Numbers 11:31 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

A wind from the Lord, i.e. an extraordinary and miraculous wind, both for its vehemency and for its effect Quails; a delicious and very nourishing food, which, considering their greedy appetite, and the newness and plenty of it, disposed them to surfeits and other distemper of body, and prepared the way for the following plague. God gave them quails once before, Exodus 16:13, but neither in the same quantity, nor with the same design and effect as now. From the sea; principally from the Red Sea, and both sides of it; where, by the report of ancient heathen writers, they were then in great numbers, and, no doubt, were wonderfully increased by God's special providence for this very occasion. Two cubits high; not as if the quails did cover all the ground two cubits high for a day's journey on each side of the camp, for then there had been no place left where they could spread them all abroad round about the camp, as it is said they did, Numbers 11:32; but the meaning is, that the quails came and fell down round about the camp for a whole day's journey on each side of it, and that in all that space they lay here and there in great heaps, which were ofttimes two cubits high.