Numbers 20:5

5 Why have you led us up from Egypt to bring us to this evil place? It's not a place of grain, figs, vines, and pomegranates,[a] and there is 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 The people quarreled with Moses and said, "If only we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord.
4 Why have you brought the Lord's assembly into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die here?
5 Why have you led us up from Egypt to bring us to this evil place? It's not a place of grain, figs, vines, and pomegranates, and there is no water to drink!"
6 Then Moses and Aaron went from the presence of the assembly to the doorway of the tent of meeting. They fell down with their faces [to the ground], and the glory of the Lord appeared to them.
7 The Lord spoke to Moses,

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. Nm 13:23-27; Ex 13:5; Dt 8:8
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