Or HaChaim on Numbers 11:21/אור החיים על במדבר י״א:כ״א

1ויאמר משה….הצאן ובקר ישחט, Moses said:…."Will flocks and herds be slaughtered, etc?" I find it incredible that Moses could have questioned G'd in such a manner, something that even a person of far lesser stature than Moses would not have dared. Some of our sages quoted in Sifri consider Moses' question as sinful, others understand Moses' question as querying why 600.000 Israelites should die eating meat. There are all kinds of homiletical answers. We must address the plain meaning of the words. Moreover, we must also understand why Moses repeated the words ואתה אמרת בשר אתן, "and You have said 'I will give meat;'" Besides, what did Moses mean about the flocks and herds? Surely the Israelites had sufficient flocks and herds with them to provide meat for thirty days! Did the Torah not make a point of saying in Exodus 12,38 that they took with them a large number of flocks and herds? Furthermore, why did Moses exaggerate so much when referring to: "all the fish in the ocean?" How could he speak about all the fish in the ocean being required to feed 600,000 people for thirty days when the entire population of the world is in the habit of eating fish all year round and the supply of fish is not exhausted?

2There may be two different approaches to explaining our verses according to the פשט, the plain meaning of the text. When G'd told Moses first that He would give the children of Israel meat to eat without specifying how much and for how long, Moses assumed that G'd spoke about one single category of meat. This is why he pointed out that there were 600,000 and that it was likely that in order to satisfy the people's craving there had to be more than one species of meat seeing each one of the Israelites craved for something different such as fowl, venison, fish, etc. Moses therefore queried: "and You have said: 'I will give meat,' i.e. only one category of meat?" He queried what kind of meat G'd planned to provide, if flocks, herds or fish? When Moses referred to fish, he did not refer to the total number of fish in the ocean but to all the varieties of fish in the ocean. The words ומצא להם, mean "could enough varieties be found to satisfy all the different tastes the Israelites craved to experience. He suggested that if G'd were to provide flocks and herds, they would claim they wanted gazelles and deer. If G'd were to provide those, they would claim that they wanted fowl. Moses mentioned only the two extremes, i.e. flocks and herds, and he spoke of fish to symbolise the various kinds of meat between herds and flocks. The words "all the fish in the sea" refer to the total number of varieties of fish. Basically, Moses certainly did not question G'd's ability but he mentioned the enormous effort G'd would have to make to satisfy these people's cravings. Had G'd been more specific saying He would provide the various kinds of meat there are, Moses would not have wondered about anything at all. We may assume that Moses' main purpose in raising objections was to prevent the Israelites' wish being granted so that they would not die as a result of having their wish granted.

3The second approach is based on Berachot 58 where we are told that G'd does not perform a miracle in order to deceive the "beneficiaries" of that miracle. [I have my doubt that this is a correct interpretation of that statement in the Talmud. Ed.] Seeing that G'd had said that the meat would become זרא, loathsome to the Israelites, Rashi explains that the word means also חרב, sword, in some language, i.e. that the reference is not to the meat that G'd would provide but to meat the Israelites had in their possession at that time. In that event we can understand Moses wondering if the Israelites had a sufficient supply of animals to provide a continuous meat diet for thirty days. G'd replied that בשר אתן להם, that He Himself would give them permission to eat the herds they had brought out of Egypt. Apparently, up until that moment the Israelites had not been allowed to slaughter their animals for anything other than sacrificial meat. When Moses spoke about the fish of the ocean, he referred to the fish in the brook which was the באר של מרים, the well which travelled with the people. Moses calculated that the amount of fish in that brook was not even sufficient to provide the nation with fish for a single day, much less for thirty days. We have already mentioned that Moses did not think that G'd would perform a miracle in order to deceive people and to have them perish as a result of that miracle, so that he did not think G'd would miraculously increase the number of fish. Considering all this, Moses' surprise was certainly legitimate and does not constitute a lack of faith in G'd's ability to provide.