In Numbers 11, the people displease God with their complaining. They are dissatisfied with God’s current provision for them in the form of manna and begin to long for Egypt and everything that they enjoyed there (forgetting the bondage and hard times they were under when they were back in Egypt). And so they begin to cry out for meat.
Moses himself then complains to God about the people complaining to him. And I really like how Moses engages with God in such a real way. He says to God, What have I done that you’ve given me these people as a burden? Where am I going to find meat for them? If this is what you’re going to put me through, well you might as well just kill me. Imagine saying all this to God.
Thankfully God has broad shoulders and didn’t respond in the affirmative to Moses’s cry. Instead, God directs Moses to gather 70 men from the elders of Israel to help him and declares He will meet with them and put some of the spirit that is upon Moses upon them. He gives further instructions that the people should prepare to receive the meat that they’ve asked for, and they will get it for 30 days. So God comes up with a solution to the problem.
The spirit then comes upon the men. God sends quail for the people, but sadly they don’t get to enjoy it for as long as they wanted to because a plague is sent upon them and many of them die and are buried in that place.
We then move on to chapter 12 where we see Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses because of his marriage to an Ethiopian woman. God comes down, calls all three of them to come and meet Him at the tabernacle of the congregation, a bit like students being called to the principal’s office. After speaking to them, Miriam becomes leprous, and Moses has to intercede for her. She spends 7 days outside the camp before being brought back in.
The final chapter, chapter 13, finds the people on the verge of entering the Promised Land. Twelve men are chosen, one from each tribe, and they are sent to spy out the land. They spend forty days searching the land and when they return, they give a negative report recounting all the challenges and problems. But Caleb is the first to stand up and say no, let’s go up because we are well able to overcome it.
