Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Numbers 11:3 - 11:9
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The People Lust for Flesh
v. 4. And the mixed multitude that was among them, the camp-followers, the rabble that had joined the host of Israel when the Lord led His people forth, fell a-lusting, was seized with a violent longing for some of the sensual delights that lay behind them; and the children of Israel, to whom the dissatisfied feeling soon spread, also wept again, remarked with reference to Exo_16:3, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? They still had their herds and flocks, but the consumption of meat from these animals had to be reduced in the wilderness; moreover, their appetite was whetted for other delicacies.
v. 5. We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely, for nothing, as they state in dissatisfied exaggeration; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic, the form of the enumeration showing with what a longing they thought of these delights of the stomach;
v. 6. but now our soul is dried away, an expression intended to convey the utmost disgust and loathing; there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes. Their lustful desire demanded rich and appetizing foods and a more frequent change in the bill of fare.
v. 7. And the manna was as coriander seed, and the color thereof as the color of bdellium.
v. 8. And the people went about and gathered it, and ground it in mills, in the small hand-mills such as were in use in the Orient, Mat_24:41, or beat it in a mortar, and baked it in pans, and made cakes of it. And the taste of it was as the taste of fresh oil, like choice pastry made with oil.
v. 9. And when the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell upon it. Cf Exo_16:14-15; Exo_16:31. This notice concerning the manna as a very acceptable, delicious food is here inserted by Moses to show the base ingratitude of the people. It is equally base and damnable ingratitude, if Christians become tired of the food of the Gospel and express their loathing by word or deed.