Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Karl Randolph" <kwrandolph AT email.com>]

Dear Jim:

Where does it say that eating the quail killed strong men within seconds?

Psalm 78 says that the fat ones were killed, presumably those who ate their 
fill and continued to stuff themselves,  while the chosen ones (often used 
for the strong) he caused to crouch (which they would do to retch out the 
poison). Did the chosen ones die, or were they just sick? Likewise the 
exceedingly great plague in Numbers did not necessarily kill within seconds, 
rather that the plague struck them while they were yet eating, to die later.

Is it possible that you read more into the text than what it says?

Karl W. Randolph.


> 
> If we assume historicity, at least for the sake of the hypothesis, we see a
> rather different and more coherent picture. The Israelites, having lived in
> Egypt for hundreds of years, would have been well acquainted with quail as a
> food source and would have known well that those arriving from the north in
> autumn are poisonous. But when they came across quail arriving in spring on
> the shores of the southern sea, as the account states, they would have
> expected them to be edible - and all the more so as they had eaten quail at
> the same time the year before without ill effects, Exodus 16:13 - both are
> dated to the second month, counting the Passover as the first month (Ex
> 16:1, Num 10:11). So it was a surprise to them that these quail were toxic,
> and so seriously so that they killed strong men within seconds. There may be
> no obvious medical explanation, but none is needed because the explanation
> is given in the text, the anger of YHWH.
> 
> Peter Kirk
> peter.r.kirk AT ntlworld.com
> http://web.onetel.net.uk/~peterkirk/
> 
-- 
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