For Teaching

Numbers 11: What the Passage Says

112 claims across 35 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Numbers 11 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The people complain about their hardship, and fire from the LORD burns the outer parts of the camp until Moses prays. Then the crowd craves meat, remembers the food of Egypt, and weeps over having only manna; Moses tells the LORD the burden of the people is too heavy and asks to die. The LORD puts some of the spirit that is on Moses onto seventy elders so they can help carry the load, and he sends quail, promising meat for a whole month. While the meat is still in their mouths, a plague strikes the people, and the place is named Kibroth-hattaavah before Israel moves on to Hazeroth.

Claim by Claim

11:1
- The people complained of hardship, and it was evil in the LORD's hearing.
- The LORD heard the people.
- The LORD's anger was kindled.
- Fire from the LORD burned among the people.
- The fire consumed the outer edge of the camp.
11:2
- The people cried out to Moses.
- Moses prayed to the LORD.
- The fire subsided.
11:3
- He called the name of that place Taberah.
- The place was so named because the fire of the LORD had burned among them.
11:4
- The mixed crowd among the people had a strong craving.
- The Israelites also wept again.
- The people asked who would give them meat to eat.
11:5
- The people said they remembered the fish they ate in Egypt at no cost.
- The people said they remembered the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.
11:6
- The people said their appetite was dried up.
- The people said there was nothing at all before their eyes except the manna.
11:7
- The manna was like coriander seed.
- The appearance of the manna was like the appearance of bdellium.
11:8
- The people went about and gathered the manna.
- The people ground the manna in handmills or crushed it in a mortar.
- The people boiled the manna in a pot and made cakes of it.
- The taste of the manna was like the taste of a rich cake made with oil.
11:9
- When the dew fell on the camp at night, the manna fell on it.
11:10
- Moses heard the people weeping by their families.
- Each man wept at the entrance of his tent.
- The anger of the LORD was kindled greatly.
- The matter was evil in the eyes of Moses.
11:11
- Moses said to the LORD.
- Moses asked why the LORD had brought harm on his servant.
- Moses asked why he had not found favor in the LORD's eyes.
- Moses said the LORD had laid the burden of all this people upon him.
11:12
- Moses asked whether he had conceived all this people.
- Moses asked whether he had given birth to them.
- Moses said the LORD told him to carry the people in his bosom as a nurse carries a nursing child.
- Moses said the people were to be carried to the land the LORD swore to their fathers.
11:13
- Moses asked where he could get meat to give to all this people.
- Moses said the people wept to him demanding meat to eat.
11:14
- Moses said he was not able to carry all this people alone.
- Moses said the people were too heavy for him.
11:15
- Moses asked that if the LORD deals with him this way, the LORD kill him at once.
- Moses made the request conditional on his having found favor in the LORD's eyes.
- Moses asked not to see his own misery.
11:16
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
- The LORD told Moses to gather to him seventy men from the elders of Israel.
- The LORD said these were men Moses knew to be elders of the people and their officers.
- The LORD told Moses to bring them to the tent of meeting.
- The LORD said they should stand there with Moses.
11:17
- The LORD said he would come down and speak with Moses there.
- The LORD said he would take some of the spirit that was on Moses and put it on them.
- The LORD said they would bear the burden of the people with Moses.
- The LORD said Moses would not bear it alone.
11:18
- The LORD told Moses to tell the people to consecrate themselves for the next day.
- The LORD said the people would eat meat.
- The LORD said the people had wept in the hearing of the LORD, asking who would give them meat.
- The LORD said the people had said it was well with them in Egypt.
- The LORD said he would give them meat and they would eat.
11:19
- The LORD said they would not eat it for one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days.
11:20
- The LORD said they would eat it for a whole month.
- The LORD said they would eat until it came out of their nostrils and became loathsome to them.
- The LORD said this was because they had rejected the LORD who is among them.
- The LORD said they had wept before him, asking why they came out of Egypt.
11:21
