Catholic Commentary
The Craving for Meat and the Contempt for Manna
4The mixed multitude that was among them lusted exceedingly; and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, “Who will give us meat to eat?5We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for nothing; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic;6but now we have lost our appetite. There is nothing at all except this manna to look at.”7The manna was like coriander seed, and it looked like bdellium.8The people went around, gathered it, and ground it in mills, or beat it in mortars, and boiled it in pots, and made cakes of it. Its taste was like the taste of fresh oil.9When the dew fell on the camp in the night, the manna fell on it.
Numbers 11:4–9 describes how non-Israelite peoples and the Israelites complained bitterly about eating only manna, nostalgically recalling Egyptian foods like fish and vegetables. The narrator then defends the manna by detailing its actual versatility and pleasant qualities, revealing that the people's discontent stemmed not from food scarcity but from their disordered desires and ingratitude toward God's provision.
Manna falls from heaven every morning, and we despise it for not being what we're craving—the same spiritual disease that threatens to make the Eucharist ordinary.
Commentary
Numbers 11:4 — "The mixed multitude lusted exceedingly" The Hebrew term asafsuf ("mixed multitude" or "rabble") refers to the non-Israelite peoples who attached themselves to Israel during the Exodus (cf. Ex 12:38). The Fathers regarded this group as a recurring source of spiritual contagion within Israel — not merely an ethnic designation but a moral category: those whose hearts never truly left Egypt. The verb translated "lusted" (hit'avvu ta'avah) is an emphatic doubled form in Hebrew, literally "desired with desire" — a grammar of obsession. That "the children of Israel also wept again" (the word again is telling, pointing back to earlier grumbling) shows how quickly spiritual infection spreads through a community. Weeping here is not grief but a manipulative demand — it is directed at God, a kind of liturgy of complaint.
Numbers 11:5 — "We remember the fish … for nothing" The inventory of Egyptian foods — fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, garlic — is remarkably specific and has the ring of genuine nostalgic longing. Yet the claim that they ate these things "for nothing" (hinam) is almost certainly false or grossly distorted memory: they were slaves. St. Augustine saw this selective remembering as the paradigmatic spiritual error of the soul that prefers comfortable bondage to the demands of freedom. The foods listed are predominantly cool, low, and rooted in the earth — a symbolic contrast with manna, which descends from above, from heaven. The very sensory pleasure associated with these foods (sharp flavors, wetness, abundance) is being weaponized against God's provision.
Numbers 11:6 — "There is nothing at all except this manna to look at" The complaint reaches its most theologically scandalous pitch here. The phrase "our soul is dried away" (nafshenu yeveishah) in Hebrew — rendered here as "we have lost our appetite" — means something closer to "our very being is withered." The people claim the manna is causing them to wither. This is an inversion of reality: the bread of angels is cast as a slow poison. The dismissive "nothing at all except this manna" is a studied contempt for a miracle happening every single morning at their feet. Note the word "look at" (zulat): the manna is reduced to a visual monotony, stripped of its theological meaning.
Verses 7–9 — The Narrator's Defense of the Manna In a striking literary move, the narrator interrupts the people's complaint with a precise, almost loving description of the manna — as if Scripture itself steps forward to correct the false testimony. The manna resembles coriander seed (white, small, round) and bedolah (bdellium — likely a translucent, pale resin, possibly pearl-like). It could be gathered, ground, pounded, boiled, or baked — it was not a nutritional constraint but a culinary canvas. Its taste was like shemen: rich oil, unctuous and satisfying. The dew narrative (v. 9) suggests the manna's intimate connection with God's nocturnal care — it arrives wrapped in the morning dew, a hidden gift of night. The detailed description serves as a counter-testimony: the manna is not the problem. The people's disordered desire is.
The Typological Sense The Church Fathers, following the trajectory established in John 6, read the manna as a figure (typos) of the Eucharist. The manna prefigures the true Bread from Heaven — Christ himself — which Israel receives but does not fully comprehend. The contempt for manna becomes, in the typological register, a warning about the danger of Eucharistic indifference or unworthy reception. The "mixed multitude" whose craving infects the whole camp foreshadows those within the Church whose attachment to earthly satisfactions endangers the entire community's faith.
Catholic Commentary
Catholic tradition reads this passage on multiple levels that mutually reinforce one another. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§1094) teaches that the liturgy of the Church reads the Old Testament through the lens of the Paschal Mystery, and the manna is one of Scripture's most explicit types (typi) of the Eucharist. Jesus himself establishes this connection in John 6:31–35, declaring himself the true Bread from Heaven of which the manna was only a figure — "a greater than the manna is here."
St. Ambrose (De Mysteriis, IX) writes that the manna was "great and wonderful" as a figure, but that the Eucharist surpasses it: "That manna came from heaven; this is above the heavens. That manna could corrupt; this is incorruptible." The contempt of the Israelites for manna is therefore, in the spiritual sense, a type of Eucharistic ingratitude — the reduction of the Holy Sacrament to mere bread, familiarity breeding contempt.
St. Augustine (Confessions I.1) illuminates the deeper disorder: the heart that "lusts exceedingly" is a heart whose desires have not been ordered by love of God. The foods of Egypt represent concupiscentia — disordered craving for lesser goods — which cannot be satisfied but only intensified by indulgence.
The Catechism (§2540) addresses envy and greed as capital sins rooted in exactly this dynamic: the refusal to accept what God provides because we desire what belongs to another time, place, or condition. Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§87), underscores how the murmuring traditions of the wilderness are warnings to the Church not to let "the word of God" — like the manna — become familiar to the point of contempt. The Church's liturgy, especially in Advent and Lent, uses the manna narrative precisely to reawaken Eucharistic wonder.
For Today
The contemporary Catholic faces a version of this same temptation with startling frequency. The Eucharist — received weekly or even daily — risks becoming what the manna became for Israel: familiar, unexciting, insufficient compared to the vivid satisfactions of secular culture. The "mixed multitude" dynamic is present whenever voices inside or on the edges of the Church suggest that Catholic worship is too plain, too demanding, or spiritually unrewarding compared to more emotionally stimulating alternatives.
The practical application is an examination of conscience around Eucharistic wonder. Before Mass, ask: have I romanticized some "Egypt" — a previous life, a different community, a more comfortable faith — in a way that blinds me to what God is actually giving me? The narrator's interruption in verses 7–9 models a spiritual discipline: when tempted to contempt, stop and look carefully at what is actually being offered. The manna was richer than the people claimed. So is the Eucharist. Adoration, slow lectio divina, and a deliberate recovery of awe before the Blessed Sacrament are concrete means of resistance to the "craving for meat" that would lead us back toward Egypt.
Cross-References