And they journeyed from Elim, and the whole assembly of the children of Israel came into the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after their departure out of the land of Egypt.
The verse fixes a place and a date. Israel is one month out of Egypt, camped in bare desert between the springs of Elim and Mount Sinai — and the place, the name and the date all explain what comes next: hunger, complaint, and bread from heaven.
Where Israel camped matters. The two place names on either side stand for two very different grounds.
Here we find Israel in a very marked and interesting position. It is still the wilderness, no doubt, but it is a most important stage of it: "between Elim and Sinai." Elim was the place where they had just tasted the refreshing springs of God's ministry. Sinai was the place where they came right off the ground of free and sovereign grace, and put themselves under a covenant of works. Here they are still the objects of the same grace that had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and so God meets all their complaints at once with His supplies. When God acts in the display of His grace, there is no hindrance.
Up to this point, the story is about God's care for the people. From Sinai onward, it runs the other way.
Up till Sinai, it was what God was for them in His mercy and love. From that time, by their own act, the ground changed to what they were for God. This is the difference between grace and law, and it is what makes the journey between Elim and Sinai so full of interest. But whether under grace or law, the flesh remained the same, and took every opportunity to reveal its corrupt and incurable character.
The name of this desert carries its own meaning, and that meaning is a picture of the world the believer walks through.
Sin means "thorn," and a thorn is a failed attempt to bear fruit, which produces instead what is harmful and painful. In our Christian history too we find that the world through which we pass is a wilderness full of thorns, or in other words, "the sin which so easily ensnares us" (Heb. 12:1).
The fifteenth day of the second month is not a stray detail. It marks the point where the food they carried out of Egypt ran out.
By this time all that they could have brought out of Egypt had doubtless been eaten, and in the wilderness there was no visible source of supply. Sadly, the people were walking by sight. The wonders of the Passover night and the crossing of the Red Sea had happened within the month, yet they had forgotten the power of their God.
Another writer finds the same discovery in every believer: safe from judgment, but with the world now a desert.
It was a full month before the Israelites realised that although they had escaped the judgment, they had lost all Egypt's resources and its pleasures. For the believer in Christ the world becomes a barren desert. The wilderness lies before him, and he has yet to learn, with the Psalmist, that all his springs are in God. This discovery is painful and humbling. He humbled you and tested you (Deut. 8:2-3).
Discontent does not stay still. Murmuring in this wilderness has a direction, and it has a cost.
May we learn that discontent and murmuring will soon land us in Sinai — take us out of the hands of God, and lead us to do the best we can for ourselves. How many a Christian is, in his own soul, "between Elim and Sinai"! He is doing the best he can for himself in this wilderness, because God has not satisfied him. But it cuts him off from fellowship with God. Complaining to God about His doings is not communion with Him.
God's answer to the murmuring is not a rebuke but bread. One writer reads that bread as Christ Himself.
And now how does God answer the murmurers? For forty years — the whole time of their wanderings in the wilderness — He gave them "manna." He puts Christ before us for the whole of our wilderness journey. Christ was always humbled, dependent and obedient. He was the only One who accepted everything in the wilderness path as from God His Father, without a single murmur. That is how God meets your murmuring and mine.
- Location. Israel camps between Elim, the place of God's refreshing springs, and Sinai, where they left free grace for a covenant of works.
- Footing. Before Sinai the question was what God is for His people. After Sinai, by their own choice, it became what they are for God. That is the line between grace and law.
- Name. "Sin" means "thorn" — a picture of a world that yields pain instead of fruit.
- Date. One month out of Egypt, the food they carried was gone and no supply was in sight. The discovery was humbling: all their springs were in God.
- Answer. Into that empty place God gave manna. It pictures Christ Himself — humbled, dependent, obedient, and never once murmuring.
And the whole assembly of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron in the wilderness.
Israel is camped in the desert between the springs of Elim and the mountain of Sinai, and the food they carried out of Egypt has run out. The whole community turns on Moses and Aaron, and the surprise of the chapter is what God does with that complaint.
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Where they camped matters. Commentators read this stopping-place as a stage in Israel's story.
Here we find Israel in a very striking and important position. It is still the wilderness, of course, but this is a key stage of it: "between Elim and Sinai." Elim was the place where they had just tasted the refreshing springs of God's ministry. Sinai was the place where they stepped right off the ground of free and sovereign grace, and put themselves under a covenant of works... Here they are still under the same grace that had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, and so God meets all their murmurings at once with His own supplies.
Where our verse says the people grumbled, older translations say they murmured. That word keeps coming back through the whole journey.
The first word we must look at is "murmurings." It translates a Greek word said something like "gongusmos." You can almost hear the grumbling and muttering in the sound of it. The children of Israel murmured very often. It was one of their chief sins. They murmured at the Red Sea (Ex. 14:11)... They murmured at Marah (Ex. 15:24)... We find it again in Ex. 16:2 in the wilderness of Sin; and again in Ex. 17:3 at Rephidim.
Their words remember Egypt's food. They leave out the rest of what Egypt was.
They were taken up with their present distress. They thought only of the cooking pots of Egypt and the bread they ate until they were full. But what about the bitter slavery and the cruelty of their slave-drivers while they were held in the land of Egypt?
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The people aim their complaint at two men. Moses tells them where it really lands.
God had heard the murmurings of the children of Israel against Him. They may say they were complaining only against Moses and Aaron. But what were those two men except God's representatives? So Moses insists that their murmurings were not against Moses and Aaron, but against the Lord (v. 8).
What is missing from God's reply is as striking as what is in it. No punishment falls here. Commentators tie that to where Israel stands — still before Sinai.
