I am astonished at how ungrateful the Hebrews were so soon after being liberated from Egyptian bondage by Yahweh, and how quickly as a whole people they grumbled against God and his prophets. This scene is to remind us not only of the need to be grateful each day for God’s blessings upon us, it also reminds us how short are our memories and how quick we are to feel entitled to more, better, faster divine handouts.
Rather than blame God, perhaps we should get up and care for ourselves. It is also to remember that God or Yahweh is reminding us that the Hebrews did not grumble because Hebrews and Jews are especially ungrateful for favor done them, every demanding more: no we are being instructed by God that both the chosen people and other children of God are equally ungrateful for life and blessings granted them from on high, and that we need to cut out the grumbling and complaining.
Here are those lines from The New American Bible: “Here in the desert the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, ‘Would that we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots ate our fill of bread. But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine.”
Yeah, we had it so great in the good old days as Pharaoh’s slaves, where available to us were all forms and quantity of bonbons, luxuries, comforts, fleshpots, and bread were available to the luckiest slaves ever to walk the earth.
Heads up: the good old days were not so good. This record of human ingratitude reveals how thin and tenuous is human loyalty to and serious dedication to thinking the best of their benevolent creators. Faith in God is commensurate to how grateful we fill, and how enduring is our good feelings towards God in tough times, when we feel neglected and forgotten. We are not going to be near as grateful or saintly as insanely persecuted and afflicted Job—nor does the Divine Couple or Jesus expect us to be such paragons—but we need not be so needlessly and quickly forgetful of how good that had it, as were the ancient Hebrews that were seeing God in a cloud, seeing plagues hitting Pharaoh to liberate them, and seeing Pharaoh and his army drowned to make their escape a lasting reality.
Not only were they lucky that God did not strike them dead for being so unreasonably and quickly ungrateful, but they spurned God without cause, largely to De’s face. I am the best human ever by a long stretch of imagination, but I am realistic, and do not want to so insult God by being callously ungrateful, rebellious and militantly sinful, as to invite divine wrath down upon my head. I am cautious, and urge people to leave God alone, not provoking such powerful deities to angers.
The Hebrews were hungry and in need, fine, but to carry on as they did, that is near to be unforgivable and outrageous misbehavior.
Here are those same passages from the Holy Bible: “And the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness: And the children of Israel said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and when we did eat bread to the full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
My response: If they did not believe that God existed, perhaps their quick, unreasonable ingratitude could have been excused somewhat because disbelief and ingratitude might be linked; they, however, knew God had delivered them from Egypt, but they were so lacking in faith, that they did not think God would provide for them in the wilderness, despite Yahweh’s impressive, strong track record of providing for them in stellar fashion just previously. Why would Yahweh not continue to provide, and handsomely at that?
Jordan Peterson has hinted that this passage is to remind us that we romanticize about the bad, self-destructive situation that we are in as better than the devil we do not know, that is, taking the leap of faith into freedom, prosperity, and adventure, heading headlong out into the wilderness to build new, better lives.
It could also be that Yahweh yanked them free from bondage before they were totally ready to be free or liberated—they were looking back when they should have been looking forward.
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