Comentario sobre Números 21:5

באלהים ובמשה [AND THE PEOPLE SPAKE] AGAINST GOD AND AGAINST MOSES — They placed the servant on a par with his Master (Midrash Tanchuma, Chukat 19).

וידבר העם באלוקים ובמשה, The people spoke out against G'd and against Moses. Although the people were perfectly aware that everything Moses did he did at the command of G'd, this did not prevent them from speaking out against him as they felt he should not have agreed with G'd's route for them but should have pleaded that G'd lead them through a more hospitable country. It would appear that the people's complaints in this instance did not justify G'd decreeing a major punishment as was the case when they had complained after hearing the majority report of the spies in Numbers 14,3. At that time the Israelites had demanded to return to Egypt. This time they "merely" indulged in slander against Moses and G'd. G'd punished them by letting snakes loose against them, seeing snakes symbolise slander ever since the time Eve was tricked by a snake into eating from the tree of knowledge (compare Taanit 8).

הקלקל, extremely lightweight.

כי אין לחם ואין מים, “for there was neither bread nor water.” The statement that there was no bread seems incomprehensible seeing they received the manna daily! They also must have had plenty of the water which had gushed forth from the rock in great quantities!
We must understand the people’s complaint as being a rebellion against their unnatural state of existence. Other nations had abundant supplies of bread and water both of which could be stored whereas the Jewish people wondered from day to day if they would have bread and water on the morrow. Seeing that the continued existence of the people appeared to hinge on immediate reward and punishment they felt themselves in a uniquely disadvantaged position when compared to the Gentiles.
Moreover, they claimed, “even the daily manna we receive is an inferior kind of bread as instead of giving our stomachs the feeling that it is full after having eaten it, our stomachs feel quite light, i.e. empty.” They expressed themselves as being fed up with that kind of existence. They knew of no other creature born of a mother that continuously imbibed food without having to excrete any of it (based on Yuma 75). G’d had intended that the daily dependence of the people on that day’s manna would teach them to put their faith in Him so that their dependence on Him should be like that of the slave on his master. He had related to the people as if they were on the level of angels.
They now had become guilty of a terrible slander against the heavenly manna. The people now used this fact as something negative, found fault with the heavenly food! Seeing their sin consisted of slander, G’d sent against them the creatures which had invented slander, i.e. snakes. Tanchuma Chukat 19 describes the punishment as fitting the crime seeing that however many different kinds of creature a snake devours they all taste like dust to it, as it had been cursed with: “dust you shall eat all the days of your life!” (Genesis 3,14). The Israelites by comparison had been given a single type of food, which however assumed all kinds of different tastes in accordance with the owner’s wishes. Another reason they were being punished through snake bites was that during the entire 40 years G’d had ensured that the snakes whose natural habitat is the desert would not attack any Israelite. Seeing that the Israelites had not appreciated this G’d simply did not continue to work this miracle and the snakes which now bit the people were not a plague, but merely the inhabitants of that desert.
The reason why the Torah does not write: “G’d sent snakes against the people,” i.e. seraphim, but it writes: ”the snakes which are the seraphim,” underlines that these snakes were not a new or different phenomenon at all. When Moses had told Pharaoh that G’d would punish him with an invasion of wild beasts (Exodus 8,17), he did not say הנני משליח בך ערוב, “here I am about to sent against you wild beasts,” but he said את הערוב. By this he meant that the wild beasts which are normally content to stay in their habitat will change their nature and invade the urban areas. Similarly here; the snakes which had suppressed their lifestyle by not harming the Jewish people though biting Gentiles, would now not practice any restraint whatsoever in their habitual confrontation with human beings, Israelite or not. The term לחם הקלוקל, is an insult, as if the Torah had written that the manna was the לחם קל שבקלים, “the least valuable kind of bread there was.”

The manna will eventually swell. Rashi explains “it will swell” because the Torah writes הקלוקל ["this rotten"] with a cholam, which literally implies a sense of decay. This was why they said that it would swell in their stomachs. When he explains that it was absorbed into the limbs, this was because it is written קלקל in the shortened form [without a vav] which implies the sense of קל ["light"], implying that one did not have to digest it. (Nachalas Yaakov) This is Rashi’s comment from Avodah Zarah 5a: “With this rotten bread — this is the manna because it was absorbed into their limbs and not excreted they called it rotten…” From there one sees that it is in the sense of lightness, similar to ירקרק or אדמדם ["yellowish" or "reddish" which are variations on the words ירק ["yellow"] and אדום ["red"] formed by doubling the root]. [It appears that] Re’m overlooked this Rashi.

