Matthew Poole and continuators on Numbers 11:32

32 And the people stood up all that day, and all that night , and all the next day, and they gathered the quails: he that gathered least, gathered ten homers : and they spread them all abroad for themselves round about the camp.

Or rather rose up, which word is oft used for attempting or beginning to do any business.

Some at one time, and some at the other, and some, through greediness or diffidence, at both times.

(i. e.) Ten ass loads. Which if it seem incredible, you must consider, 1. that the gatherers here were not all the people, which could not be without great confusion and other inconveniencies, but some on the behalf of all, possibly one for each family, or the like, while the rest were exercised about other necessary things. So the meaning is not, that every Israelite had so much for his share, but that every collector gathered so much for the family or others by whom he was intrusted. 2. that the people did not gather for their present use onely, but for a good while to come as we shall see, and being greedy and distrustful of Gods goodness, it is not strange if they gathered much more than they needed. 3. that the word, rendred homers, may signify heaps, as it doth Exod. 8. 14. Iudg. 15. 16. Hab. 3. 15. and ten is oft put for many, and so the sence is, that every one gathered several heaps. If yet the number seems incredible, it must be further known. 4. that heathen and other authors affirm that in those eastern and southern countries quails are innumerable, so that in one part of Italy within the compass of five miles there were taken about an hundred thousand of them every day for a moneth together; and that sometimes they fly so thick over the sea, that being weary they fall into ships, sometimes in such numbers that they sink them with their weight, as Varro and Solinus affirm. And Athenaeus relates that in Egypt, a country prodigiou[illegible: 1+ letters]ly populous, as all agree, they were in such plenty, that all those vast numbers of people could not consume them but were forced to salt them and keep them for their future use. So that there is no need at all that God should create innumerable quails for this purpose: which yet if it were affirmed he did▪ Atheists and Anti-scripturists have no occasion of triumph, since they must either own the creation of the world, which is a far greater miracle, or ascribe the production of the world to a casual jumble of Atoms, which is more senceless and ridiculous than all the fables of the Poets.

That so they might dry them, and salt them, and preserve them for their future use, according to what they had seen and learned in Egypt.