Bemidbar 11:1 (Beha`alothekha) - A balagan

Chapter eleven in the book of Bemidbar begins after the people had just left Mount Sinai to go the land of Israel. In the end of chapter ten, things appeared to be going well with the ark and the cloud of G-d leading the way, but suddenly and unexpectedly, everything went awry, even before the failure of the mission of the spies.

The first verse of chapter eleven describes a cryptic episode. The people complained, and they were instantly punished. The Torah does not record what were the complaints and what were the people's sins which caused them to be punished. Were the sins so heinous that they could not be mentioned? It is unlikely that the Torah is hiding some terrible sin, as the Torah records that the people committed idolatry (Shemot 32:1-6) and that Cozbi acted a harlot (25:1-15). Furthermore, it is surprising that after this swift punishment, the people complained about their food, 11:4-6. Why did the people not learn a lesson from this incident in 11:1?

The conjunction of this incident in 11:1 with the traveling of the people in the end of chapter ten has led commentators to suggest that the people's complaints were due to the traveling. Rashbam (on 10:33 and 11:1) suggests that that the people were complaining of hardships on the road. Ramban (on 11:1) suggests that by Mount Sinai, the people had become established and gotten relatively comfortable, but now they were despairing of surviving in the desert.

My guess is that the complaints arose due to the problem of coordinating the movement of all the people in their march to the land of Israel. This coordination problem arises naturally whenever large masses of people travel. Some people want to march earlier in the morning, and some want to start later. Some people walk faster and some people walk slower. This leads to backups and frustration amongst the people. This was not the first time the people had travelled, but previously, when they left Egypt, everybody was in such high spirits from being freed from slavery that they were more tolerant and willing to accommodate other people. However, now after being in the desert a little more than a year, normal human behavior returned.

Possibly, the frustration led some people to stop marching altogether, and hence they were at the back of the camp. Thus, G-d struck them down since they were refusing to march with the rest of the nation, and 11:1 records that the people were killed at the edge of the camp. My son, Binyamin, suggested that the edge could also be in the front of the camp that some people were marching ahead of everybody to separate themselves from the rest of the nation.

With this idea, we understand why the Torah did not list the people's complaints. First of all, these complaints were not serious, i.e., he/ she is walking too slow.  Secondly, the complaints consisted of many different complaints from different people. For example, A was upset with B, and C was upset with D, and E was upset with F, etc. The Torah could not have listed all of these insignificant complaints, and hence the Torah just stated in a general way the people complained.

This idea can explain why the swift punishment in 11:1 did not deter some people from complaining for meat immediately afterwards. The people realized that the complaints in 11:1 were "small time" and due to a lack of manners, while they thought that their complaints about food were justified.

This idea can also explain Moshe's statement in 11:14 that he was all alone since he had to deal with all of these little complaints by himself, and then the seventy prophets, 11:16, who were G-d's answer to Moshe's statement in 11:14, were to be a type of traffic police to coordinate the travels of the people.