A teaching poem retells rebellion and mercy: Craving, provision, and judgment

Craving tests the Giver while water is still running

And they sinned yet more against him by provoking the most High in the wilderness. And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust. Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; can he give bread also? can he provide flesh for his people?

The insult is not hunger. It is treating a God who already split rock as probably unable to set a table. Therefore the LORD heard this, and was wroth: so a fire was kindled against Jacob, and anger also came up against Israel; because they believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation.

Heaven's doors open, and desire is still unestranged when judgment hits the mouth

Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, and had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven. Man did eat angels' food: he sent them meat to the full. He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven: and by his power he brought in the south wind. He rained flesh also upon them as dust, and feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea, and let it fall in the midst of their camp.

So they did eat, and were well filled: for he gave them their own desire; they were not estranged from their lust. But while their meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel. The poem reads Numbers' quail crisis as gift swallowed without trust. It is not a diet law, not a ban on meat, and not a rule for reading every death at a table as this wrath.