I've been studying the book of Numbers the past few weeks, and although it has given me quite a bit to think about, my study hasn't yielded many "Aha!" moments. That is, until a few days ago when I looked at what I like to call "The Quail Incident".
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, it's found in chapter 11, and what happened was that the Israelites, as was their practice, were complaining about something. The NIV has them "wailing. . . 'If we only had meat to eat (vs. 4)!'" Then God basically said, "You want meat? I'll give you meat! You'll get so much meat that it'll come out of your noses!" God caused a wind to blow and it blew in so much quail from the coast that the minimum gathered per person was about 60 bushels. Now that's a lot of quail! Sadly, they didn't get to enjoy it much, because before it could even be swallowed, God struck dead all the quail eaters. That place then, for obvious reasons, became known as "Graves of Craving" or "Craving Graves".
This passage has often been used by dedicated vegetarians as an illustration of the perils of eating meat, but I think that if one focuses solely on that aspect, they are missing the point. One commentator said that the Israelites had more food variety than one may think. The manna could be prepared in a couple of different ways, plus they could get milk and curds from their flocks, plus there were sacrifices in which the person offering would share a meal with the priests. A meal mainly comprised of meat. Also the majority of the things the Israelites were pining for were non-meat items (see vs. 5). The main problem wasn't so much that they were craving meat. It was that they were craving Egyptian meat; meaning that they would rather be slaves in Egypt than to be free under God's guidance.
The lesson that struck me this time around was the whole "We want something else!" concept. I had found myself recently wanting a change simply for change's sake. Sometimes the routine of life can seem a little tedious, but if the routine is of divine design, then we should think twice before demanding something different.
