And it came to pass, that at even the quails came up, and covered the camp: and in the morning the dew lay round about the host.
At even the quails came up, х hasªlaaw (H7958); Septuagint, ortugomeetra] - i:e., mother-quails, being sacred to Latona, in Ortygia, the original name of Delos, from the abundance of its quails. Though the word Selav has been taken to mean various animals, as the locust, by Ludolf and others, and the flying-fish by Rudbeck, Ehrenberg, and Michaelis (but the latter afterward changed his opinion), there can be no doubt that it was a bird (Psalms 78:27). Foster ('Voice of Israel'), doubtingly supported by Stanley ('Sinai and Palestine,' p. 82, note), supposes that 'the feathered fowl' meant was the large red-legged crane, three feet in height, which periodically visits that desert in large flocks. But not to urge other objections against this view (see the notes at Numbers 11:31-35) the Israelites, whose nomadic wanderings led them often to the borders of the wilderness, must have known the time for the arrival of those birds, if they visited the peninsula every season. But the tenor of the language used in this narrative plainly indicates that it was an unexpected and extraordinary phenomenon, the locality where the birds appeared being away from the quarter which the cranes usually frequent; and as all these conjectural emendations have been found untenable, there is a general disposition among Biblical scholars to accept the rendering of our version as the right one.
The quail is a bird of the gallinaceous kind, resembling the red partridge, but not larger than the turtle dove. Properly speaking, it belongs to the Tetraonidae, or grouse family, and is migratory in its habits. Starting from Africa in immense flocks, crossing at certain seasons the Mediterranean and Black Seas, it seeks a habitation in all the temperate regions or flying along the Syrian desert into Arabia. Being a bird of heavy flight, it is obliged to rest at intermediate stages, as on Malta and Sicily, or on a sailing ship, where in great numbers they alight exhausted, and let themselves be easily taken by those who are near them. In a similar state they appeared about the camp of the Israelites in the wilderness of Sin. But that was entirely out of their course; and, moreover, it was in accordance with a prediction: so that, excepting the circumstance of their coming toward night-the usual time when they alight, faint through fatigue with the day's flight-the arrival of those quails must be considered a directly providential or miraculous incident.
In the morning. This was the first day of the week.