Numbers 11:4

4. Mixed multitude The Hebrew is very expressive, it being a syllable intensively repeated, saph-sooph, the gathering of the gathered, much like our word riffraff, or ruffscuff. “With these two millions of Israelites also went up a mixed multitude of varied descent, drawn in the wake of God’s people by the signs and wonders so lately witnessed just as a mixed crowd still follows after every spiritual movement, a source of hinderance rather than of help to it, ever continuing strangers, and at most only fit to act as hewers of wood and drawers of water.” Edersheim. Tacitus, though egregiously caricaturing Jewish history in many particulars, employs a phrase peculiarly appropriate to this mongrel horde of hangers-on and camp-followers when he describes Israel as “populi colluvies undecumque collecta,” the dregs of people collected from everywhere. See Exodus 12:38, note. Many of this mixed multitude were related to Israel by intermarriage. Leviticus 24:10, note. There is nothing more damaging to the cause of Christ, and to the purity of his Church, than intimacy with men of mixed principles. This association is much more dangerous than it is with men of unmixed evil characters, whose open hostility puts the Christian on his guard.

Fell a lusting Hebrew, lusted a lust.

Wept again Literally, returned and wept. Similar complaining, respecting the absence of flesh, but without mention of tears, took place in the desert of Sin, Exodus 16:2-12. The Israelites, instead of feeling disgust at the animalism of the mob, began to imitate them. “A few factious, discontented, ill-natured people may do a great deal of mischief in the best societies, if great care be not taken to discountenance it. This Egyptian rabble were the disordered sheep that infected the flock, the leaven that leavened the whole lump.” Henry.

Flesh to eat This is not the language of the starving, but of epicures. Their gross appetites were not satisfied with the wholesome food from heaven plentifully bestowed. The best Hebraists consider the flesh in this verse as the flesh of fish only, a much more savory food than any flesh diet which was likely to be within reach of the oppressed Israelites. Fish was, and is to this day, a staple article of food among the poor in Egypt.