141 Then all the people gave load cries of grief, and all that night they gave themselves up to weeping. 2 And all the children of Israel, crying out against Moses and Aaron, said, If only we had come to our death in the land of Egypt, or even in this waste land! 3 Why is the Lord taking us into this land to come to our death by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will get into strange hands: would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt? 4 And they said to one another, Let us make a captain over us, and go back to Egypt.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Numbers 14:1-4
Commentary on Numbers 14:1-4
(Read Numbers 14:1-4)
Those who do not trust God, continually vex themselves. The sorrow of the world worketh death. The Israelites murmured against Moses and Aaron, and in them reproached the Lord. They look back with causeless discontent. See the madness of unbridled passions, which makes men prodigal of what nature accounts most dear, life itself. They wish rather to die criminals under God's justice, than to live conquerors in his favour. At last they resolve, that, instead of going forward to Canaan, they would go back to Egypt. Those who walk not in God's counsels, seek their own ruin. Could they expect that God's cloud would lead them, or his manna attend them? Suppose the difficulties of conquering Canaan were as they imagined, those of returning to Egypt were much greater. We complain of our place and lot, and we would change; but is there any place or condition in this world, that has not something in it to make us uneasy, if we are disposed to be so? The way to better our condition, is to get our spirits in a better frame. See the folly of turning from the ways of God. But men run on the certain fatal consequences of a sinful course.