“The entire Israelite community departed from Elim and came to the Wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had left the land of Egypt. The entire Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat and ate all the bread we wanted. Instead, you brought us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of hunger!'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Kids can be whiny. I know this. I have three of them. If you have kids, yours are whiny too. I was whiny when I was a kid. Whiny kids is a natural part of life. They do it because they want what they want (like all of us do), but they don’t have any power to get what they want. So, they use the only tactic they think they do have: to irritate the world around them into giving it to them. Kids have to be taught by loving parents not to do this or else they will grow up to be whiny adults. Whiny adults are a sad thing to see. They are an even more irritating thing to experience. The roots of whining actually go deeper than this, though. More than merely a lack of power, they reveal a lack of something else the next part of the story of Israel’s journey into the wilderness gives us the chance to explore.

Entering into chapter 16, we get a date for the first time. It doesn’t tell us the exact year all this was happening, although that would have been really nice, but it does give us some context at least. We know that we are now starting the third week since the people had left “the land of Egypt.” That wording matters, but understanding it with any kind of precision requires us to know exactly what counted then as “the land of Egypt.” There is what appears to be a fairly vigorous debate as to exactly where many of these ancient places are. Most notably, are they mostly located on the Sinai Peninsula, or are they mostly located in modern-day Saudi Arabia. The answers to those questions as well as just how far the borders of “the land of Egypt” extended to the west tell us whether the people have been journeying for just two weeks at this point or three to four. Ultimately, though, the answers to those questions give us interesting information, not vital information.

This next story gets a date attached to it because it was one of the most significant stops on the Exodus journey. We are entering into the story of God’s providing manna for the people to eat. There is a great deal of spiritual significance to these events. We’ll explore some of this in the days ahead of us.

This story, though, kind of like the last one, starts with the people’s complaining yet again. This time they are complaining about food. Now, it could be that they were running out of food. It could also simply be that they were tired of traveling and just looking for something to complain about. The Hebrew word here is translated “grumbling.” “Murmur” or “complain” are other translation options. The idea is that unlike their panicked response to a lack of water in the last story, what the people are doing here is the result of a rising tide of discontentment.

It started small and in pockets. When were they ever going to get where God was taking them? They were getting some food each day, but not enough. They were tired of being hungry all the time. Was Moses really leading them anywhere, or were they just meandering idly from place to place while he figured out what he was supposed to do? You know, when they were back in Egypt, they never missed a meal. I mean, sure, there was the whole slavery thing, but at least they got to sleep in the same place every night on a reasonably comfortable bed and eat until they were full whenever they wanted. Was that really worse than what they were facing now? Was the supposed “freedom” of some mythical “Promised Land” really worth all of this?

What started as mere murmurs grew louder and louder until the leaders finally went to Moses to make their complaint. “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat and ate all the bread we wanted. Instead, you brought us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of hunger!”

The people were whining. That’s all this was. Yes, their circumstances were not ideal. They were traveling through the desert and were still at the beginning of a long journey. It would be hard. They were going to run short on supplies. Feeding and watering a group of people as large as the Israelites were was no small task in a lush environment with lots of natural resources close at hand. Let me say it again: they were in the desert. They had flocks and herds with them, but they understood they couldn’t just burn through those. They had to pace themselves. Living on food rations isn’t any fun. It was bread, though, that they needed each day to sustain them. But there was no farming when you were living as a nomadic people in the desert. No farming meant no wheat, which meant no bread.

All of that was true, but they were also being led by a God who had miraculously provided for them in unforgettable ways twice now. And let’s not forget the giant pillar of cloud that sat in front of them during the day that became a pillar of fire during the night. There was never any doubt that God was the one leading them. They had a visible reminder of His presence with them constantly. All they had to do was look up to be reminded of the fact that if He had taken care of them then, He would take care of them now regardless of what one particular “now” happened to entail.

But the people didn’t believe. And that’s what lay at the root of their whining here. They didn’t really believe God was going to provide for them. Even more than that, perhaps, they were trying to grab control of their situation themselves. The real problem here was not that there was a meaningful question of whether God was going to provide for them. He had literally just days before demonstrated His ability to meet their needs. The real problem was that they didn’t know how they were going to provide for themselves. They were sitting in a place in which they really didn’t have much control or the ability to make it on their own. Without God’s constant and abiding help, they were toast.

What this all was was a failure on their part to grasp the nature of God’s character. Actually, that’s probably too generous a description. Their failure wasn’t an inability to grasp God’s character so much as it was an unwillingness to accept it. God had demonstrated who He was to them several times now. And it wasn’t like He was subtle about this either. The plagues, the parted Red Sea, and the miraculously sweetened water were rather hard to miss. They had every reason to assume that when they had a need, God not only could but would meet it for them. Yet at the very next opportunity they had to choose between faith and doubt, between trust and trying to wrestle control over their situation away from God and for themselves, they went immediately to the latter. This refusal to trust in God and instead to trust only in what they could see with their own eyes in a given moment would plague the rest of their history.

As a matter of fact, this same refusal has plagued pretty much the whole of human history. We naturally live by what we can see. If we can’t see how our needs are obviously going to be met, we go into panic mode. If we don’t have any kind of a worldview framework that includes some sort of a higher power, we start hoarding for ourselves as much as we can get our hands on, even at the expense of the people around us. Once we get ours, then we’ll think about sharing with them (but we’re not really going to share with them because then we might not have enough for ourselves). If our worldview framework does include some sort of a higher power, if the character of that higher power is generally capricious or even malicious, we’ll start to bargain and look for various superstitions or talismans we think will help us force our gods to do what we want them to do. If, on the other hand, we retain a belief in a higher power that is beneficent, we’ll start with prayer, then we’ll switch almost immediately to whining. If our God or god is not going to meet our needs as we see fit simply because we want Him to, we’ll try to irritate Him into action…just like a young child.

Whining like this always reveals a lack of trust in God’s character. It is a symptom of a lack of faith that needs to be addressed. God is patient. If we haven’t really had enough time to get to know Him well enough to trust Him personally, He’ll be gentle with us like He was with Israel here. Now, realistically, He has given us more than enough evidence to warrant our trust in Him before our feet hit the floor on any given day. But He is remarkably gracious in giving us the benefit of the doubt that we simply haven’t had someone teach us how to properly interpret the evidence already available to us. If we have had enough time to grow our trust to the point that we shouldn’t be whining and are thus without excuse, He’ll be a little firmer with us just like He was with Israel’s enduring lack of faith later on in their journey.

The truth is: You should trust God. His character is unchanging and it is good. If you’re having any doubts about that, spend some more time in the Scriptures. The evidence is plain for all to see. The same God who raised Jesus from the dead will carry you through whatever valleys happen to be stretching out in front of you. It won’t always be in the way you expect, but it will be in the way that brings Him the most glory and you the most good if you’ll stick with Him. How can you live out your trust in God’s character more fully today?