The reality of God’s goodness can soon be overwhelmed by fictitious thoughts of the world.
Next on the itinerary for Israel was Elim, the sort of place one wished was the destination, not a temporary wayside spot. “Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve wells of water and seventy palm trees” (Ex 15:27). Dr Thomas Shaw was professor of Greek at Oxford when he died in 1751, but for 12 years he was a chaplain in Algiers. During that time, he explored from Barbary to Syria. In his Travels, he told how he found nine of Elim’s twelve wells, the other three having been choked with sand, and that the seventy palm trees had multiplied to more than 2,000. But the Israelites would certainly see God’s special kindness in leading them to 12 wells for 12 tribes, and providing a large grove of date palms (Elim is plural for “palm”) as a place of rest and refreshment. Yet even after this kindness, when “the children of Israel came to the Wilderness of Sin,…on the fifteenth day of the second month after they departed from the land of Egypt…the whole congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses” (16:1-2), actually accusing him of bringing them into the desert to kill them all! A month and a half on the journey and, like petulant children, they said it would have been better if they had died in Egypt. Ah, Egypt, “when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full!” (v 3). Oh, so that was how it was in Egypt—a barbecue down by the Nile each evening, and the kitchen cupboards overflowing! The brick-kilns, scrounging for straw, and the slave master’s lash all forgotten. What a warning to us. When you begin to doubt the Lord and fixate on the idea of His people doing you harm, you start having romantic ideas about how wonderful the world is. Watch out! It’s the devil’s lie.