Biblion Bible Commentary
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We Remember the Fish
Numbers 11:1-23
1 The people were complaining in the ears of Yahweh. When Yahweh heard it, his anger burned; and Yahweh’s fire burned among them, and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp. · WEB
Three days out of Sinai the complaining starts, and the man carrying the nation asks God to kill him.
Three days after leaving the mountain, the people were complaining in the ears of Yahweh Numbers 11:1. No cause is given. The complaint has no content, which is what makes it the purest example of the thing.
Then the second and more specific one, and it begins with the crowd at the edges: the mixed multitude that was among them lusted exceedingly Numbers 11:4.
What they want is meat, and what they say about the past is the most quoted sentence in the wilderness narrative.
We remember the fish, which we ate in Egypt for nothing; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic Numbers 11:5.
The menu is detailed and the memory is false in one word. For nothing — they were slaves. The fish cost them their sons in the Nile and their backs under the whips, and the recollection has edited out everything except the taste.
That is how the book understands nostalgia: not as an inaccurate account of the food but as an accurate account of the food with the price removed.
And the complaint about the present is delivered with real contempt: there is nothing at all except this manna to look at Numbers 11:6. Bread that arrives daily, without work, has become an insult.
Moses' response is the most desperate speech in the Pentateuch, and it is addressed to God rather than to the people.
Why have you treated your servant so badly?... Have I conceived all this people? Have I brought them out, that you should tell me, 'Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a nursing infant'? Numbers 11:11–12.
The figure he reaches for is a wet nurse carrying somebody else's baby, and his objection is that they are not his. Then: I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me Numbers 11:14.
And finally: if you treat me this way, please kill me right now Numbers 11:15.
God does not rebuke him. The answer is seventy men to share the load, and the Spirit that is on Moses put on them Numbers 11:16–17 — the burden is redistributed rather than the man reproved for feeling it.
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