Verse 20. - But even a whole month. There is some little difficulty about these words, because the Israelites do not seem to have made a long stay at Kibroth-Hattaavah, and the miraculous supply does not seem to have followed them. The words are words of stern irony and displeasure, and need not be literally pressed: it was enough that animal food was given them in quantity sufficient to have gorged the whole nation for a month, if they had eared to go on eating it (see below on verse 33).
11:16-23 Moses is to choose such as he knew to be elders, that is, wise and experienced men. God promises to qualify them. If they were not found fit for the employ, they should be made fit. Even the discontented people shall be gratified too, that every mouth may be stopped. See here, I. The vanity of all the delights of sense; they will cloy, but they will not satisfy. Spiritual pleasures alone will satisfy and last. As the world passes away, so do the lusts of it. 2. What brutish sins gluttony and drunkenness are! they make that to hurt the body which should be its health. Moses objects. Even true and great believers sometimes find it hard to trust God under the discouragements of second causes, and against hope to believe in hope. God here brings Moses to this point, The Lord God is Almighty; and puts the proof upon the issue, Thou shalt see whether my word shall come to pass or not. If he speaks, it is done.
But even a whole month,.... So long the Israelites continued at Taberah or Kibrothhattaavah, as the Jews (o) conclude from this clause:
until it come out at your nostrils; being vomited up, through a nausea of it, the stomach being overfilled and glutted with it; in which case, it will make its way through the nostrils, as well as out of the mouth:
and it be loathsome unto you; being surfeited with it; or it shall be for "dispersion" (p), scattered about from the mouth and nostrils:
because that ye have despised the Lord which is among you; who dwelt in the tabernacle that was in the midst of them, whom they despised by treating the manna with contempt he so plentifully spread about their camp, and by distrusting his power to give them flesh, and by murmuring and complaining against him on the account of their having none: the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan are,"because ye have loathed the Word of the Lord, whose Shechinah (or the glory of whose Shechinah, as Jonathan) dwelleth among you;''the essential Word, and who was figured by the manna they tasted and despised:
and have wept before him; complaining of him, and murmuring against him:
saying, why came we forth out of Egypt? suggesting it would have been better for them if they had stayed there; thus reflecting on the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, displayed in the deliverance of them, and for which they had the utmost reason to be thankful.
(o) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 8. p. 24. (p) "in dispersionem", Munster, Fagius, Montanus: so R. Joseph Kimchi, apud Kimchi Sepher Shorash rad. "et Aben dana".
