4. The riffraff among them were so greedy for meat that even the Israelites lamented again, “If only we had meat for food!
5. We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.
6. But now we are famished; we have nothing to look forward to but this manna.”
7. Manna was like coriander seed and had the appearance of bdellium.
8. When they had gone about and gathered it up, the people would grind it between millstones or pound it in a mortar, then cook it in a pot and make it into loaves, with a rich creamy taste.
9. At night, when the dew fell upon the camp, the manna also fell.
10. When Moses heard the people, family after family, crying at the entrance of their tents, so that the Lord became very angry, he was grieved.
11. “Why do you treat your servant so badly?” Moses asked the Lord. “Why are you so displeased with me that you burden me with all this people?
12. Was it I who conceived all this people? or was it I who gave them birth, that you tell me to carry them at my breast, like a nurse carrying an infant, to the land you have promised under oath to their fathers?
13. Where can I get meat to give to all this people? For they are crying to me, ‘Give us meat for our food.’
14. I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me.
15. If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once, so that I need no longer face my distress.”
16. Then the Lord said to Moses: Assemble for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be elders and authorities among the people, and bring them to the tent of meeting. When they are in place beside you,
17. I will come down and speak with you there. I will also take some of the spirit that is on you and will confer it on them, that they may share the burden of the people with you. You will then not have to bear it by yourself.
18. To the people, however, you shall say: “Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, when you shall have meat to eat. For in the hearing of the Lord you have cried, ‘If only we had meat for food! Oh, how well off we were in Egypt!’ Therefore the Lord will give you meat to eat,
19. and you will eat it, not for one day, or two days, or five, or ten, or twenty days,
20. but for a whole month—until it comes out of your very nostrils and becomes loathsome to you. For you have rejected the Lord who is in your midst, and in his presence you have cried, ‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’”
21. But Moses said, “The people around me include six hundred thousand soldiers; yet you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month.’