Contemplative Bible Reading

Numbers 11:34 (New Living Translation)

34 So that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah (which means “graves of gluttony”) because there they buried the people who had craved meat from Egypt.

This is part of the (hi)story of the people wandering the wilderness before entering the land promised by God. As usual, they were complaining about one thing or another. This time it was food. No one was dying of starvation or suffering from malnutrition. They were, however, unhappy.

God sent them quail to eat. God sent them a lot of quail to eat. God sent them so much quail to eat that they became sick of all the quail they had to eat. In fact, many people died and were buried there because they had too much quail to eat.

The place was known as the graves of gluttony.

Now we fast forward to today. The graveyards of America and other places are full of people who died from one thing or another related to eating too much of this and that. Sigh. Do we have cemeteries of gluttony? Is this too much of a stretch to connect the two? Does this really matter to anything?

The New Testament mentions gluttony. Perhaps I should pay more attention to diet and cravings for quail and the like.