Quail 

One time I found a recipe for quail and thought I would try it. I duly ordered 24 from the local butcher for a dinner party and was quite surprised at how small they were, the recipe called for them to be stuffed with grapes! Well, I could only get a couple into each tiny cavity. I don’t think I will cook quail again; they are very fiddly and you need two each if you have a good appetite.

When God heard the cry of the Israelites about longing for the cucumbers of Egypt, having had enough of manna, He sends quail!

In Numbers 11 it says, “Now a wind went out from the Lord and drove quail in from the sea. It scattered them up to two cubits deep all around the camp, as far as a day’s walk in any direction.  All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers. Then they spread them out all around the camp.”

A cubit is about 18 inches, and ten homers is possibly about 1 3/4 tons or about 1.6 metric tons, so that’s an awful lot of quail!

Earlier in Exodus chapter 16 we read that God sends quail, here they appear as a sign of God’s providence and generosity, and also a foreshadowing of the Eucharist and the Incarnation. In the Desert, God gave his people bread from heaven and flesh from the sky in the form of quail. In the Eucharist, our bread from heaven is the Body and Blood of Christ himself, this is our food for our journey with God.

In Numbers Chapter 11, however, the context is slightly different. This time the people have already received the gift of the Manna, they are sick of it. They are bored of this food and are longing for the variety of their diet in Egypt. The sacrifices of freedom are too high. The consolations of slavery much too alluring. Once again God responds to the complaints of his people by providing meat in the form of quail, but this time he promises Israel that they will grow tired of this meat too. He tells Israel: ‘You will eat it [meat]….for a month until it comes out of your nostrils and sickens you’ (Numbers 11: 20).

Nicholas Crowe OP, a Dominican Friar explains the symbolism like this “Here the quail represent all the sensual, intellectual and emotional consolations that we turn to in order to avoid the cross of Christ, in order to avoid the sacrifices that love of God and love of neighbour demand. Eventually, these consolations become revolting and we must search for another ‘fix’. As Augustine puts it, our hearts are restless until they rest in God. This is the hard lesson that the Israelites learnt by enduring the privations of the desert for forty years. It is a lesson that we too must learn if we are to fully embrace our freedom as children of God and finally dispel all thoughts of returning to the slavery of sin.”

(Note OP means Order of Preachers.)

Prayer - I praise you, Lord, for all your benefits: for your forgiveness and healing, for redeeming me, for crowning me with love and compassion and for satisfying me with good things. May I experience your comfort and learn to rely not on myself but on you and seek you all my life. Amen.