V. 5. וידבר העם באלקי׳. Ihr Unmut wendet sich auch direkt gegen Gott, sie zweifeln nicht an Mosche Sendung, aber sie sind unbefriedigt durch die göttliche Führung. wir kommen auf diese Weise nie zum :למות במדבר ,Gott und Mosche :למה העלי ֻתנו וגו׳ Ziel und enden unser Leben in der Wüste unter ganz abnormen, einförmigen Verhältnissen. כי אין לחם ואין מים kann nicht sagen wollen, es fehle ihnen an der nötigen Nahrung, sie gestehen ja selbst sofort, sie hätten לחם, vielmehr vermissen sie Speise und Trank nach gewöhnlicher Menschenweise; die mühelose, wenngleich wundervolle Versorgung mit beiden war ihnen — langweilig, die vierzigjährige täglich sich wiederholende, so speziell fürsorgende Gottesgnade etwas — Alltägliches geworden, und dieser Unmut machte sie sogar ungerecht gegen den Nahrungswert des ihnen von Gott gereichten Mannabrotes, sie nennen es: לחם הקלקל, nach der לחם קל :פסיקתא, eine freie, leicht verdauliche Speise, so verdaulich, dass sie nach dem נימוח באיברים :מדרש שוחר טוב ganz in reproduzierende Assimilation ohne Substrat aufging, שנבלע ברמ׳׳ח איברים (Joma 75 b). Diese vorzügliche Eigenschaft verkehrte ihr Unmut in ihr Gegenteil, sie war ihnen nicht substantiell genug.

כי אין לחם....ונפשנו קצה בלחם הקלוקל, “for there was no bread (that was the product of the earth) and the insubstantial bread from heaven (the manna) the people had become fed up with.”The expression קצה is familiar to us from when Rivkah experiencing so much tension with her daughtersinlaw, the wives of Esau, told her husband that if Yaakov were to marry wives from a similar background she would become fed up with living. (Genesis 27,46, .(קצתי בחיי

למה העליתנו WHEREFORE HAVE YE BROUGHT US UP — “ye”: they (God and Moses) were both on a par to them.

Can anyone … without excreting. You might ask: Is it not written (Devarim 23:14), “You shall have a shovel aside from your weapons, and it shall be when you sit outside…”? From there it seems that they did excrete. The answer is that they excreted [food] purchased from the merchants [not the manna].

ונפשנו קצה מלחם הקלקל, "and we loathe the light bread." Perhaps they thought that the reason the arduous detour around the land of Edom bothered them so much was because they did not have the kind of food that would enable them to endure such a march more easily. People who travel on foot prefer to eat "heavy" food which is not easily digested as their very walking helps the digestive process. As soon as food has been digested one feels hungry again. Since the mannah was so easily digested they believed that the feeling of an empty stomach made it more difficult to endure the march. This is the reason the Torah introduced their complaint by mentioning the detour around the territory belonging to the kingdom of Edom. Our sages in Bamidbar Rabbah 19,21 say that the people who said all this were the remnants of the earlier generation who had nothing to look forward to but death in the desert during the coming months as they were destined to die before the Israelites would enter the Holy Land. They were fed up with their very lives. The same did not apply to the younger generation who had much to look forward to in the immediate future.

בלחם, “with the bread;” the letter ב at the beginning of this word has the vowel patach to show that a certain well known “bread” was meant.

ונפשנו קצה AND OUR SOUL LOATHETH — This, too, is an expression for “the shortening of soul” and “rejecting” (not being able to bear the trouble).

הקלוקל, as in Ezekiel 21,26: קלקל בחצים, “like flashing arrows,” a simile for the word בדולח, “shining crystal,” a word used by the Torah to describe the appearance of the manna in Numbers 11,7. An alternate interpretation: the word is a variation of קלקול, as in Jeremiah 4,24: וכל הגבעות התקלקלו, “and all the heights, (low hills) are disintegrating.” They are not providing man with strength.

בלחם הקלקל THIS LIGHT BREAD — because the manna was miraculously absorbed into their limbs (and was not execrated) they derisively called it “light”. They said: this manna will at some time or other swell up in our stomachs, for is there any mortal (lit., anyone born of woman) who takes in food and does not eject it? (Yoma 75b; cf. Rashi on Avodah Zarah 5b).