21. Moses said to the Lord, “Here I am leading 600,000 people, and you say that you will give them enough meat for a month?
22. Could enough cattle and sheep be killed to satisfy them? Are all the fish in the sea enough for them?”
23. “Is there a limit to my power?” the Lord answered. “You will soon see whether what I have said will happen or not!”
24. So Moses went out and told the people what the Lord had said. He assembled seventy of the leaders and placed them round the Tent.
25. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him. He took some of the spirit he had given to Moses and gave it to the seventy leaders. When the spirit came on them, they began to shout like prophets, but not for long.
26. Two of the seventy leaders, Eldad and Medad, had stayed in the camp and had not gone out to the Tent. There in the camp the spirit came on them, and they too began to shout like prophets.
27. A young man ran out to tell Moses what Eldad and Medad were doing.
28. Then Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses' helper since he was a young man, spoke up and said to Moses, “Stop them, sir!”
29. Moses answered, “Are you concerned about my interests? I wish that the Lord would give his Spirit to all his people and make all of them shout like prophets!”
30. Then Moses and the seventy leaders of Israel went back to camp.
31. Suddenly the Lord sent a wind that brought quails from the sea, flying less than a metre above the ground. They settled on the camp and all round it for many kilometres in every direction.
32. So all that day, all night, and all the next day, the people worked catching quails; no one gathered less than a thousand kilogrammes. They spread them out to dry all round the camp.
33. While there was still plenty of meat for them to eat, the Lord became angry with the people and caused an epidemic to break out among them.
34. That place was named Kibroth Hattaavah (which means “Graves of Craving”), because there they buried the people who had craved meat.
35. From there the people moved to Hazeroth, where they made camp.