Days of Our Forefathers in Faith's Lives

Today's first reading, from Numbers 11, has a cliffhanger ending, with Moses complaining to the LORD about the Israelites:

I cannot carry all this people by myself, for they are too heavy for me. If this is the way you will deal with me, then please do me the favor of killing me at once,so that I need no longer face this distress.

How does the LORD reply? Will He do Moses the favor of killing him at once?

Tuning in tomorrow won't do you much good, as the reading skips ahead to Chapter 12, and ends with its own cliffhanger:

Then Moses cried to the LORD, "Please, not this! Pray, heal her!"

It's almost like the Lectionarists want people to go check their Bibles to see what happens next.

If they do check their Bibles, they might also notice the curious edit at the beginning of today's reading. The whole of Hebrews 11:4 reads:

The foreign elements among them were so greedy for meat that even the Israelites lamented again, "Would that we had meat for food!"

But the Lectionary begins with 4b:

The children of Israel lamented, "Would that we had meat for food!"

Maybe foreign elements (Douay Rheims: "a mixt multitude of people") on the Lectionary Committee didn't want the blame to fall on Them. And, for what it's worth, the LORD didn't seem too concerned with whether the greedy people were sons of Abraham or merely fellow travellers when He...

Labels: Numbers 11

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