Numbers 20:5

5 Why have you led us up from Egypt to bring us to this evil place without grain, figs, vines, or pomegranates? And there's no water to drink!"

Numbers 20:5 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 20:5

And wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt
They represent that affair in such a light, as if they were forced out of Egypt by Moses and Aaron against their wills; or at least were overpersuaded by them to do what they had no inclination to, namely, to come out of Egypt; though they were in the utmost bondage and slavery, and their lives were made bitter by it, and they cried by reason of their oppression, and the hardships they endured; but this was all forgot. Aben Ezra says, it is a strange word which is here used, which shows the confusion they were in:

to bring us unto this evil place;
dry and barren, where there were neither food nor drink, as follows:

it is no place of seed;
or fit for sowing, as the Targum of Jonathan, any sort of seed, as wheat, barley, rye, rice

or of figs, or vines, or pomegranates;
it is not a soil fit to plant such trees in, nor would they grow were they planted:

neither is there any water to drink;
for them and their cattle, and therefore must be a miserable place for so large a body of people to subsist in.

Numbers 20:5 In-Context

3 Then the people confronted Moses and said to him, "If only we too had died when our brothers perished in the LORD's presence!

4 Why have you brought the LORD's assembly into this desert to kill us and our animals here?

5 Why have you led us up from Egypt to bring us to this evil place without grain, figs, vines, or pomegranates? And there's no water to drink!"

6 Moses and Aaron went away from the assembly to the entrance of the meeting tent and they fell on their faces. Then the LORD's glory appeared to them.

7 The LORD spoke to Moses: