Numbers 11:33 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The Lord smote the people with a very great plague With a pestilence, say some, with a consumption, say others. But it seems more probable that it was by some untimely death, which was the effect of their own gluttony and intemperance. This seems to agree best with the threatening, Numbers 11:20. God was pleased, in a great measure, to overlook their first murmuring, about a year before, when he sent them the manna, because they were then under great necessity, being really pinched with hunger; whereas now that they were fed with bread from heaven, they cried for meat, not from need, but mere wantonness, and that after much experience of God's care and kindness, after he had pardoned their former sins, and after he had made known his laws to them in a most solemn and terrible manner. Besides, the longer God exercises forbearance, the more is the offender's guilt aggravated, if he remain impenitent. Reader, remember, “the goodness of God leads thee to repentance,” and take heed that thou do not, “after thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up to thyself wrath against the day of wrath!”