Number of words: 230.

Step forward the Old Testament God who, as the Book of Numbers explains, got into a right biblical fury over the Israelites nagging food demands. His chosen people had just absconded en masse from bondage in Egypt and were holed up, under a kind of holy witness protection programme, somewhere in the desert near Mount Sinai. Jehovah was generously providing daily bread from heaven. But the Israelites were bored with their manna-only diet. It was fine for a while. But it tasted like nothing and stuck to the roofs of their mouths. So they started chivvying Moses. ‘If He can do bread, then He could do meat, they said. ‘Go on. Ask Him. God heard his messenger’s lamentations, then decreed: ‘The Lord will give you meat and you shall eat. You shall eat not one day, not two, not even five days or ten or twenty, but a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome for you. And down came the quails. Falling from the sky in thousands. In millions. The Israelites’ desire for meat was met with so much precipitated protein that it drove them mad with gluttony. Then they contracted a hideous surfeit-related disease, from which the greediest died agonising deaths. Be careful what you wish for. 

Excerpted from pages 55 of Enough: breaking free from the world of excess by John Naish