John Calvin Commentary Numbers 20:2

"And there was no water for the congregation: and they assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron." — Numbers 20:2 (ASV)

And there was no water for the congregation. We have already seen a similar, though not identical, history. For when the people had scarcely come out of Egypt, they began to rebel in Rephidim because of the scarcity of water. Now, after thirty-eight years or approximately that time, a new rebellion arose in Kadesh, because there, too, they lacked water.

Their first murmuring indeed sufficiently showed how great was their depravity and stubborn rebellion. For when God gave them their food from heaven every day, why did they not plead with Him for water, so that their sustenance might be complete? Yet, with no less despicable ingratitude than godless stubbornness, they attack God with accusations and complain that they are deceived and betrayed.

But this second rebellion is far worse. For when they had experienced that it was in God’s power to extract plenty of water from the barren rock, why do they not now implore His aid? Why does not that miraculous intervention on their behalf come to their minds?

Yet in their madness, they cry out that they have been treated more cruelly than if they had been swallowed up by the earth or consumed by fire from heaven, as if there was no solution for their thirst. Surely this was incredible stupidity, intentionally, so to speak, to shut the gate of God’s grace and to cast themselves into despair.

It is true that they rebel against Moses and Aaron, but they direct their complaints like darts against God Himself. They consider it a very great injustice that they had been brought into the desert, as if they had not, in their own godless obstinacy, themselves preferred the desert to the land of Canaan. They were therefore deserving to waste away, lacking everything, even to death itself.

Then, perversely, they cast the blame, which belongs to themselves alone, upon the servants of their salvation. Indeed, they truthfully call the place evil and barren; but God would not have wished to keep them imprisoned there, unless they had voluntarily refused the land flowing with milk and honey, after it had been set before their eyes and an easy entrance to it had been granted to them under the guidance and authority of God.

Thus the Prophet, in Psalm 105, in recounting the history of their redemption, before he addresses the punishments inflicted upon their sins, relates that they were brought forth by God with joy and with gladness.¹⁰⁸

Furthermore, prompted by the inconvenience they experienced from thirst, they maliciously pile up other complaints. There was no shortage of food to satisfy their hunger, food that was pleasant to the taste; yet they complain exactly as if hunger oppressed them as well as thirst. God daily rained for them food from heaven, which it was very easy for them to gather; but the basis of their murmuring is that they did not have to tire themselves with ploughing and sowing.

See to what senselessness people are driven by unreasonable desires and by contempt for God’s present blessings! The height of their madness, however, is that they mourn their fate that they were not swallowed up with Korah and his companions, or consumed by fire from heaven.

They had been overwhelmed with great fear at that grim spectacle, and rightly so, for God had shown a wonder, fearsome throughout all ages. Now they argue with Him because His lightning did not strike them also.

Nor do they only mourn that they were not destroyed by that particular kind of death, but they deliberately provoke God’s vengeance upon themselves, which should have terrified them more than a hundred deaths. For it is forcefully added that those with whom they desired to be associated had died before the Lord.

Therefore, they acknowledge that the destruction they call down upon themselves had happened not by chance but by the clear judgment of God, as if they were angry with God for having spared them. They most truly call them their brethren, to whom they were all too similar; yet it is with brutal arrogance that they desire to be considered God’s Church, for while they openly connect themselves with the opposing faction, they falsely claim this title for themselves.

¹⁰⁸ These expressions occur, Psalms 105:43. It is in . It is in Psalm 106 that the Psalmist proceeds to narrate the history of their rebellions and punishments. that the Psalmist proceeds to narrate the history of their rebellions and punishments.