NOTES for Num 11:1-35

The journey to the Promised Land is difficult. Leaving slavery is even more difficult. How familiar this grumbling sounds: “But sausage used to cost two rubles twenty! And there were special orders for trade-union members!” (cf. vv. 4-5). Yet we are no longer in “Egypt”; we are on the journey, where the conditions of life are different and what belonged to slavery is of no use. God is with us, going before us in the pillar of cloud; He sends manna, which makes it possible for us to live in this wilderness. How hard it is for Moses, the one who understands what is happening: he cannot bear this responsibility alone (v. 14). God then answers by sending the Spirit upon seventy elders so that, filled with the Spirit, they can share the heavy burden with Moses. To the rest of the people—“Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” (v. 29)—God says, as it were: “You want meat? Very well, but do not blame Me afterward,” and the meat does them no good. Once again we see that the issue is not meat, but the Spirit.