What Do You Want?
Now the rabble who were among them had greedy cravings; and the sons of Israel also wept again and said, “Who will give us meat to eat? Numbers 11:4 NASB
Had greedy cravings – It’s unfortunate that English translations convert this Hebrew phrase into modern psychology. “Greedy cravings” removes the deeper impact of the Hebrew doubled word. Here’s what it looks like in Hebrew:
וְהָאסַפְסֻף אֲשֶׁר בְּקִרְבּוֹ הִתְאַוּוּ תַּאֲוָה
The two words are in red. They are both derivatives of the root ʾāwâ (to desire, long, lust, covet, wait longingly, wish, sigh, crave, want, be greedy, prefer).[1] Literally, the verse reads, “desired desire,” with the actual object unspecified. Zornberg comments:
“In the next episode, the ‘riffraff’ desired desire. This cryptic expression is usually idiomatically translated, ‘were overwhelmed by desire.’ But the object of their desire is at first unexplained: they simply, reflexively, ‘desire desire.’ Only in the next verse do we hear the voice of the people, specifying their desire: ‘Who will give us meat? . . . We remember the fish . . .’ . . . But the unappeasable nature of desire is already implicit in the cognate verb and object: ‘They desired desire.’ A blank wishfulness haunts their cry: who will gratify this desire?”64
The Hebrew text tells us something very important. These people didn’t have some particular thing in mind. They just wanted—whatever they thought they didn’t have now. It isn’t greed that motivates. It’s a sense of entitlement motivated by a dimly registered emptiness. “I want what I want when I want it,” is the sense of this cryptic verbal arrangement. They really don’t know what they want. All they know is that they don’t have it.
This demanding, entitlement attitude is still with us. In fact, it is more and more visible as the days go on. Unhappiness is the most prevalent modern disease. It is truly dis-ease, the inability to choose contentment—or responsibility. What הִתְאַוּוּ תַּאֲוָה (hitaoo’oo ta’ava) really means is “Gimme, gimme and don’t ask anything of me.” To desire desire is to renounce any responsibility for obtaining something because no thing is the object of this craving. The object of this craving is the craving itself. To desire desire is idolatrous fantasy, substituting legitimate choice and consequence for unbridled (and unobtainable) lust. What the “rabble” want is the rush of wanting, demanding, getting—without any mutual obligation. The world of the wilderness journey was full of this idolatry, the denial of the sovereignty and care of God—and so is our world.
“What do you want? What do you really want?” we might ask those clamoring for the spotlight under the rubric of the next great cause. Trans-rights, abortion, gun control, election fraud, climate, inflation—all accompanied by the rhetoric of blame. We give, and give, and give—but there is no reduction in the demands. This is ethical recidivism. What was God’s answer? Extermination. Radical cultural surgery. Why?
“This is not a choice between good and evil in the moral sense. It is a turning aside, an aversion from one source of bliss and its substitution by another.”[2]
“ . . . ‘You have rejected God who is in your midst, by weeping before Him and saying, “Why did we ever leave Egypt?”’ (Numbers 11:20). God describes their desire for ‘flesh’ as a rejection of Him and, indeed, of the whole Exodus project. Of course, the people did not utter these precise words (‘Why did we ever leave Egypt?’). What they said was, ‘Who will give us meat to eat?’ But God provides an unexpected elaboration for that apparently banal craving: ‘ . . . you have wept in the ears of God saying, ‘Who will give us meat to eat?—It was good for us in Egypt!’ (11:18). . . . Essentially, they are saying, ‘We love Egypt, the place of bassar.’ Of course, again, the people never actually say these words. This is God’s elaboration of ‘Who will give us meat to eat?’ . . . It is their words that God interprets so radically.”[3]
The desire for desire begins with a lie. “We remember the fish which we used to eat for free in Egypt, . . .” But, of course, the fish weren’t free, were they? They came with the condition of slavery. The lie generates a fantasy reality where “free” meant “without effort or responsibility.” That is the milieu of the desire for desire. Ask nothing of me, just give. The man with his hand out—on the street or in the congress. God initiated a forty-year cure. Soon America will vote their desire. I’m a bit scared to know the results.
Topical Index: desire, ʾāwâ, free, Numbers 11:4
[1] Alden, R. (1999). 40 אָוָה. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 18). Chicago: Moody Press.
[2] Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, pp. 69-70.
[3] Ibid., p. 70.
