on me?
12 Was it I who conceived this whole people? Was it I who gave birth to them, that you tell me, 'Carry them in your arms as a foster father carries a nursing infant,' to the land you swore to their fathers?
13 Where can I get meat to give all this people? They keep weeping to me, saying, 'Give us meat to eat!'
14 I cannot carry this whole people by myself; it is too heavy for me.
15 If this is how you will treat me, then please put me to death at once, if I have found favor with you, and do not let me look on my misery."
16 The LORD answered Moses, "Bring together for me seventy of the elders of Israel, men you know to be elders and officers of the people. Take them to the tent of meeting and have them stand there with you.
17 I will come down and speak with you there; I will take some of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them. Then they will share the burden of the people with you, and you will not have to carry it alone.
18 "And say to the people, 'Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you will eat meat. You have wept in the LORD's ears, saying, "If only someone would give us meat to eat! We were well off in Egypt." So the LORD will give you meat, and you will eat.
19 Not just one day will you eat it, or two days, or five, or ten, or twenty,
20 but for a full month, until it comes out of your nostrils and you are sick of it, because you have rejected the LORD who is among you and wept before him, saying, "Why ever did we leave Egypt?"'"
21 Moses replied, "The people I am with number six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, 'I will give them meat to eat for a full month'!
22 Could flocks and herds be slaughtered enough to be sufficient for them? Could all the fish in the sea be caught enough to be sufficient for them?"
23 The LORD said to Moses, "Is the LORD's arm too short? You will soon see whether my word comes true for you or not."
24 Moses went out and told the people what the LORD had said. He gathered seventy men from the elders of the people and stationed them around the tent.
25 The LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him; he took some of the Spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them they prophesied, but they did not continue doing it.
26 Two men, however, had stayed behind in the camp, one called Eldad and the other Medad. The Spirit rested on them as well; they were among those listed, but had not gone out to the tent, and they prophesied in the camp.
27 A young man ran to tell Moses, "Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp!"
28 Joshua son of Nun, who had served Moses since his youth, spoke up: "Moses, my lord, stop them!"
29 But Moses answered him, "Are you zealous on my behalf? If only all the LORD's people were prophets, and the LORD would put his Spirit on them!"
30 Then Moses went back to the camp, he and the elders of Israel.
31 A wind went out from the LORD and swept quail in from the sea, letting them drop around the camp, about a day's walk in one direction and a day's walk in the other, all around the camp, some two cubits deep on the ground.
32 All that day, all that night, and all the next day the people were up gathering the quail; whoever gathered least had ten homers. They spread them out for themselves all around the camp.
33 But while the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the LORD's anger burned against the people, and the LORD struck the people with a very severe plague.
34 So that place was named Kibroth-hattaavah, because there they buried the people who had given way to craving.
35 From Kibroth-hattaavah the people moved on to Hazeroth, and they stayed at Hazeroth.