t among them fiery serpents and they were bitten, a
multitude of the people perishing.

Complaining against God is here called tempting him. Men set
themselves against the Word of God and blaspheme as if God and his
Word were utterly insignificant, because his disposing is not as they
desire. Properly speaking, it is tempting God when we not only
disbelieve him but oppose him, refusing to accept what he says as
true and desiring that our own wisdom rule. That is boasting
ourselves against him. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, 22: "Do we
provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?"

19. Such was the conduct of the Jews. Notwithstanding God's promise
to be their God, to remain with them and to preserve them in trouble,
if only they would believe in him and trust him; and notwithstanding
he proved his care by daily providences expressed as special
blessings and strange wonders, yet all these things availed not to
save them from murmuring. When the ordering of events accorded not
exactly with their wisdom or desire, or when, perhaps, disaster or
failure threatened, immediately they began to make outcry against
Moses; in other words, against his God-given office and message. "Why
have you led us out of Egypt?" they would complain, meaning: "If you
bore, as you say you do, the word and command of God and if he truly
designed to work such marvels with us, he would not permit us to
suffer want like this." In fact, they could not believe God's
dealings with them were in accord with his promise and design. They
insisted that he should, through Moses, perform what they dictated;
otherwise he should not be their God.

At the outset, when they entered the wilderness, after having come
out of Egypt and having experienced God's wonderful preservation of
them in the Red Sea and his deliverance from their enemy, and having
received from him bread and flesh, they immediately began to murmur
against Moses and Aaron and to chide them for leading into the
wilderness where no water was. "Is Jehovah among us, or not?" they
burst forth. Ex 17, 7. This was, indeed, as our text says, tempting
God; for abundantly as his word and his wonders had been revealed to
them, they refused to believe unless he should fulfil their desires.

20. And they persisted in so opposing and tempting God as long as
they were in the wilderness, unto the fortieth year; to which God
testifies when he says to Moses: "Because all those men that have
seen my