Numbers: Faith, Law, and History

The Plague and the Quail

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Plague and the Quail

Genre:

Track: 22

Dictation Name: RR181L22

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found. Call ye upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. Let us pray.

All glory be to thee, Oh God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, for all thy mercies and blessings which are new every morning. We thank thee that we live and move and have our being in thee, that it is thy will that shall prevail and not the will of men. Guide us this day and this week, prosper us in thy service, and give us joy in thee and in thy kingdom. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Our scripture is from Numbers 11:31-35. We come now to the conclusion of this very important chapter, now a forgotten one, that deals with ingratitude. Numbers 11:31-35. Our subject: The Plague and the Quail. “And there went forth a wind from the Lord, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth. And the people stood up all that day, and all that night, and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least gathered ten homers: and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp. And while the flesh was yet between their teeth, ere it was chewed, the wrath of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord smote the people with a very great plague. And he called the name of that place Kibrothhattaavah: because there they buried the people that lusted. And the people journeyed from Kibrothhattaavah unto Hazeroth; and abode at Hazeroth.”

The quail described in these verses was a member of the partridge family which wintered in Europe and still does. In the spring, this type of quail would fly across into Arabia or into Italy, or Greece, and it would do so in great numbers. At least to the beginning of this century, it was in phenomenal quantities. Their annual migration was comparable to that of the passenger pigeons, which came into the American Midwest in such great numbers in the early days of the last century, that they broke the branches of trees where they lighted, as well as covering the ground, they were that thick and plentiful. We are told that these particular quails made long flights, always flying with the wind to make it easier to cross the Red Sea. They would land exhausted in huge fluttering heaps, in clusters as much as three feet high. The birds came from the south, but according to Psalm 78:26, they were blown to their place near Israel’s encampment by an east wind. These quails landed on either side of Israel’s camp, about a day’s journey. It was readily apparent to Israel that they were near. To this day, these quails are easily caught in the Sinai Peninsula at the time of their northward migration, because they are exhausted from the flight. There are various estimates as to how many bushels an omer at that time equaled.

One thing is very clear. Even those that gathered the least had an abundant supply of meat, for a month. The birds would be picked clean of their feathers, cleaned, salted, and then dried in the sun. Anyone who has eaten quail knows that it is a prized delicacy. They of Israel who had wept for meat, now had it, but before they had even chewed it, we are told that God smote the people with a very great plague. The plague came not from the quails, but from God for their ingratitude. Earlier, in Exodus 16:13, we are told of quail lighting around the encampment. On that occasion, there was no curse as in this incident. The name of this place was called from Kibrothhattaavah, meaning “The graves of lust are of ungodly desires, of greed and demands of God.”

We have here a series of providential events or miracles. First, verse 31 tells us that wind brought the quail to precisely where Israel was. They could have landed many miles away. Second, the quails came in great numbers to this particular area, instead of spreading out for countless miles. Some scholars claim that the reference in verse 3 to two cubits high refer to the height at which the exhausted quail were flying. This is, low and close to the ground, and therefore, easily caught, or clout{?}. This is probably not the cause, but in either case, we have a providential event. The third, this blessing is turned into a curse by God. Where men are ungodly, the Lord will use even blessings to curse them, as in this instance. The people gathered this fat variety of quail for two days, and the intervening night. Here indeed was a remarkable windfall that supplied them with meat for a full month.

But God’s gift became His means of judgment. What the people wept and whined for became, for many of them, death. This was a warning to the survivors, but it was not heeded. The people justified their sins as rightful demands against God. Some have tried to explain away this event, which was long remembered in Israel’s history, as a case of food poisoning, but such a naturalistic interpretation does violence to the text. The people had a strong sense of entitlement. As God’s chosen people, they were supposedly entitled to whatever would best satisfy them. God indeed ruled that they had an entitlement, but it was to death.

