Numbers 11:1 to 6 and 1 Corinthians 10:10 · Story · Gratitude
Grumbling, the Opposite of Thanks
Exodus and Numbers record Israel complaining against Moses, Aaron and the LORD during its years in the wilderness.
Fed with bread from heaven each morning, the people said of it in Numbers 21:5, "we detest this wretched food!"
And Moses added, “The LORD will give you meat to eat this evening and bread to fill you in the morning, for He has heard your grumbling against Him. Who are we? Your grumblings are not against us but against the LORD.”
- Where
- Mount Sinai, Kadesh-Barnea, Edom
- Who
- Moses, Aaron
- When
- the wilderness years, from the crossing of the sea to the road around Edom (Exodus 15:22 to Numbers 21:9)
Summary
Grumbling is Scripture's word for the complaints Israel raised in the wilderness. They began before the sea was crossed and returned at hardship after hardship. The people complained over water, bread and meat, the fear of the sword in Canaan and the death of Korah's company. God answered them with provision, with judgment, or with both.
- The people grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and Moses said that their grumbling was against the LORD (Exodus 16:8).
- The grumbling came soon after God's gifts, at Marah three days after the sea was crossed and again over the manna He sent each morning (Exodus 15:22 to 24; Numbers 11:4 to 6).
- The complaint remembered Egypt's food and forgot Egypt's slavery (Exodus 16:3, Numbers 11:5 and Numbers 14:3 to 4).
- The generation that grumbled at Kadesh died in the wilderness and did not enter the land (Numbers 14:27 to 29).
- Paul names the wilderness grumbling among the warnings written down for the church (1 Corinthians 10:10 to 11).
Grumbling in the Wilderness
Grumbling is a sin of the tongue that runs through the wilderness books.
This study follows one sin through the books of Moses and into the letters of Paul. Grumbling stands opposite to gratitude, the thanks owed to God for who He is and for what He has done, because it answers the same gifts with complaint. It matters to every reader who has been given much and still finds fault with the Giver.
The question at the centre of the study is why Scripture treats a complaint about food and water as a sin against God. The answer lies in what God had given before each complaint.
From the Red Sea to the Road Around Edom
Exodus 14 to Numbers 21 record the complaints in the order the people raised them.
The column of gifts sets a work of God just before each complaint, from the pillar of cloud to the victory at Hormah.
| Place | The complaint | Given just before | What followed |
|---|---|---|---|
| The shore of the Red Sea | The people asked Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us into the wilderness to die?" | The pillar of cloud by day and fire by night (Exodus 13:21) | The LORD divided the sea and Israel crossed on dry ground (Exodus 14:21 to 22) |
| Marah | The people asked Moses, "What are we to drink?" | The crossing of the sea and the song of Exodus 15:1 | The LORD showed Moses a log that made the water sweet (Exodus 15:25) |
| The Desert of Sin | The whole congregation grumbled that it would starve in the desert | The twelve springs and seventy palms of Elim (Exodus 15:27) | Quail in the evening and manna in the morning (Exodus 16:13 to 15) |
| Rephidim | The people grumbled that they and their livestock would die of thirst | Manna each morning (Exodus 16:4) | Water from the rock at Horeb, and the place named Massah and Meribah (Exodus 17:6 to 7) |
| Taberah | The people complained about their hardship | The ark went ahead of them to seek a resting place (Numbers 10:33) | Fire from the LORD burned the outskirts of the camp until Moses prayed (Numbers 11:1 to 2) |
| Kadesh | The congregation wished it had died in Egypt and spoke of going back | The spies showed the fruit of a land flowing with milk and honey (Numbers 13:26 to 27) | The generation of twenty and older would die in the wilderness over forty years (Numbers 14:29 and 34) |
| The camp after Korah's fall | The congregation told Moses and Aaron, "You have killed the LORD's people!" | Moses and Aaron had pleaded with God for the whole congregation (Numbers 16:22) | A plague killed 14,700 until Aaron made atonement with incense (Numbers 16:46 to 49) |
| From Mount Hor toward the Red Sea | The people spoke against God and Moses and said they detested the food | The LORD had given the Canaanites of Arad into their hands at Hormah (Numbers 21:1 to 3) | Venomous snakes, and the bronze snake on a pole for any who looked at it (Numbers 21:6 to 9) |
The camp after Korah's fall, From Mount Hor toward the Red Sea
The Words for Grumbling
The words for grumbling stand in Exodus, Numbers and 1 Corinthians.
