Now [when] the people complained, it displeased the LORD; for the LORD heard [it,] and His anger was aroused. So the fire of the LORD burned among them, and consumed [some] in the outskirts of the camp.
Now the mixed multitude who were among them yielded to intense craving; so the children of Israel also wept again and said: "Who will give us meat to eat?
The people went about and gathered [it,] ground [it] on millstones or beat [it] in the mortar, cooked [it] in pans, and made cakes of it; and its taste was like the taste of pastry prepared with oil.
Then Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, everyone at the door of his tent; and the anger of the LORD was greatly aroused; Moses also was displeased.
So Moses said to the LORD, "Why have You afflicted Your servant? And why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid the burden of all these people on me?
"Did I conceive all these people? Did I beget them, that You should say to me, 'Carry them in your bosom, as a guardian carries a nursing child,' to the land which You swore to their fathers?
So the LORD said to Moses: "Gather to Me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tabernacle of meeting, that they may stand there with you.
"Then I will come down and talk with you there. I will take of the Spirit that [is] upon you and will put [the same] upon them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you may not bear [it] yourself alone.
"Then you shall say to the people, 'Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wept in the hearing of the LORD, saying, "Who will give us meat to eat? For [it was] well with us in Egypt." Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat.
'but [for] a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have despised the LORD who is among you, and have wept before Him, saying, "Why did we ever come up out of Egypt?" ' "
And Moses said, "The people whom I [am] among [are] six hundred thousand men on foot; yet You have said, 'I will give them meat, that they may eat [for] a whole month.'
"Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them, to provide enough for them? Or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to provide enough for them?"
So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD, and he gathered the seventy men of the elders of the people and placed them around the tabernacle.
Then the LORD came down in the cloud, and spoke to him, and took of the Spirit that [was] upon him, and placed [the same] upon the seventy elders; and it happened, when the Spirit rested upon them, that they prophesied, although they never did [so] again.
But two men had remained in the camp: the name of one [was] Eldad, and the name of the other Medad. And the Spirit rested upon them. Now they [were] among those listed, but who had not gone out to the tabernacle; yet they prophesied in the camp.
Then Moses said to him, "Are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the LORD's people were prophets [and] that the LORD would put His Spirit upon them!"
Now a wind went out from the LORD, and it brought quail from the sea and left [them] fluttering near the camp, about a day's journey on this side and about a day's journey on the other side, all around the camp, and about two cubits above the surface of the ground.
And the people stayed up all that day, all night, and all the next day, and gathered the quail (he who gathered least gathered ten homers); and they spread [them] out for themselves all around the camp.
But while the meat [was] still between their teeth, before it was chewed, the wrath of the LORD was aroused against the people, and the LORD struck the people with a very great plague.