- Moses said the people among whom he was numbered six hundred thousand on foot.
- Moses said the LORD had said he would give them meat to eat for a whole month.
11:22
- Moses asked whether flocks and herds could be slaughtered for them to suffice them.
- Moses asked whether all the fish of the sea could be gathered for them to suffice them.
11:23
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
- The LORD asked whether the LORD's hand is too short.
- The LORD said Moses would now see whether his word would come to pass or not.
11:24
- Moses went out.
- Moses told the people the words of the LORD.
- Moses gathered seventy men from the elders of the people.
- Moses stationed them around the tent.
11:25
- The LORD came down in a cloud.
- The LORD spoke to Moses.
- The LORD took some of the spirit that was on Moses.
- The LORD put that spirit on the seventy elders.
- When the spirit rested on them, they prophesied.
- The King James says they did not cease; the Hebrew can mean either that they did not continue or that they did not stop.
11:26
- Two men remained in the camp.
- One man was named Eldad.
- The other man was named Medad.
- The spirit rested on them.
- They were among those registered.
- They had not gone out to the tent.
- They prophesied in the camp.
11:27
- A young man ran and reported to Moses.
- The young man said Eldad and Medad were prophesying in the camp.
11:28
- Joshua son of Nun answered.
- Joshua was the attendant of Moses, one of his chosen young men.
- Joshua said to Moses to restrain them.
11:29
- Moses said to Joshua.
- Moses asked whether Joshua was jealous on his behalf.
- Moses said he wished all the LORD's people were prophets.
- Moses said he wished the LORD would put his spirit upon them.
11:30
- Moses withdrew into the camp.
- The elders of Israel went with him.
11:31
- A wind went out from the LORD.
- The wind drove quail in from the sea.
- The wind let the quail fall by the camp.
- The quail extended about a day's journey on one side and a day's journey on the other side, around the camp.
- The quail lay about two cubits above the surface of the ground.
11:32
- The people rose up all that day, all that night, and all the next day.
- The people gathered the quail.
- The one who gathered least gathered ten homers.
- The people spread the quail out all around the camp.
11:33
- While the meat was still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the anger of the LORD burned against the people.
- The LORD struck the people with a very great plague.
11:34
- He called the name of that place Kibroth-hattaavah.
- The place was so named because there they buried the people who had craved.
11:35
- The people journeyed from Kibroth-hattaavah to Hazeroth.
- The people stayed at Hazeroth.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1: "His anger was kindled" is fire language: the Hebrew idiom for growing angry literally says the anger burned, which is why fire follows in the same sentence. The "uttermost parts of the camp" are the outer edges; Israel camped in a square with the tent of meeting at the center and the tribes ranged around it, so the outskirts were the parts farthest from it.
11:3: Taberah means "burning" in Hebrew. Naming a place after what happened there is common in these books, and the name is usually a pun on a key word in the story, here, the burning fire.
11:4: The "mixed crowd" (King James "mixt multitude") were non-Israelites who left Egypt along with the Israelites (Exodus 12:38). The Hebrew word is contemptuous, something like "the rabble."
11:5: "At no cost" translates a word about price, not quantity: the fish cost them nothing. Fish from the Nile and its canals was the cheap everyday protein of Egypt, within reach even of forced laborers.
11:6: Manna was the flaky food that had appeared with the dew each morning since soon after Israel left Egypt (Exodus 16); the name echoes the people's first puzzled reaction to it, man hu, roughly "what is it?" The word behind "appetite" (King James "our soul is dried away") is nephesh, often translated "soul," but here meaning the throat or the hunger felt in it.
11:7: Coriander seed is a small, pale, roundish seed about the size of a peppercorn. Bdellium is a fragrant gum resin that oozes from certain trees and hardens into pale, waxy, semi-transparent lumps; it was a costly trade good, so the comparison suggests something pale and translucent rather than dull.
11:8: A hand mill was two stones, one turned on the other, for grinding grain; a mortar was a stone bowl in which the grain was pounded with a club-shaped pestle. Both are the ordinary equipment for turning grain into flour, which is the point: manna was treated exactly like grain.