Numbers 11:1 uses a different verb from the other passages, which the Berean text renders as complain.
Exodus and Numbers name the grumbling with one Hebrew verb and its noun, and Paul names it with one Greek verb.
| Word | Language | Sense in Strong's lexicon | Where it stands |
|---|---|---|---|
| lun | Hebrew verb | To stop, usually for the night; in a bad sense, to be obstinate in words, to complain | Exodus 15:24, 16:8 and Numbers 14:27 |
| telunah | Hebrew noun | A grumbling | Exodus 16:8, twice, and Numbers 14:27 |
| gongyzō | Greek verb | To grumble | 1 Corinthians 10:10, twice |
Augustine, in his Confessions, placed the people's fault in their murmuring against the Lord over their craving for meat.
The Manna and the Quail
Two gifts of food stand behind the grumbling of Exodus 16 and Numbers 11, and each has its own study.
The manna came after the complaint of Exodus 16, and Israel ate it for forty years until they reached the border of Canaan (Exodus 16:35). In Numbers 11 the people turned against that same gift.
Meanwhile, the rabble among them had a strong craving for other food, and again the Israelites wept and said, “Who will feed us meat? We remember the fish we ate freely in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our appetite is gone; there is nothing to see but this manna!”The rabble's craving spread to the Israelites, and their complaint names the manna itself as the thing they were tired of.
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible, noticed that the people remembered the cucumbers, melons and leeks of Egypt and forgot its brick-kilns and taskmasters.
The LORD answered the craving with quail and then with a plague, and the place was named Kibroth-hattaavah because those who craved other food were buried there (Numbers 11:31 to 34).
The Generation That Grumbled
At Kadesh the LORD named the grumbling of the congregation and judged the generation that had seen His signs.
In Numbers 14:22 the LORD says that the men who had seen His glory and His signs in Egypt and in the wilderness had tested Him "these ten times".
“How long will this wicked congregation grumble against Me? I have heard the complaints that the Israelites are making against Me. So tell them: As surely as I live, declares the LORD, I will do to you exactly as I heard you say. Your bodies will fall in this wilderness—all who were numbered in the census, everyone twenty years of age or older—because you have grumbled against Me.The LORD's sentence here makes the generation's complaint against Him the cause of its death in the desert.
Psalm 106 recalls the refusal of the land in Israel's worship and says, "They grumbled in their tents and did not listen to the voice of the LORD" (Psalm 106:25).
The Opposite of Thanks
Exodus, Deuteronomy, Romans and 1 Corinthians set the two answers to God's gifts side by side.
Exodus 15 holds both answers within a few verses. Israel sang to the LORD who had thrown horse and rider into the sea, and three days later the same people grumbled at Marah over bitter water (Exodus 15:1 and 15:22 to 24).
Moses warned that when Israel had eaten and was satisfied in the land, its heart could grow proud and forget the LORD who brought it out of slavery (Deuteronomy 8:11 to 14). Paul traces the darkened heart of the nations to men who knew God and "neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him" (Romans 1:21). John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), read the two charges as a failure to thank God for His benefits and to glorify Him for His divine perfection.
And do not complain, as some of them did, and were killed by the destroying angel. Now these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.Paul's "some of them" looks back to the judgments that followed the grumbling in Numbers 14 and 16, where a generation fell in the desert and a plague struck the camp.
Augustine on Unthankfulness
Augustine tied the unthankfulness of Romans 1:21 to pride.
died 430 · Augustine of Hippo
“If they had given thanks to God who gave this wisdom, they would not have claimed any credit for their own ideas. Therefore they were given over by the Lord to the desires of their own hearts, and did improper things.”
Augustine of Hippo · Augustine on Romans 4 · on Romans 1:21Patristic
Thanks in Place of Grumbling
Paul answers the wilderness grumbling with a command to the church at Philippi.
Paul's word to the Thessalonians, "Give thanks in every circumstance," names the habit the wilderness generation lacked (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine as lights in the worldPaul's words for the world around the church echo the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32:5, which in the Berean text uses the same two words for Israel in the reverse order.
The bronze snake of Numbers 21 is the picture Jesus took for Himself.
Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.The Gospel of John records the comparison in Jesus' own words.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible TBESH and TBESG, Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0, with the Brief lexicon based on Abbott-Smith (1922)
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible.
- Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 10.31.46.
- Augustine of Hippo, On Romans, 4.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755)
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