Study Desk

So they camped or traveled at the Lord 's command, and they did whatever the Lord told them through Moses.

Judah's troops led the way. They marched behind their banner, and their leader was Nahshon son of Amminadab.

They marched for three days after leaving the mountain of the Lord , with the Ark of the Lord 's Covenant moving ahead of them to show them where to stop and rest.

Soon the people began to complain about their hardship, and the Lord heard everything they said. Then the Lord 's anger blazed against them, and he sent a fire to rage among them, and he destroyed some of the people in the outskirts of the camp.

Then the foreign rabble who were traveling with the Israelites began to crave the good things of Egypt. And the people of Israel also began to complain. "Oh, for some meat!" they exclaimed.

The people would go out and gather it from the ground. They made flour by grinding it with hand mills or pounding it in mortars. Then they boiled it in a pot and made it into flat cakes. These cakes tasted like pastries baked with olive oil.

I will come down and talk to you there. I will take some of the Spirit that is upon you, and I will put the Spirit upon them also. They will bear the burden of the people along with you, so you will not have to carry it alone.

And the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to Moses. Then he gave the seventy elders the same Spirit that was upon Moses. And when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But this never happened again.

Two men, Eldad and Medad, had stayed behind in the camp. They were listed among the elders, but they had not gone out to the Tabernacle. Yet the Spirit rested upon them as well, so they prophesied there in the camp.

So the people went out and caught quail all that day and throughout the night and all the next day, too. No one gathered less than fifty bushels! They spread the quail all around the camp to dry.

But while they were gorging themselves on the meat—while it was still in their mouths—the anger of the Lord blazed against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague.

While they were at Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses because he had married a Cushite woman.

Then the Lord descended in the pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the Tabernacle. "Aaron and Miriam!" he called, and they stepped forward.

So Miriam was kept outside the camp for seven days, and the people waited until she was brought back before they traveled again.

Then they left Hazeroth and camped in the wilderness of Paran.

So they went up and explored the land from the wilderness of Zin as far as Rehob, near Lebo-hamath.

Going north, they passed through the Negev and arrived at Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai—all descendants of Anak—lived. (The ancient town of Hebron was founded seven years before the Egyptian city of Zoan.)

When they came to the valley of Eshcol, they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes so large that it took two of them to carry it on a pole between them! They also brought back samples of the pomegranates and figs.

to Moses, Aaron, and the whole community of Israel at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran. They reported to the whole community what they had seen and showed them the fruit they had taken from the land.

So they spread this bad report about the land among the Israelites: "The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge.