Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Numbers 11:31 - 11:31

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Keil and Delitzsch Commentary - Numbers 11:31 - 11:31


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As soon as Moses had returned with the elders into the camp, God fulfilled His second promise. “A wind arose from Jehovah, and brought quails (salvim, see Exo 16:13) over from the sea, and threw them over the camp about a day's journey wide from here and there (i.e., on both sides), in the neighbourhood of the camp, and about two cubits above the surface.” The wind was a south-east wind (Psa 78:26), which blew from the Arabian Gulf and brought the quails - which fly northwards in the spring from the interior of Africa in very great numbers - from the sea to the Israelites. גּוּז, which only occurs here and in the Psalm of Moses (Psa 90:10), signifies to drive over, in Arabic and Syriac to pass over, not “to cut off,” as the Rabbins suppose: the wind cut off the quails from the sea. נָטַשׁ, to throw them scattered about (Exo 29:5; Exo 31:12; Exo 32:4). The idea is not that the wind caused the flock of quails to spread itself out as much as two days' journey over the camp, and to fly about two cubits above the surface of the ground; so that, being exhausted with their flight across the sea, they fell partly into the hands of the Israelites and partly upon the ground, as Knobel follows the Vulgate (volabant in aëre duobus cubitis altitudine super terram) and many of the Rabbins in supposing: for הַמַּחֲנֶה עַל נָטַשׁ does not mean to cause to fly or spread out over the camp, but to throw over or upon the camp. The words cannot therefore be understood in any other way than they are in Psa 78:27-28, viz., that the wind threw them about over the camp, so that they fell upon the ground a day's journey on either side of it, and that in such numbers that they lay, of course not for the whole distance mentioned, but in places about the camp, as much as two cubits deep. It is only in this sense of the words, that the people could possibly gather quails the whole of that day, the whole night, and the whole of the next day, in such quantities that he who had gathered but little had collected ten homers. A homer, the largest measure of capacity among the Hebrews, which contained ten ephahs, held, according to the lower reckoning of Thenius, 10,143 Parisian inches, or about two bushels Dresden measure. By this enormous quantity, which so immensely surpassed the natural size of the flocks of quails, God purposed to show the people His power, to give them flesh not for one day or several days, but for a whole month, both to put to shame their unbelief, and also to punish their greediness. As they could not eat this quantity all at once, they spread them round the camp to dry in the sun, in the same manner in which the Egyptians are in the habit of drying fish (Herod. ii. 77).