Quail in Fausset's Bible Dictionary

celaw. The Arabic name is similar, which identifies the quail as meant. Twice miraculously supplied to Israel (Exodus 16:13; Numbers 11:31-32). Psalm 105:40 connects the quail with the manna, and therefore refers to Exodus 16:13, the first sending of quails, the psalm moreover referring to God's acts of grace. Psalm 78:27; Psalm 78:31, refers to the second sending of quails (Numbers 11) in chastisement (Psalm 106:14-15). The S.E. wind blew them from the Elanitic gulf of the Red Sea. Translated "threw them over the camp ... about two cubits above the face of the ground." Wearied with their long flight they flew breast high, and were easily secured by the Israelites. They habitually fly low, and with the wind. The least gatherer got ten homers' (the largest Hebrew measure of quantity) full; and "they spread them all abroad for themselves" to salt and dry (Herodotus ii. 77). "Ere the flesh was consumed" (so Hebrew) God's wrath smote them. Eating birds' flesh continually, after long abstinence from flesh, a whole month greedily, in a hot climate predisposed them by surfeit to sickness; God miraculously intensified this into a plague, and the place became Kibroth Hattaavah, "the graves of lust." (See KIBROTH HATTAAVAH The red legged crane's flesh is nauseous, and is not therefore likely to be meant. "At even" the quails began to arrive; so Tristram noticed their arrival from the S. at night in northern Algeria two successive years. Ornithologists designate the quail the Coturnix dactylisonans (from its shrill piping cry).