So, what was God’s reaction in all of this? It says in v. 10 that His anger was kindled GREATLY! He wasn’t just like, “Oh, I understand you’re tired of manna after all this time! I never thought about that, let me get you something else to eat.” You see, God is never pleased when we impose upon His unmerited goodness toward us. In His controlled, deliberate anger, God determined to answer their prayer but in a way they would never forget. It says in verses 18-20 that the Lord commanded the people to consecrate themselves because He was going to give them meat, “not for a day, not for two days, not even for a week but for one month until it came out of their nostrils and become loathsome to them.” That’s no joke! And indeed, in verses 31-33 it says that God brought a wind that swept in quail that surrounded the camp all around within a days journey in any direction! Not only that but it was stacked three feet high! The circumstances were so extreme that even the laziest people gathered 60-70 bushels.
The Israelites were so excited to see something other than manna that they crossed over from need to greed! They collected manna for 36 hours! I don’t know about you, but I have never spent more than a few hours in one grocery trip and I wasn’t that excited about it to begin with! But, their fanaticism and greed displeased the Lord and while they were in the midst of taking their first, long awaited bite of meat, the bite they had salivated over while plucking and preparing, the Lord brought a severe plague to them. Don’t you imagine that this had to be some kind of stomach flu since God said it would become loathsome to them?
Let’s hit the pause button for a second while they are still chewing...do you remember the last time you had the stomach flu? Do you remember what you ate just before that made its way back up? How long did it take you to be able to eat that food again? When I was 15 I got sick after eating KFC. It has taken me 20 years to be able to eat a piece of fried chicken...and only in desperate situations like when there is nothing else to eat and I am thinking my arm might be okay with a little bit of salt! Needless to say, it is hard to find things palatable again once you have gotten sick from eating them.
However, God didn’t just take away the quail after the plague hit, they had to continue to eat this for another 29 days! The alternative: starve! There’s no biblical basis for this but it would seem highly likely that God took away the manna during this period so that even if they had wanted manna it wasn’t there for the taking. Can you imagine, approximately 5000 years prior to the Frigidare, the stench that lay over the camp? Can you imagine day 29 when you were preparing your last quail? Possibly it would take 5 - 10 decent sized birds to even fill up a grown man. At that rate, with an average of 2 meals a day, you would have cleaned and prepared a minimum of 300 birds for just one person! Get the picture?
Just because we don’t get all this detail in scripture doesn’t mean we don’t have enough information to fill in the blanks! The point to be grasped here is this: God is not okay with ungrateful people! These were His chosen people and they received stiff consequences for their disobedience! We as believers are His children and although He loves us, He will not allow us to continue in a spirit of greed, envy, jealousy and overall thanklessness. If you have read this post and you are convicted, act on that in repentance and make today the day you turn it around. Learn it off the pages of Numbers through the example of the Israelites instead of taking the field trip! God’s spankings are just and fair but they are not experiences we will soon forget! In closing, a bit of advice (for me and for you): Go fix dinner and be grateful for all of the wonderful variety that you have to work with and if your family complains, serve a little Numbers 11 for dessert!!
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