¹⁷ I will come down and speak with you there. I will also take some of the spirit that is on you and will confer it on them, that they may share the burden of the people with you. You will then not have to bear it by yourself.

¹⁸ To the people, however, you shall say: “Sanctify yourselves for tomorrow, when you shall have meat to eat. For in the hearing of the Lord you have cried, ‘If only we had meat for food! Oh, how well off we were in Egypt!’ Therefore the Lord will give you meat to eat, ¹⁹ and you will eat it, not for one day, or two days, or five, or ten, or twenty days, ²⁰ but for a whole month—until it comes out of your very nostrils and becomes loathsome to you. For you have rejected the Lord who is in your midst, and in his presence you have cried, ‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’”

²¹ But Moses said, “The people around me include six hundred thousand soldiers; yet you say, ‘I will give them meat to eat for a whole month.’ ²² Can enough sheep and cattle be slaughtered for them? If all the fish of the sea were caught for them, would they have enough?” ²³ The Lord answered Moses: Is this beyond the Lord’s reach? You shall see now whether or not what I have said to you takes place.

The Spirit on the Elders. ²⁴ So Moses went out and told the people what the Lord had said. Gathering seventy elders of the people, he had them stand around the tent. ²⁵ The Lord then came down in the cloud and spoke to him. Taking some of the spirit that was on Moses, he bestowed it on the seventy elders; and as the spirit came to rest on them, they prophesied^[a] but did not continue.