Once again, the people start to grumble about their hardships. This whole time they have been eating the mana that falls to the ground with the dew and they’re getting tired of it. They tried preparing it a few different ways, but it’s getting really old and they remember all the good food they had in Egypt. They talk about how they were better off back there, so God sets some of them on fire.
Moses goes to talk to God and begs Him to let some of Moses’s responsibilities rest on some other people. He feels like a nurse-maid carrying the whole camp while none of them understand anything about what’s going on with God. The Lord tells him to bring 70 men from all the tribes and He will make them prophets as well. Since is was the griping about the food that started all this, He will also stuff all the complainers so full of meat that they’ll wish they’d never asked for it to begin with. These people need to stop saying that they were better off in Egypt. That really seems to piss God off.
God says that He’s sending meat because He has heard the wailing of the people. A huge amount of quail showed up in piles several feet deep all around the camp. The language seems to imply to me that the quail was already dead when the Israelites went out to gather it, which would make them violate the law about dealing with dead things, but it’s not completely clear. That would make sense though because in the next scene we hear about a terrible plague wiping out all the people who complained so much about wanting meat.
Aaron and his wife start questioning Moses’s leadership a little bit. Now that there are some other prophets around Moses doesn’t seem quite as special. I’ve been thinking lately that Aaron is really positioned to have a lot of problems with his pride here. He’s the high-priest of the whole civilization, which is a huge deal since this is supposed to be a nation of priests. Within the temple hierarchy he is the biggest thing around, yet what are his duties? Lighting some candles, overseeing the way the tabernacle components are cleaned and transported. He does a lot of sacrifices for people, but that’s probably actually pretty tedious once the novelty wears off to be honest. He’s like the head janitor of the camp. All he does take care of all the day to day operations and whatever else Moses tells him God says to do.
Anyway, God calls a meeting with all three of them, chews out Aaron and gives his wife leprosy. Aaron goes to Moses, who then goes to God on her behalf and she is cured seven days later, but in the interim she has to live outside of camp.
These little administrative matters taken care of, the camp continues on to Canaan, the promised land. When they start getting close, Moses sends some spies in from all the tribes to scout out the land and the people in it. They report back that the land is awesome and full of great fruit and stuff, but also populated by giants and assorted badasses living in big fortified cities and who would love nothing more than to eat little Israelite armies for breakfast.
One of the scouts though, Caleb, insists that it will be fine and they should attack at once. Caleb is confident that they will be victorious, after all, God told them that land was for them to have, right?
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