Quail, Grace and Judgment

Quail, Grace and Judgment.

“They asked, and He brought them quail… He rained meat on them like dust, winged birds like the sand of the sea.” (Psalm 105:40 and 78:27)

Quail is a choice game bird in the partridge family that has blessed Sinai residents for over 3,500 years. As the Lord had done so many times in Scripture, He used natural circumstances to do His will. During certain times in the year, quail migrated by swarming in flight over the Red Sea and even the Mediterranean Sea. They were a heavy bird, with lots of girth, but had small wings. So quail usually needed to rest in the Sinai region from their exhausting trip. As they flew over the wilderness there, they would always fly low to the ground, or were even known to simply rest by sitting on the ground. Quail were thus easy to capture, whether by throwing a net over their low flights, or by grabbing them up as they rested on the ground.

In this biblical story, quail were sent by the God of nature to provide meat for the grumbling Israelites during their journey in the  middle of the Sinai Peninsula after their escape from Egypt. Quail came to be a symbol of both God’s grace (in Exodus 16) and God’s judgment (in Numbers 11).

In Exodus 16:12-13 we see Moses speaking a word from the Lord to the people, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’ And in the evening quail came up and covered the camp…” Quail was a sign of God’s grace, the undeserved favor and blessing given to a group of malcontents. Quail represented an unexpected sign of God’s presence and care, overlooking the grumbles of His people for the time being. These birds were an example of God’s lowliness, lowering Himself to fulfill the requests of a wandering, bickering, ungrateful pack of the Chosen People of God. Heaven knows they didn’t deserve to eat anything but crow, which they eventually did in fact do in God’s anger.

Oh, the mystery of grace: Those who deserve the worst (them and us) receive the best (quail, manna, water, Jesus). And that is the Father’s design for us: To make us lowly as He to dispense that same grace to others, to provide quail for the unfaithful and water for the disrespectful, taking menu orders from those who are unable or unwilling to pay the bill.

In the Numbers 11:31-34 account we read of a frightening twist to the quail story. The Lord became impatient with the constant complaining about the lack of meat and their greed for meat, so in divine anger He basically told them, “You want meat? I’ll give you meat!” And the Lord, in an almost comical fashion, sent so much quail that they stacked up three feet deep on the ground, and quail were found as far as a day’s walk from the camp. The whining Israelites were literally tripping over all the quail sent by the Lord. In fact, the people greedily gathered so much quail that they each collected the equivalent of 60 bushels full of quail meat. By the end of the month, they were sick of meat. They weren’t sure they liked it anymore when, day after day, God’s wind blew the quail in from the sea.

And the comedy soon turned to tragedy. The Lord in His anger sent a plague on the people literally while they were gorging themselves on quail dinner, “while the meat was still between the teeth.” This “very great plague” of judgment evidently was quite severe and resulted in the death of many people. This plague may have come from the meat itself, which may have been rotting or full of a disease of some kind. We’re not sure of the nature of the plague, but the people never forgot it… They named that place “Kibroth-hattaavah,” which means “graves of craving.”

Grace and judgment, mixed together, with innocent quail birds in the middle of it all.