Numbers 11:10

10 Moses heard the people weeping according to their clans, each at the doorway of their tents. Then {Yahweh became very angry}, and in the eyes of Moses it was bad.

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 about and gathered [it], and they ground [it] with mills or crushed [it] with mortar. Then they boiled [it] in a pot and made it [into] bread-cakes; and it tasted like olive oil cakes.
9 When the dew came down on the camp [at] night, the manna came down [with] it.
10 Moses heard the people weeping according to their clans, each at the doorway of their tents. Then {Yahweh became very angry}, and in the eyes of Moses it was bad.
11 And Moses said to Yahweh, "Why have you brought trouble to your servant? Why have I not found favor in your eyes, that the burdens of all these people have been placed on me?
12 Did I conceive all these people? If I have fathered them, that you could say to me, 'Carry them in your lap, just as a foster-father carries the suckling on the land that you swore an oath to their ancestors?'

Footnotes 2

  • [a]. Hebrew "its"
  • [b]. Literally "the nose of Yahweh became very hot"
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