4 The rabble among them had a strong craving; and the Israelites also wept again, and said, “If only we had meat to eat!
We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic;
but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.”
STUCK IN THE PAST
Many religious people lament that the first fervours of their conversion have fled away. They think—sometimes rightly, but not, I believe, always—that their sins account for this. They may even try by pitiful efforts of will to revive what now seem to have been the golden days. But were those fervours—the operative word is those—ever intended to last?
It would be rash to say that there is any prayer which God never grants. But the strongest candidate is the prayer we might express in the single word encore. And how should the Infinite repeat Himself? All space and time are too little for Him to utter Himself in them once.
And the joke, or tragedy, of it all is that these golden moments in the past, which are so tormenting if we erect them into a norm, are entirely nourishing, wholesome, and enchanting if we are content to accept them for what they are, for memories. Properly bedded down in a past which we do not miserably try to conjure back, they will send up exquisite growths. Leave the bulbs alone, and the new flowers will come up. Grub them up and hope, by fondling and sniffing, to get last year’s blooms, and you will get nothing. “Unless a seed die . . .”
—from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
For reflection
Numbers 11:1–6
7 Now the manna was like coriander seed, and its color was like the color of gum resin.
The people went around and gathered it, ground it in mills or beat it in mortars, then boiled it in pots and made cakes of it; and the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil.
When the dew fell on the camp in the night, the manna would fall with it.
10 Moses heard the people weeping throughout their families, all at the entrances of their tents. Then the LORD became very angry, and Moses was displeased.
So Moses said to the LORD, “Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me?
Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child, to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors’?
Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’
I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.
If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once—if I have found favor in your sight—and do not let me see my misery.”
16 So the LORD said to Moses, “Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting, and have them take their place there with you.
I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself.
And say to the people: Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat; for you have wailed in the hearing of the LORD, saying, ‘If only we had meat to eat! Surely it was better for us in Egypt.’ Therefore the LORD will give you meat, and you shall eat.
You shall eat not only one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days,
but for a whole month—until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you—because you have rejected the LORD who is among you, and have wailed before him, saying, ‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’”
But Moses said, “The people I am with number six hundred thousand on foot; and you say, ‘I will give them meat, that they may eat for a whole month’!
Are there enough flocks and herds to slaughter for them? Are there enough fish in the sea to catch for them?”
The LORD said to Moses, “Is the LORD’s power limited?[22 (#ulink_c8e0a8ed-13f4-51aa-8a21-9046b59870ad)] Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.”
24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the LORD; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent.
Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.
26 Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp.
And a young man ran and told Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”
And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men,[23 (#ulink_02a8ec82-06c9-5ace-9999-8cd5c8b9267d)] said, “My lord Moses, stop them!”
But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!”
And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.
31 Then a wind went out from the LORD, and it brought quails from the sea and let them fall beside the camp, about a day’s journey on this side and a day’s journey on the other side, all around the camp, about two cubits deep on the ground.
So the people worked all that day and night and all the next day, gathering the quails; the least anyone gathered was 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 consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD struck the people with a very great plague.
So that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah,[24 (#ulink_54af9597-a37f-595f-af82-83e908e34663)] because there they buried the people who had the craving.
From Kibroth-hattaavah the people journeyed to Hazeroth.
12 While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married (for he had indeed married a Cushite woman);
and they said, “Has the LORD spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?” And the LORD heard it.
Now the man Moses was very humble,[25 (#ulink_90a2dbe5-569b-5611-91f5-f272491d2734)] more so than anyone else on the face of the earth.
Suddenly the LORD said to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, “Come out, you three, to the tent of meeting.” So the three of them came out.
Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud, and stood at the entrance of the tent, and called Aaron and Miriam; and they both came forward.
And he said, “Hear my words:
When there are prophets among you,
I the LORD make myself known to them in visions;
I speak to them in dreams.
Not so with my servant Moses;
he is entrusted with all my house.
