New Year: Nm 10-12 for Feb 11

What a day brings cannot always be predicted, even after almost two years (Numbers 10:11) of the daily presence of God with the people. They "kept the Lord's charge" (9:23) about when to camp and when to break camp. As we open these chapters, we don't expect hardly any of it.

We don't expect that God, saying, "I am the Lord your God," would tell the Israelites that a trumpet sound would remind Him of them "in the day of their gladness" and in their sacrifices (10:10).

In chapter 11, we are not surprised at people complaining, since we have seen it, and the common form the "grumble against Him" takes (Ex 16:8). What we don't expect is that it happens so repeatedly (11:1; 11:4), and that we get the actual language put to us of the complaint, almost such that we can hear the mockery of it by Moses: "our soul is dried up," they say (11:6, lit.). Then, the famous list, which we should all put to memory: "the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic." Someone should write a complaining song,

"We remember the fish which
we used to eat in Egypt
the cucumbers and the melons
and the leeks and the onions --
and the garlic."

Chorus:
"But now our soul is dried up
There is nothing at all
for our eyes except this manna."