And the mixed multitude that was among them had a strong craving: and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?
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Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Do we not see that the Israelites got to their own hurt what their guilty lusting craved? For while manna was raining down on them from heaven, they desired to have meat to eat. They disdained what they had, and they shamelessly sought what they had not, as if it were not better for them to have asked not that their unbecoming desires be gratified with food that was wanting, but that their own dislike be removed, and that they be made to receive rightly the food that was provided. For when evil becomes our delight and good the opposite, we ought to entreat God to win us back to the love of the good rather than to grant us the evil.
The people in the desert deserved to be reprimanded, not because they desired meat but because they murmured against the Lord as a result of this desire for meat. .
For, seems, however, to connect the burning of some with the destruction of many more, who had eaten the quails, as if both judgments took place at the same encampment. Septuagint render the Hebrew, "and a mixt rabble among them, desired greatly; and sitting, cried, as well as the Israelites, and said "(Haydock)
A mixt multitude. These were people that came with them out of Egypt, who were not of the race of Israel: who, by their murmuring, drew also the children of Israel to murmur: this should teach us the danger of associating ourselves with the children of Egypt; that is, with the lovers and admirers of this wicked world. (Challoner)
This verse may relate a different history from the preceding ones, as the punishment was of another kind. (Du Hamel)
The murmurers were burnt to death. (Haydock)
A mixt multitude: These were people that came with them out of Egypt, who were not of the race of Israel; who, by their murmuring, drew also the children of Israel to murmur: this should teach us the danger of associating ourselves with the children of Egypt, that is, with the lovers and admirers of this wicked world.
