There is so much happening in the first part of Numbers 11 that I have a really hard time making sense of it all.
On the surface, it looks really straightforward: The people complain, God sends out fire to consume some of the outskirts of the camp, and they name the place Taberah to remember not to ever whine again.
But then, inexplicably, they complain again! And in the very next verse! And it’s about food! Does everyone just have that short of a memory, or was food that big of an issue with the people?
To sort this out, we have to sift through some of the facts as they appear. The “outskirts of the camp” could involve humans (which means God inflicted capital punishment), or it burned the trees and foliage that were just outside the Israelites, creating a ring of fire around the people.
I think it has to be people-related; otherwise, the fear of God and the lesson of Taberah wouldn’t have been as memorable.
The source of the complaining also switches gears. In Numbers 11:4, Moses specifically calls out “the rabble who were among them” as the one who had “greedy desires” and influenced the Sons of Israel to cry out to God. This is the “mixed multitude” who left with Israel during the Exodus (Exodus 12:38).
The complaint itself was also different. It wasn’t just that they were hungry, it was that they missed the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic that was so plentiful in Egypt.
It’s hard to imagine this complaining as being any better than the one mentioned in Numbers 11:1-3, and yet Moses’ himself gets into it (Numbers 11:10-15). God responds by saying that they will soon have so much food it “comes out of their nostrils.”
But back up to the first mention of complaining at Taberah. So little is said of the whining that killed so many people, and so much is said of the one that ended with a stuff-your-face buffet. Why is that?
Think back to the nature of Taberah. In those verses, the people are described as those who “complain in the face of adversity.” They whine about anything and everything, and, if left unchecked, a rebellion could very soon follow. It makes sense that God needed to teach them a lesson—and fast.
The second complaint was rooted in a singular desire for certain delicacies (or, at least it’s expressed that way). To handle that issue, God sends them exactly what they want to prove that He can provide better than Egypt ever could. If they wanted food, that’s exactly what they got!
Numbers 11 shows God’s different responses to different issues, but both of them show how He handles things in the appropriate manner.
