19. Poisonous Quail

Quit Complaining

Looking back, the Israelites thought of their years of slavery like this: We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Num. 11:4-5.  Oh, how they hankered to go back to Egypt; back to the "good old days" when they were slaves.  At least then they had meat to eat and they wanted some now. They were so tired of the same manna, day after day after day.  So Moses said to the Lord, Where am I to get meat to give to all these people? For they weep all over me, saying, ‘Give us meat, that we may eat.' Num.11:13.

So the Lord said to Moses:‘Consecrate yourselves ... you shall eat meat; ... Now a wind went out from the Lord, and it brought quail from the sea and left them fluttering near the camp.  Incidentally, this wind happens every year at this time and every year it brings with it the quail that are in the process of migrating.  So to credit the Lord with the mechanics of this incident is really giving credit to Jehovah for controlling nature.  He may have had nothing to do with this situation.

All Things in Moderation

... the people stayed up all that day, all night, and all the next day, and gathered the quail ... 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. Num.11:14-33.  It is absolutely amazing that the Lord gets blamed for every bad thing that happens, even though the event is strictly natural. 

I find it disheartening that in this whole story there is not a single word of thanksgiving for the food!

It does seem rather incongruous that the Lord would send the quail to feed the Israelites and then immediately punish them with a very great plague just because they ate the quail which He had sent.  It is much more likely that the author wanted to point out to us the sin of complaining about the way things have happened in our life.

From the following quote notice the natural situation in which the Israelites found themselves.

Coturnism is an illness featuring muscle tenderness and rhabdomyolysis (muscle cell breakdown) after consuming quail that have fed on poisonous plants. There can be no doubt that this literary example only made sense because the possibility of poisoning from eating quail was widely understood. Central to these ancient accounts is the thesis that quail became toxic to humans after consuming seeds from hellebore or henbane (Hyoscyamus niger).

Quail are never poisonous outside the migration season ... European Common Quail migrate ... across Algeria to France (and) is associated with poisonings only on the spring migration. The eastern flyway, which funnels down the Nile Valley is the reverse, on the autumn return. 
Wikipedia. 

The time frame in the preceding paragraph is astonishing - Notice this:

We know that the Israelites left Egypt in April and if we accept the theory that suggests that the 40 years in the wilderness did not officially begin until after the spies had returned from scouting out Canan for 40 days; the timing fits exactly.
Biblical Account of Old Testament Chronology.  

The death by the quails falls about at the beginning of the month of September and that is when the Israelites were in that area.  That is precisely when the poisonous quails, doing their fall migration, would have been in that area.

That the quail were there at that time of year was natural.  The fact that the poisonous meat would affect the eaters is also natural.  The writer's point in this story might have been, quit complaining!  

Almost all of us enjoy better lives than any of the Israelites in the desert did, and if they were not to complain, we certainly should not.