Catholic Commentary
Departures from Sinai: Kibroth Hattaavah and Hazeroth
16They traveled from the wilderness of Sinai, and encamped in Kibroth Hattaavah.17They traveled from Kibroth Hattaavah, and encamped in Hazeroth.
Numbers 33:16–17 records Israel's departure from Sinai and subsequent encampments at Kibroth Hattaavah (Graves of Craving) and Hazeroth, place-names that commemorate two major crises: plague resulting from the people's appetite-driven rebellion against God's provision, and Miriam's leprosy following her challenge to Moses' prophetic authority. The repetitive itinerary formula throughout Numbers 33 transforms geographic waypoints into theological memorials that preserve Israel's failures within the ordered progress of God's guidance.
Two graves mark Israel's early desert road: one dug by craving what Egypt offered, one by the pride of those who questioned God's chosen leader—both warnings about the perils of the baptized soul.
Numbers 33:16 — "They traveled from the wilderness of Sinai, and encamped in Kibroth Hattaavah."
The departure from Sinai is laden with theological weight. Sinai is the mountain of covenant and Torah; to leave it is not abandonment but commissioning — Israel now carries the Law within and must live it in motion. The itinerary formula ("they traveled… and encamped") repeated throughout Numbers 33 functions as a kind of liturgical drumbeat, insisting that the whole of Israel's wilderness life is ordered movement, not aimless wandering. Each station is named and remembered; none is wasted in God's providential economy.
Kibroth Hattaavah — literally "Graves of Craving" or "Graves of Desire" (Hebrew: qivroth ha-ta'avah) — takes its name from the episode narrated at length in Numbers 11:4–34. The "rabble" (Hebrew: 'asafsuf, a mixed multitude) who had joined Israel from Egypt incited a craving (ta'avah) for the fleshpots of Egypt: "We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic; but now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at" (Num 11:5–6). God sent quail in overwhelming abundance — but "while the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the LORD was kindled against the people, and the LORD struck the people with a very great plague" (Num 11:33). The place was named for the dead who were buried there. This name is not merely geographic notation; it is a theological epitaph carved into Israel's memory. The wilderness itinerary in Numbers 33 preserves that memorial precisely so that subsequent generations — including the Church — do not forget what disordered appetite costs.
The craving at Kibroth is not simply hunger; it is a nostalgia for Egypt that masks a rejection of God's sufficiency. Manna was miraculous bread, a daily sign of divine provision, yet the people despised it. Their craving was spiritual before it was physical: it was a preference for the sensible and the familiar over the gratuitous gift of God. The Fathers consistently read ta'avah as a figure of concupiscence in its most dangerous form — not mere bodily hunger but the soul's refusal to be nourished by what God freely gives.
Numbers 33:17 — "They traveled from Kibroth Hattaavah, and encamped in Hazeroth."
Hazeroth (Hebrew: ḥatseroth, "enclosures" or "settlements") is the site of a second crisis, equally instructive, narrated in Numbers 12: Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of his Cushite wife, but their real grievance was a challenge to Moses' unique prophetic authority — "Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?" (Num 12:2). God's judgment fell on Miriam with leprosy; her exclusion from the camp for seven days delayed the entire community's march. Both place-names together — Graves of Craving, then the place of Miriam's discipline — suggest a pattern: after the sin of disordered desire comes the sin of wounded pride and fractured authority. The journey outward from Sinai is immediately beset by the two great perils of the interior life: appetite and ambition.
The brevity of verse 17 in this itinerary list is itself significant. The itinerary strips each station to its bare coordinates: departure and arrival. This minimalism is not carelessness but catechesis — it teaches that the meaning of each place was already established in the narrative, and that the pilgrimage is made up of both grace-moments and failure-moments, all of which are encompassed within God's overarching guidance of his people.
Catholic tradition reads the wilderness journey typologically as the life of the Church and of every baptized soul moving through history toward the heavenly Promised Land. St. Paul establishes this hermeneutical key definitively: "These things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come" (1 Cor 10:11). The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 1094) affirms that the Church reads the Old Testament in light of Christ, and that the events of the Exodus pre-figure the sacramental life of the New Covenant.
Kibroth Hattaavah is a locus classicus for patristic teaching on concupiscence. Origen, in his Homilies on Numbers (Hom. 27), reads the craving for Egypt's food as the soul's temptation to return to the passions it has renounced at baptism — the "fish" and "garlic" of Egypt are the pleasures of sin, made falsely attractive by memory and distance. He notes pointedly that they despised manna, which he reads as a figure of the Eucharist and of the Word of God: "Whoever is not satisfied by the divine Word and seeks other pleasures has already arrived, in spirit, at the Graves of Craving."
The Church's teaching on the seven deadly sins, developed from Evagrius Ponticus through John Cassian and systematized by St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 84), finds in ta'avah a paradigm case of gula (gluttony) and avaritia (greed) metastasizing into something more lethal — a turning of the heart away from God. CCC 2514–2516 teaches that concupiscence "does not of itself constitute a sin" but "inclines man to commit sins," and that the Christian life is precisely the ongoing discipline of ordering desire rightly. Kibroth Hattaavah shows what happens when that discipline collapses entirely.
The Hazeroth episode, with Miriam's punishment and restoration, anticipates Catholic teaching on legitimate hierarchical authority (CCC 874–879) and the penitential and medicinal character of Church discipline. Miriam's seven-day exclusion is not vindictive but restorative; the whole community waits for her. Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§41), notes that even the difficult and dark passages of Scripture reveal God's pedagogy — his patient willingness to work through human failure toward ultimate communion.
Contemporary Catholics live in a culture saturated with stimulation, choice, and the constant pressure to want more — more comfort, more entertainment, more status. Kibroth Hattaavah is a mirror held up to this moment. The Israelites were not starving; they were given miraculous bread daily. Yet they despised it because it was not what they craved. The practical question for today's Catholic is pointed: Do I approach the Eucharist — the true manna, the Bread of Life — with gratitude and receptivity, or do I come distracted, comparing it unfavorably to what the world offers? The "Graves of Craving" are dug not only by dramatic moral failures but by the slow erosion of wonder.
Hazeroth invites examination of how we handle authority and disagreement within the Church. When we resent legitimate Church teaching or clerical authority — even when our critique has a surface plausibility, as Miriam's did — are we in fact asserting our own judgment over God's appointed structure? The discipline of waiting, of not moving until Miriam was restored, is a model of communal patience: the whole Church travels together, and no one is left behind casually.