11:9: Dew is tiny drops of water that settle on the ground at night.
11:10: "In the door of his tent" means at the entrance of the family living space, the spot where household life spilled into public view. Weeping there, family after family across the whole camp, made this a visible protest rather than private grief.
11:11: "Found favour in thy sight" is a standard idiom for standing well with someone who has power over you. Moses is not asking about warm feelings; he is asking what he has done to lose his standing.
11:12: The King James "nursing father" reflects the Hebrew, which uses a masculine word for the one doing the carrying, a male guardian or foster-parent carrying a nursing infant against his chest. Moses is asking why the job of a child's caretaker has been given to him.
11:15: "Out of hand" in 1611 English means at once, right now. "I pray thee" is simply please. Moses is asking to be killed immediately rather than go on with the job.
11:16: "Elders" were the heads of families and clans, the men who settled disputes and spoke for the community; the office was one of standing and age, not of religion. The "tent of meeting" (King James "tabernacle of the congregation") was the portable sanctuary at the center of the camp, the tent where the LORD was said to meet with Moses.
11:17: The Hebrew word translated "spirit" here, ruach, also means breath and wind, the same word that names the wind in verse 31. Taking "some of the spirit that is on you" pictures a share of what has been resting on Moses being distributed, not divided away from him.
11:18: "Make yourselves ready" translates a word meaning to set oneself apart for contact with something holy: washing, clean clothes, and abstaining from ordinary activity, usually for a day beforehand. It is preparation, not moral improvement.
11:21: "Men on foot" (King James "footmen") is a military term for men of fighting age, the group counted in the census in Numbers 1 and 2. Women, children, and the elderly are not in the figure, so the whole company being described is larger still.
11:23: "Is the LORD's arm too short?" is a Hebrew idiom. A short arm cannot reach what it wants; the question asks whether God's reach has run out.
11:25: The last phrase is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew. It can mean the elders prophesied and did not stop, or that they prophesied then and never did so again; ancient and modern translators split both ways. "Prophesied" here describes ecstatic speech or behavior marking someone as seized by the spirit, not necessarily the foretelling of events.
11:26: "On the list" translates "they were of them that were written", the two were among the seventy registered for the ceremony but had not come out to the tent.
11:28: Joshua son of Nun is Moses' personal attendant and military commander, and later his successor. The King James "one of his young men" and the reading "from his youth" both render the same Hebrew, which can mean either that Joshua was one of Moses' chosen men or that he had served since he was young.
11:29: "Enviest thou for my sake?" means "are you jealous on my behalf?" "Would God that" is old English for "I wish that"; it is an expression of a wish, not an oath or a command.
11:30: "Gat him into the camp" simply means went back into the camp. "Gat" is an old past tense of get, and "gat him" is an old construction where the pronoun adds nothing we would translate today.
11:31: Quail are small migratory game birds that cross the Sinai in vast flocks in spring and autumn, arriving exhausted after the sea crossing and easily caught by hand. A "day's journey" is a rough distance, about twenty miles. A cubit was about eighteen inches, roughly the length of a forearm, so two cubits is about three feet, and the Hebrew can mean either that the birds lay piled that deep on the ground or that they flew about that high above it.
11:32: A homer was a dry measure of roughly six bushels, about 220 liters, a donkey-load, which is what the name suggests. Ten homers is an absurd quantity for one person, which is the point. Spreading the birds out was the standard way of drying meat in the sun to keep it from spoiling.
11:33: The word translated "plague" means a blow or a striking. It describes a sudden deadly affliction, not specifically an infectious disease.
11:34: Kibroth-hattaavah means "the graves of craving," naming the place after the appetite described earlier in the chapter.
11:35: Hazeroth is the next campsite on the route. Numbers keeps a running record of where Israel stopped and in what order, so these place names function like dated entries in a travel log.

Read Numbers 11