Numbers 11:32

Stood up, or rather rose up, which word is oft used for attempting or beginning to do any business. All night; some at one time, and some at the other, and some, through their greediness or diffidence, at both times. Ten homers, i.e. ten ass loads; which if it seem incredible, you must consider,

1. That the gatherers here were not all the people, which could not be without great confusion and other inconveniences; but some on the behalf of all, possibly one for each family, or the like, while the rest were exercised about other necessary things. So the meaning is not that every Israelite had so much for his share, but that every collector gathered so much for the family or others by whom he was intrusted.

2. That the people did not gather for their present use only, but for a good while to come, as we shall see; and being greedy and distrustful of God's goodness, it is not strange if they gathered much more than they needed.

3. That the word rendered homers may signify heaps, as it doth Exodus 8:14 Judges 15:16 Habakkuk 3:15, and ten is oft put for many; and so the sense is, that every one gathered several heaps. If yet the number seems incredible, it must be further known,

4. That heathen and other authors affirm, that in those eastern and southern countries quails are innumerable, so that in one part of Italy, within the compass of five miles, there were taken about a hundred thousand of them every day for a month together; and that sometimes they fly so thick over the sea, that being weary they fall into ships, sometimes in such numbers that they sink them with their weight, as Varro and Solinus affirm. And Athenaeus relates, that in Egypt, a country prodigiously populous, as all agree, they were in such plenty, that all those vast numbers of people could not consume them, but were forced to salt and keep them for their future use. So that there is no need at all that God should create innumerable quails for this purpose; which yet if it were affirmed he did, atheists and antiscripturists have no occasion of triumph, since they must either own the creation of the world, which is a far greater miracle, or ascribe the production of the world to a casual jumble of atoms, which is more senseless and ridiculous than all the fables of the poets. Spread them all abroad, that so they may dry them, and salt them, and preserve them for their future use, according to what they had seen and learned in Egypt.