It is a curious fact that there seems to be a very real correlation between ages of tyranny and times of doubt, of unbelief in God. When people seem ready to view casually the bombing of innocent civilians, the existence of slave labor camps, street crimes, and injustice on a great scale in the courts, they’re most readily indignant at the thought of God punishing anyone. The rationale behind this is that men, however much they complain, are more ready to tolerate human injustice than God’s justice. The reason’s a clear one. In a world where major evils escape punishment and justice, men believe that their many since, petty or great, can go unpunished and unnoticed in such a world, so they like an evil world.

I recall a homosexual professor talking with several other professors, two of whom are also homosexuals, and I was in an outer office working with the secretary, and I could hear what they were saying, and he said very cynically that justice was the demand of hypocrites. Nothing would be more intolerable, he said, than a world of public and complete justice. Very few people, he said, are that honest, or that just. Well, he was right, even though he was himself a very evil man. The fact is that most people seem content with injustice. It provides them with a more congenial world than with God’s justice. However, because God is the creator and Lord of all, His justice eventually and always prevails, either in time or in eternity. Because Israel was then God’s chosen people, it came upon them more quickly. Both Israel and the church today, by claiming to be God’s chosen peoples, are thus more readily prone to be judged by Him.

The quail had landed exhausted from the flight, and this is a fact common to some bird migrations. The scene was, to Israel, like a great windfall from God; exhausted birds, easy kills, women and children collecting the clubbed birds to pluck and get them, and gut them before salting them and setting them out to dry, and one and all happily looking forward to an abundance of meat. They had not been thankful for deliverance from Egypt, nor for the daily miracle of manna. Now God gave them their desire and made it a curse to them.

Although the quail are not normally long distance flyers, they do make this annual migration. They wait for the right winds, and they fly with the wind. They land, whether going north or south, exhausted and are thus easily killed. When killed in numbers on this occasions, the various peoples of that part of the world do exactly as Israel then did. They gut and pluck them, salt and dry them in the sun, and keep them for future use.

In Psalm 78:21-32, we are told of Israel and this judgment. In verse 32, “For all this they sinned still and believed not His wondrous works.” They insisted on seeing God’s miracles as natural occurrences, including the manna. In Psalm 106:13-15, we have another reference to this event. “They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel: but lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert. And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.” The reference here is to a particularly grim curse. “He gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.” Apart from those who died, the rest had leanness in their souls. We live in a time when God has sent leanness into the souls of countless peoples.

According to C.J. Elliott in the expression “the Lord smote the people with a very great plague,” the word smote and plague are cognate in the Hebrew and refer to pestilence of any epidemic sickness. As we have said, this is a supernatural judgment. Such large harvests of quail were common. No ill effects followed. According to Athenaus, a writer of Antiquity, in Egypt, vast numbers of peoples regularly killed and salted the quail for future use. The Israelites had obviously done the same while in Egypt, and they quickly responded to the opportunity. It was, in Egypt, an annual a natural event, and they assumed it to be the same on this occasion. Fallen man wants constantly to reduce God’s providence to naturalistic events. The reason for this is an obvious one. Nature has no court of judgment; whereas God does.

Morgan said of this event, “Here, a principle emerges which is a perpetual application and importance. It is that there are times when God grants an unwarranted request in order that men may learn through experience the folly of their desires.” Now, this sounds good, but it is not a biblical doctrine. Men do not learn their basic lessons from experience, but from God’s grace. Certainly, the later history of Israel shows very clearly that they learned nothing from this experience. It is God, through Moses, who terms this site The Graves of Greed or Lust, not Israel. Their sin was their continuing and continual failure to learn from experience. Israel sought its will rather than God’s. It paid a price for doing so and it learned nothing from the experience.

John Gill, writing some generations ago, noted that in his day, in Italy on the coast of Antium, within a month in the space of five miles, a hundred thousand quails were taken every day. According to Pliny, going back into Antiquity, in some parts of Ethiopia, such quail provided the people with enough meat for a year. All this tells us why both Israel of old and church commentators today insist on viewing these quail and the plagues naturalistically. Well, to do so removes moral responsibility. The plague the just happened, as did the quail. This tells us why the modern concept of historiography is sure to further blindness. In a world where things happen just by chance or naturalistically, both meaning and morality are discarded. This is, of course, intentional.

