And why have you made us come up out of Egypt, to bring us to this evil place?: This is another rhetorical question. Here the Israelites complain that Moses and Aaron have brought them from Egypt to a horrible place. Instead of the literal expression evil place, New Revised Standard Version and New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh have “wretched place.” The rendering for evil should not imply negative personal morality here. Good News Translation makes explicit what this phrase means by saying “miserable place where nothing will grow.”

It is no place for grain, or figs, or vines, or pomegranates: The Hebrew word for grain is literally “seed,” referring to cereal crops, such as wheat and barley, in this context. For suggestions on how to render grain, see the comments on 18.12. For figs and pomegranates, see 13.23. In some languages it will be more natural to mention what the vines produce, so Good News Translation says “grapes” (see the comments on 6.4).

And there is no water to drink: See verse 2.

Quoted with permission from de Regt, Lénart J. and Wendland, Ernst R. A Handbook on Numbers. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .