And ye murmured in your tents
Not in a private manner; for though the murmurs began there, they having wept all night after the report of the spies; yet it became general and public, and they gathered together in a body, and openly expressed their murmurs against Moses and Aaron, ( Numbers 14:1 Numbers 14:2 ) ,
and said, because the Lord hated us, he hath brought us forth out of
the land of Egypt;
a strange expression indeed! when it was such a plain amazing instance of his love to them, as could not but be seen by them; being done in such a remarkable and extraordinary manner, by inflicting judgments on their enemies in a miraculous way, giving them favour in their eyes, to lend them their clothes and jewels, and bringing them out with such an high hand, openly and publicly in the sight of them, where they had been in the most wretched slavery for many years; yet this is interpreted an hatred of them, and as done with an ill design upon them, as follows:
to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us;
which now, under the power of their fears and unbelief, they thought would be quickly their case; see ( Deuteronomy 4:37 ) .