The Demand for Meat and Moses’ Despair

4

For a mixt multitude of people, that came up with them, burned with desire, sitting and weeping, the children of Israel also being joined with them, and said: Who shall give us flesh to eat?

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We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt free cost: the cucumbers come into our mind, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic.

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Our soul is dry, our eyes behold nothing else but manna.

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Now the manna was like coriander seed, of the colour of bdellium.

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And the people went about, and gathering it, ground it in a mill, or beat it in a mortar, and boiled it in a pot, and made cakes thereof of the taste of bread tempered with oil.

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And when the dew fell in the night upon the camp, the manna also fell with it.

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Now Moses heard the people weeping by their families, every one at the door of his tent. And the wrath of the Lord was exceedingly enkindled: to Moses also the thing seemed insupportable.

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And he said to the Lord: Why hast thou afflicted thy servant? Wherefore do I not find favour before thee? And why hast thou laid the weight of all this people upon me?

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Have I conceived all this multitude, or begotten them, that thou shouldst say to me: Carry them in thy bosom as the nurse is wont to carry the little infant, and bear them into the land, for which thou hast sworn to their fathers?

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Whence should I have flesh to give to so great a multitude? They weep against me, saying: Give us flesh that we may eat.

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I am not able alone to bear all this people, because it is too heavy for me.

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But if it seem unto thee otherwise, I beseech thee to kill me, and let me find grace in thy eyes, that I be not afflicted with so great evils.

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