🔢WEB · Numbers 11:19
What does Numbers 11:19 mean?
"You will not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days,"
— Numbers 11:19 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Yahweh 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; and bring them to the Tent of Meeting, that they may stand there with you.
I will come down and talk with you there. I will take of the Spirit which is on you, and will put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with you, that you don’t bear it yourself alone.
“Say to the people, ‘Sanctify yourselves in preparation for tomorrow, and you will eat meat; for you have wept in the ears of Yahweh, saying, “Who will give us meat to eat? For it was well with us in Egypt.” Therefore Yahweh will give you meat, and you will eat.
You will not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, neither ten days, nor twenty days,
but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils, and it is loathsome to you; because you have rejected Yahweh who is among you, and have wept before him, saying, “Why did we come out of Egypt?”’”
Moses said, “The people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand men on foot; and you have said, ‘I will give them meat, that they may eat a whole month.’
Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them, to be sufficient for them? Shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to be sufficient for them?”
Explanation
Numbers 11:19 is a fragment of a longer divine statement, and it only makes full sense alongside verse 20, which finishes the sentence: the people will eat meat not for one day, two days, five, ten, or twenty days, "but a whole month, until it come out at your nostrils, and it be loathsome unto you." God is emphatically piling up numbers to stress that the meat he is about to send will not be a brief, satisfying treat — it will keep coming until the Israelites are sick of it.
The context is the wilderness wandering after the exodus from Egypt. The Israelites, tired of manna, weep and complain, longing for the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic they remember (falsely nostalgically) from Egypt (Numbers 11:4-6). Moses, overwhelmed by the burden of leading this constantly grumbling nation, cries out to God in frustration, asking why he alone must carry them and even asking to die rather than continue (11:10-15). God responds in two ways: first, by appointing seventy elders to share the burden of leadership with Moses (11:16-17), and second, by addressing the people's complaint about meat. It is in this second response that verse 19 appears — God announces he will give them meat, but in such abundance and duration that it becomes a
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