The historian who has been most influential, since the forties, in influencing historiography, not only in the English speaking world, but all over the world, Collingswood of Oxford, felt that history was entirely manmade. He railed against those who had a hangover of Christianity and therefore, set history into periods, and had an apocalyptic belief that there would be judgments, and days of reckoning in history. He saw this the antithesis of truly historical writing, which tells you why, increasingly, more and more of the historical books printed are worthless, because they try to eliminate anything but a trivial manmade reason.

We are told in the last verse that Israel soon journeyed to Hazeroth, which means “enclosures, or settlements.” They did not want to stay in the place where so many had died. Perhaps they believed there was something about the environment there that was responsible, but man’s basic environment is always God Almighty. Let us pray.

Our Father, we thank thee for this, thy word. Deliver us from the sin of ingratitude. Make us a godly people, always faithful, always joyful, always confident that thy will shall be done. Make us instruments of thy kingdom and of thy will. In Christ’s name. Amen. Are there any questions about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] On the sideline notes of my Bible, it {?} the word golegany{?}

[Rushdoony] The word, what?

[Audience] Golegany{?}. It does kind of sound, according to this, even when they got the meat right into their mouths, that’s when they died. Is that correct?

[Rushdoony] I’m sorry, I can’t quite hear.

[Audience] When the people got the meat into their mouths . . .

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] . . . that’s when they died?

[Rushdoony] The point is, before they really had a chance to do more than start eating, they died, so that they food was not responsible. They were about to eat, they were about to rejoice in all that they had received, and before they could do more than lift it to their mouth, they were stricken. So, the whole point of that is, they had complained, they had whined, and they were stricken before they could even chew on it.

[Audience] They call it the plague then. You would think that plagues would be something that was, like bacteria, or something like that.

[Rushdoony] They were ready to give it any reason except the true reason. That it was God’s judgment. This they would not accept, and of course, this whole chapter is about ingratitude. Next week, as we continue, we’ll see other sins coming into play in the successive chapters, but in Chapter 12 it’s envy. Envy. So, we have, as men are ungrateful to God and as they refuse to see the hand of God, they go from one sin to another. Yes?

[Audience] Well, the argument or the assumption that morality doesn’t exist by the historians or the commentators, they have switched it from morality to discrimination.

[Rushdoony] Very good point. They have created a humanistic morality, just as they say history is made by man, not by God, and that is the essence of the new historiography, so morality has to be made over again, and discrimination is now the great sin, the capital offense almost, so we have a new catalog of sins.

[Audience] They’re going to get new hate {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, in one of his earlier works, Karl Marx said there had to be a substitute for heaven and hell, and so he said, we will have the communist world of the future as the heaven, for men to aspire to, and we must create hell for all who dissent. So, you had your torture prisons and your slave labor camps because Karl Marx called for a hell and a heaven. They’ve never realized the heaven, but they’ve certainly created hell. Marx is unwittingly paying tribute to God and His word. He said men needed heaven and hell. Are there any other questions and comments? Yes?

[Audience] Well, this one parallel strikes me, American business has asked for regulations because they wanted to consolidate their position or consolidate their gains. They didn’t want to have to compete in many areas. So, the government has given them regulations but they’ve given them regulations that have destroyed them.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that’s very, very true, and the universities have asked for it, too, and now that there are investigations, they’re very upset because all their misappropriations of funds are coming to the light, but they begged for it. They were there with their hands out for millions, and now we find that they’ve used the money for some very, very idiotic ways.

[Audience] The moral is be careful what you ask for.

[Rushdoony] I recall that it was some years ago when they were very unhappy because it seemed likely that the Romance languages would not longer get national defense funds. This was at Stanford. Now, we were not going to wage war against South America or Central America. Why was funding the Hispanic studies at Stanford essential to national defense? Perhaps they sneaked it some other way, I don’t know, but there was a great deal of hew{?} and cry when it was cut off. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, we know how prone we are to go from sin to sin. Give us grace and wisdom that we may go from faithfulness to greater faithfulness, that we may rejoice in thy word, know that thy judgments are true and righteous altogether, and that we may, by thy grace, serve thee with all our heart, mind, and being. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape