When we
read this passage from Numbers I’m quite sure many of us sigh heavily thinking,
“Oh great, another story about God’s people acting spoiled and petty and then God
quite narcissistically overreacting and angrily smiting and killing them with
some sort of plaque.” In Numbers 11
alone we have God sending the dreaded fire on the outskirts of the camp making
the people anxious and what amounts to severe food sickness from eating quail
that had spoiled because the amount of quail that God provided was so
ridiculously large, to the point of being offensive. Of course, it probably would have helped if
their way of eating small fowl back then involved cooking it. The ancient historian Herodotus says they ate
it raw with lots of salt. (Don't
everyone gag at once.) Yet alas, to
simply dismiss this story and others like it as if the Old Testament were a
movie entitled “Legends of a Petty God” would be to miss the invaluable lesson it
contains with respect to us and God; that we prefer idols to the real thing.
Yet we
have to admit here that something just isn’t quite right in Numbers 11 in that
it is riddled with excessive behaviours that don’t add up. If I were to put myself in the place of the
Israelites, I would be missing meat too; carnivore that I am. But I don’t think I would be standing in my
doorway weeping loudly and bitterly about it as if someone had died. And then there’s Moses and his “it’s all
about me” reaction to seeing and especially hearing this multitude of 600,000+
people wailing for a little “two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce,
cheese, tomatoes on a sesame seed bun”.
And the big question, why is the LORD so mad that he would literally
bury his people in quail and give them a lethal dose of food poisoning? With all these excesses in behaviours it
seems there is more going on here than the Israelites simply complaining about
the food. It seems like something got
lost in translation.
So, maybe
a different translation might be in order.
Take note: this will probably be the one and only time I will say the
King James Version trumped them all. It
reads: “And the mixt multitude that was among
them fell a lusting: and the children of Israel
also wept again, and said, ‘Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt
freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the
garlick: But now our soul is dried
away: there is nothing at all, beside
this manna, before our eyes’.” Well, let me do a little verse by verse for a
moment here and we’ll come to see that the Israelites are actually longing worship
and serve another god than the one who delivered them from slavery in Egypt.
Let’s
start with the mixt multitude who fell a lusting. The mixt multitude or rabble was a
considerable number of non-Israelite people who left Egypt
with them after having seen how the God of the Israelites had humiliated all
the Egyptian gods by means of the Ten Plagues.
They wanted to worship and serve the one true God. Well, the rabble gets a strong craving. They “fell a lusting”. You see, almost all ancient religious
festivals related to celebrating life and fertility and agriculture involved a
drunken feast that turned into an orgy.
If you remember this was what was happening at the Golden Calf incident
when the Israelites “rose up to play”. I
am inclined to think here in Numbers 11 that it was festival time for one of
the fertility gods back in Egypt and the rabble’s craving was indeed that they
“fell a lusting” because it was time to rise up and play.
Second,
the Hebrew does not say “Oh that we had meat to eat.” Quite literally it reads “who will cause us to
eat meat?” In the ancient world it was
next to impossible to eat meat that was not in someway associated with the
worship of some god. The Israelites being
poor lower class slaves in Egypt
didn’t get to eat much meat. They mostly
ate fish and root vegetables. They said “Oh
how we remember the fish we ate freely in Egypt,
the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic.” Meat and fish would have most likely come to
them as charitable overflow from one of the Egyptian fertility festivals for
which it was the responsibility of the god to provide the food abundantly and
free of charge for all the people. So, their
asking “who shall give us meat to eat” reflects that they are looking, longing
for another god who will give them meat to eat and a god associated with the
Nile is looking like a reasonable suspect.
I can see Moses and the LORD beginning to be a bit upset here because
things are building up to another Golden Calf episode.
And of
course, they threw the word “remember” in there. Remembering what your god had done for you
was an official component of worship way back when. In the book of Numbers this incident happened
not long after their first celebration of the Passover in the Wilderness. So, they should have been remembering how the
LORD their God brought them out of Egypt,
out of slavery and poverty and was taking them to their own land to make them
to be a great nation. But no! They are “remembering” the free fish and
slaves' food the so-called gods of Egypt
provided them. Moreover, they've got the
nerve to say that their very lives were withering away. Then the clincher, like gods themselves they
rather snobbishly proclaim that there has been nothing but "this
manna" set before them. I hope you
can feel the gravity of the insult they are offering up to the LORD. They start by asking "who will give us meat
to eat?" And add to it a showy display of bitter weeping and finish with
"There's nothing but this manna."
No wonder the LORD wants to bury them in quail.
What god
are they longing for? Well, there's an
ancient Egyptian god who fits the bill and coincidentally, his name was
Hapi. He was a fertility god who made
the Nile flood every year to make the
soil rich in nutrients for growing crops.
He was the god responsible for feeding Egypt
not only with vegetables but with fish as well.
Hapi was very important. He gave
Hapi-ness to his people, abundant food and festival. Yahweh, the LORD, on the other hand, he was a
great warrior god but when it came to food all he seemed able to give was manna
and manna, miracle provision that it was, just wasn't Hapi enough. They wanted more than the LORD God's gracious
provision for them.
So, this
morning we gather around the table of the LORD.
Part of the spiritual disciple we exercise with this simple ort of a
meal is to come remembering how the Triune God of grace has acted savingly in
each of our lives. We come remembering
that Jesus his very self is the True Manna come down from heaven from the
Father in the power of the Holy Spirit to be our abundance of enough. We come remembering how Jesus has come into
our lives and changed us, healed us, transformed us and made us to know that we
are not alone. We should also come
knowing that we too suffer from Hapi-ness.
We are indeed inclined to want to find a power greater than ourselves
who will give us meat to eat because it is difficult for us to simply let
Jesus, in his presence and his power be our enough. We truly are inclined to say “Oh that we had
meat to eat”. Well, here is bread. Here is wine.
Here is the flesh and blood of Jesus, our Lord and Saviour. We may be inclined to think he is not enough,
but praise him for he has made us each to know for certain that he is. Come to the table of our LORD. Let us remember him and stand more firmly in
the Life abundant. Amen.
