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 flesh pots, 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.
Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt - i:e., by the plague which had carried off the first-born of the Egyptians suddenly, rather than by a lingering death from starvation here. How unreasonable and absurd the charge against Moses and Aaron! how ungrateful and impious against God! After all their experience of the divine wisdom, goodness, and power, we pause and wonder over the sacred narrative of their hardness and unbelief. To such a depth of debasement had they sunk, that they seem never to have reflected or reasoned on the course of Providence; and although they had witnessed the most astonishing demonstrations of the majesty and power of God, they were incapable of drawing from these gracious interpositions any general conclusions for their encouragement and comfort in future emergencies. In short, the wonders they had seen in Egypt, and the miraculous passage of the Red Sea, contributed little either to banish despondency or to inspire them with full confidence in the divine aid.
Thus, their character appeared, and the unbelief, fickleness, and impatience of their temper were displayed, on the exhaustion of their provision stores, without any natural sources of supply within their reach, by vehement outcries against their leaders: 'Ye have brought us forth into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.' There is a feeling of solitude and despondency in the desert; and the expression of feeling, even when entertained among a few, is contagious in a multitude. The Israelites were now discouraged by these influences; and besides, we must remember that they were people engrossed with the present; that the Holy Spirit was not then given, and that they were destitute of all visible means of sustenance, and cut off from every visible comfort, with only the promises of an unseen God to look to as the ground of their hope. And though we may lament they should tempt God in the wilderness, and freely admit their sin in so doing, we can be at no loss for a reason why those who had all their lives been accustomed to walk by sight should, in circumstances of unparalleled difficulty and perplexity, find it hard to walk by faith. Do not even we find it difficult to walk by faith through the wilderness of this world, though in the light of a clearer revelation, and under a nobler leader than Moses' (Fisk). (See 1 Corinthians 10:11-12.)
It is observable that there was no complaint at this time about the want of water; and the reason was that they were in that part of the desert where the Egyptians possessed copper mines, the whole of the northern coast of the Red Sea being an extensive mining district. 'Now, although it is most probable that the mining population drew its supplies of food from Egypt, yet it would be all but impossible to send them also the necessary supply of water across the Red Sea. Artificial reservoirs, such as the Egyptians were accustomed to form in their own country, and such as the Nabathaeans dug in the desert (Kalisch on Genesis 25:13), must therefore have been made in the vicinity of the mines for the supply of this lack; and it would have been strange if, under the leadership of such a man as Moses, at the height of Egypt's science, and with complete local knowledge of the desert, the water supply for such a multitude should have been left by him entirely to chance or miracle' (Benisch).