Chapter 20—Their Journeyings
For three days the children of Israel traveled in the wilderness, and
could find no good water to drink. They were suffering with thirst, and
the people murmured against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?
And he cried unto the Lord; and the Lord shewed him a tree, which
when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There
he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them,
and said, If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy
God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, and wilt give ear to
his commandments, and keep all his statutes, I will put none of these
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diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians; for I am
the Lord that healeth thee.” The children of Israel seemed to possess
an evil heart of unbelief. They were unwilling to endure hardships in
the wilderness. When they met with difficulties in the way, they would
regard them as impossibilities. Their confidence in God would fail,
and they could see nothing before them but death. “And the whole
congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and
Aaron in the wilderness. 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 fleshpots, 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.”
They had not really suffered the pangs of hunger. They had food for
the present, but they feared for the future. They could not see how the
host of Israel was to subsist, in their long travels through the wilderness,
upon the simple food they then had, and in their unbelief they saw
their children famishing. The Lord was willing that they should be
brought short in their food, and that they should meet with difficulties,
that their hearts should turn to Him who had hitherto helped them,
that they might believe in him. He was ready to be to them a present
help. If in their want they would call upon him, he would manifest to
them tokens of his love, and continual care. But they seemed to be
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unwilling to trust the Lord any farther than they could witness before
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