We can see that God dealt with Israel in unmixed grace, whatever their murmurings might be, until they reached Sinai. He did it so that they might know how fully He was for them... In chapter 16, when they murmured for food, God gave them quails as well as manna, without a word of reproach. Israel was to know that God was feeding them on the ground of perfect grace. But later, when they murmured for meat again, they were under law by then. We read that while the meat was still in their mouths, the anger of the Lord burned against the people.
Grace went further than food. God answered the grumblers by showing them His glory.
In His grace God answered their murmuring by giving them meat and manna, and also by letting His glory appear (Ex. 16:2-10). God did not scold them for murmuring. He appeared in His glory to show His care for them in wonderful grace.
This is not just ancient history. One hardship can blot out a lifetime of kindness in us too.
When we have set out to walk in His ways, we are ready to murmur and rebel at the first sign of pressure or trial... We forget ten thousand mercies the moment one hardship comes... our path through the desert is scattered with countless mercies. Yet let one cloud the size of a man's hand appear on the horizon, and at once we forget the rich mercies of the past because of that single cloud — which, after all, may only break in blessings on our head.
- Place: They grumble "between Elim and Sinai" — past the springs, not yet under the covenant of works. They still stand wholly on grace.
- Pattern: You can almost hear the grumbling in the word itself. It returns at the Red Sea, at Marah, here, and at Rephidim — one of Israel's chief sins.
- Blindness: They remember Egypt's cooking pots. They forget Egypt's bitter slavery and cruel slave-drivers.
- Target: Moses and Aaron only stood in for God. The complaint went past them to the Lord.
- Answer: God sends bread with no rebuke and shows His glory. The same grumbling later, under law, brought judgment.
And the children of Israel said to them, Would that we had died by the hand of Jehovah in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, when we ate bread to the full; for ye have brought us out into this wilderness, to kill this whole congregation with hunger!
One month out of Egypt, the food runs out, and the whole camp turns on Moses and Aaron with a wish that God had killed them back in Egypt. Their words show what the desert was there to expose: what a rescued people carry in their hearts when supplies run out.
The place and the date matter. The camp is in the wilderness of Sin, on the road between the springs of Elim and Mount Sinai. God has not yet given the law. This stretch of the journey is marked only by His kindness.
Up to Sinai, everything rested on what God was for them in His mercy and love. From that time on, by their own action, they changed the ground to what they were for God. That is the difference between grace and law, and that is what makes the journey between Elim and Sinai so interesting. But under grace or under law, the flesh stayed the same. It used every chance it got to show its corrupt and incurable character.
Their account of Egypt is true about the food and silent about everything else. The plagues and the slave labour have dropped out, leaving only the cooking pots.
It was easy to be glad to escape Egypt while God's terrifying judgements were falling on it one after another. At that moment the meat pots, the leeks, the onions and the garlic held little attraction. They came tied to the heavy plagues sent from the hand of an offended God. But now they have forgotten the plagues, and they remember only the meat pots.
Put as a plain question, the choice they are making is absurd:
Which was better — to toil at Pharaoh's brick-kilns, or to travel in the desert with God? Who could have any difficulty about that for a moment? They had forgotten their slavery. All they remembered was what they had eaten.
God's power had not changed; their view of it had. All they could see was an empty desert.
Sad to say, the people were walking by sight. The wonders of the Passover night and the crossing of the Red Sea had happened within the month, yet they had completely forgotten the power of their God. They remembered only the meat pots of Egypt, and they reproached Moses and Aaron. They saw nothing ahead but death, and they would have preferred it in Egypt rather than in the wilderness.
The people shouted at Moses and Aaron, but they were not the real target. The answer that came back was not what their words deserved.
When the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron, it was against God they were complaining. But God in His grace answered their murmuring. He gave them flesh and manna, and He also let His glory appear (Ex. 16:2-10). God did not rebuke them for murmuring. He appeared in His glory to show His care for them in wonderful grace.
The same point is made about the gift itself: grace, not payback, is stamped on it.
The character of grace is stamped on this gift of the manna for the people's need. Their murmuring, instead of bringing down judgment, is met by the supply for their need.
God could have fed them from day one. The hunger was deliberate, and the ugly words it produced served a purpose.
It is a great mercy of God that He sometimes deprives us of food to such an extent that we become extremely hungry. He did this to Israel after He delivered that nation from the slavery of Egypt through the crossing of the Red Sea. He could easily have provided the food they needed from the start of their journey. Instead He allowed them to hunger — that is, to feel their lack enough to stir up serious concern within them. This concern reached the point of bitter complaint and murmuring, but in a certain sense this was good. Why? Because it brought out what was actually in their hearts.
Their charge was that Moses had brought them out to kill them with hunger. The hunger had the opposite aim.
The Lord has His purpose in letting us go hungry: to wean us from the meat pots of Egypt and to draw us to Himself... In their unbelief the children of Israel accused Moses of planning to kill them with hunger. But their hunger was meant to create another appetite in them, and only that appetite could sustain their true life.
The wish to have died in Egypt is not a small lapse of mood. Left alone, it darkens a person's whole reading of God.
The heart that stops keeping a thankful sense of God's goodness will soon become "dark." So Israel lost the sense of being in God's hands... This is the path a soul travels when it has lost touch with God. It first loses the sense of being in God's hands for good, and finally begins to think itself in His hands for evil.
- Hunger — God let them feel the lack on purpose, to bring out what was already in their hearts and to stir a new appetite for Himself.
- Memory — the empty stomach edited Egypt down to full meat pots, deleting the slavery that came with them.
- Sight — a month after the Red Sea they judged by what the eye could see, so they saw only death ahead.
- Grace — they aimed their murmuring past Moses at God, and God answered with bread, meat and His glory instead of judgment.
- Warning — an unthankful heart goes dark. It stops trusting God's hands for good and starts fearing them for harm.