Birds of the Bible

In December, a lot of you ate Turkey, and I even know some that ate quails. Therefore, it’s rather fitting to write this article, even if it’s a good four months since we exploded on our Christmas dinner. Oh sorry, Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t eat Christmas dinner as it’s bad for them. I know, I’m digressing!

Anyway, an unusual account is recorded in Numbers 11. It begins with the Israelites moaning and groaning once again due to a shortage of food. Manna simply wasn’t cutting it for them. This lot were on the hunt for meat and this birds of the bible account is quite exceptional.

Please open your Bibles and turn with me to Numbers, chapter 11 and we’ll read verses 18 through to 20.

18 And to the people you should say, ‘Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, as YOU will certainly eat meat, because YOU have wept in the ears of Jehovah, saying: “Who will give us meat to eat, for it was well with us in Egypt?” And Jehovah will certainly give YOU meat, and YOU will indeed eat. 19 YOU will eat, not one day nor two days nor five days nor ten days nor twenty days, 20 but up to a month of days, until it comes out of YOUR nostrils and it has become a loathing to YOU, just because YOU rejected Jehovah, who is in YOUR midst, and YOU went weeping before him, saying: “Why is it that we have come out of Egypt?”

Well, God kept to his word. Please turn with me to verse 31.

31 And a wind burst forth from Jehovah and began driving quails from the sea and letting them fall above the camp about a day’s journey this way and about a day’s journey that way, all around the camp, and about two cubits above the surface of the earth.

Now, let’s calculate just how many quail are involved here. Most bible dictionaries consider a day’s journey to be approximately 20 miles (Net.Bible.org). So, a circle with a radius of 20 miles/32 Kilometers would have an area of 1,256 square miles/2,021 square kilometers. The quail filled this area to a depth of 2 cubits, or 35 inches/88.9 centimeters.

This makes 102 billion cubic feet (or 31 billion cubic meters) of quail. The quail is a fairly small bird, averaging one pound (or half a kilogram) in weight, and 13 inches/33 centimeters in height. Based on this size, each quail would occupy 0.72 cubit feet (or 0.21 cubit meters). Therefore, God must have blessed the Israelites with approximately 142 billion quail. That’s over 47,000 quail for every Israelite. It must have been like an early version of Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’.

Now, I’m not sure of the world population of quail, however the current world population of chickens is between 19.5 – 23 Billion (Wiki.Answers.com) I did attempt to research the global populations of quail, but Google wasn’t my friend. I did find a few articles that stated that chickens likely outnumber quail by at least 100 to 1. This is due to the fact that chickens are commonly raised in huge commercial quantities in our modern, crowded earth. So, when the Israelites asked God for some meat, little did they suspect that he would respond with over 500 times the entire world population of quail?

Before I finish with the quail, I must point out the end result of the meat harvest.

Please turn to verse 33 of the same chapter.

33 The meat was yet between their teeth, before it could be chewed, when Jehovah’s anger blazed against the people, and Jehovah began striking at the people with a very great slaughter.

I thought God said that they would get to eat the quail for a whole month? Good ole’ Jehovah; back to his loving ways.