Numbers 11:10

10 Moses heard people from every family crying. They were sobbing at the entrances to their tents. The LORD burned with hot anger. So Moses became troubled.

Numbers 11:10 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 11:10

Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families,
&c.] So general was their lusting after flesh, and their discontent for want of it; and so great their distress and uneasiness about it, that they wept and cried for it, and so loud and clamorous, that Moses heard the noise and outcry they made:

every man in the door of his tent:
openly and publicly, were not ashamed of their evil and unbecoming behaviour, and in order to excite and encourage the like temper and disposition in others; though it may have respect, as some have observed, to the door of the tent of Moses, about which they gathered and mutinied; and which better accounts for his hearing the general cry they made; and so in an ancient writing of the Jews it is said ^F12, they were waiting for Moses until he came out at the door of the school; and they were sitting and murmuring:

and the anger of the Lord was kindled greatly;
because of their ingratitude to him, their contempt of the manna he had provided for them, and their hankering after their poor fare in Egypt, and for which they had endured so much hardship and ill usage, and for the noise and clamour they now made:

Moses also was displeased;
with the people on the same account, and with the Lord also for laying and continuing so great a burden upon him, as the care of this people, which appears by what follows.

---

FOOTNOTES:

F12 Siphri apud Yalkut in loc.

Numbers 11:10 In-Context

8 The people went around gathering it. Then they ground it in a small mill they held in their hands. Or they crushed it in a stone bowl. They cooked it in a pot. Or they made cakes out of it. It tasted like something made with olive oil.

9 When the dew came down on the camp at night, the manna also came down.

10 Moses heard people from every family crying. They were sobbing at the entrances to their tents. The LORD burned with hot anger. So Moses became troubled.

11 He asked the Lord, "Why have you brought this trouble on me? Why aren't you pleased with me? Why have you loaded me down with the troubles of all of these people?

12 "Am I like a mother to them? Are they my children? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms? Do I have to carry them the way a nurse carries a baby? Do I have to carry them to the land you promised? You took an oath and promised the land to their people of long ago.