grumbling: the wilderness generation's voiced complaint against God and against the leaders he appointed
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
This is not a general word for complaining. It belongs to one stretch of Israel's story: the manna in Exodus 16, and the rebellions of Numbers 14 and 17. In all seven of its verses the same three things hold:
it is plural, a chorus of voices rather than one unhappy person
it is the act of the whole assembly, spoken as a community
it is something God is said to hear
What Exodus 16 presses hardest is who the complaining is actually aimed at. The people bring it to Moses and Aaron, and Moses answers that it was never against him at all: your grumblings are not against us, but against the LORD. Numbers keeps the same accounting. God calls them the grumblings of the sons of Israel, which they grumble against me, and the budding staff of Aaron is given so that these grumblings will finally be quieted. Complaining against the leaders God appointed is counted as complaining against God.
That is what marks this word off from ordinary lament. Scripture is full of raw protest addressed to God, and it treats that as prayer. This word names protest turned against him, by a people who have stopped asking and started accusing. The verb it belongs with (לוּן) carries the same weight, and when the Greek Old Testament needed a word for it, translators chose the one (γογγυσμός) the New Testament later used to warn readers not to repeat the wilderness generation's mistake.
always names a corporate act, since the plural belongs to the whole assembly and never to one disgruntled personExo 16:9Exo 16:12
Both
both describe discontent that is spoken aloud rather than merely feltExo 16:7
Only murmurings
in English "murmuring" suggests a soft private mutter, something too small to matter, while the Hebrew names an offense serious enough to bring judgment
counts complaint against God's appointed leaders as complaint against God himselfExo 16:8Num 17:5
Both
both name repeated, voiced dissatisfaction with how one is being treatedNum 14:27
Only grumblings
in English "grumbling" is usually petty and low stakes, an office annoyance rather than a rupture in a relationship
“complaints”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How telunah differs from similar Hebrew words
לוּןthe verb this noun belongs with, which also carries an unrelated sense of staying somewhere overnight; this word is the noun for the complaint itself, the thing God says he hears
This word names the complaints as a body of grievance that God has already taken in. Moses tells the people to come near because the LORD has heard their complaining (Exodus 16:9), and God says it himself: "I have heard the murmurings of the Israelites" (Exodus 16:12).Exo 16:9Exo 16:12
It is also the thing God moves to bring to an end. The complaints are a mass that has piled up on him and has to be taken away, so Aaron's staff is kept in front of the covenant chest until their complaining is finished and the people stop dying for it (Numbers 17:10).Num 17:10
Both
Both belong to the same wilderness crisis and cover the same behavior: the whole community, not one disgruntled person, complaining against Moses and Aaron over food, water, and where they have been led. The two words often stand in one sentence, the act and the grievance it produces (Exodus 16:7;Numbers 14:27).Exo 16:7Num 14:27
Both carry the same charge: grumbling aimed at human leaders counts as grumbling aimed at God. Moses tells the people their complaints are not against him and Aaron but against the LORD (Exodus 16:8), and God speaks of taking off himself the complaining that Israel directs at Moses and Aaron (Numbers 17:5).Exo 16:8Num 17:5
This word reports the complaining as it broke out, fixed to a moment and to one concrete grievance, with the people's own words usually quoted right afterward: nothing to drink at Marah (Exodus 15:24), raging thirst at Rephidim (Exodus 17:3), and the frightening report about the land (Numbers 14:2).Exo 15:24Exo 17:3Num 14:2
It covers stirring other people into complaining, not only complaining yourself. The scouts who had gone through the land came back and set the whole community grumbling against Moses (Numbers 14:36), and Moses tells Korah's followers that their quarrel with Aaron is the same act (Numbers 16:11).Num 14:36Num 16:11
It reaches past the wilderness years and past the manna story. Once Israel discovered it had been tricked into a treaty with the people of Gibeon, the whole community turned on its own leaders (Joshua 9:18), a protest against a decision they thought wrong, with nothing said about God hearing it.Jos 9:18
מְרִיrebellion as a settled stubborn streak in a people; this word is the voiced complaining that such rebellion produces, which is why Numbers can call the same people rebels and speak of their grumblings in one breath
Names the audible complaining itself, the talk that God says he has heard, so it can be counted, quoted back, and brought to an end.Num 14:27Num 17:5
Rises out of concrete physical want, food and hunger in the desert, rather than out of a rejected command.Exo 16:7Exo 16:12
Is aimed at human leaders on the surface while the text insists it lands on God, a redirection this word makes explicit.Exo 16:8Exo 16:9
Belongs entirely to one stretch of the story, the congregation in the wilderness, and never spreads to individuals or to later generations.Exo 16:7Num 14:27
Both
Both name resistance that God treats as aimed at himself, so neither is a private mood that can be brushed off as harmless.Deu 31:27Num 14:27
They meet in one scene: Aaron's budding staff is kept as a warning sign to the rebels so that their complaining will stop and they will not die.Num 17:10
Both describe the same wilderness generation, one from the inside as its ingrained defiance and the other from the outside as the noise that defiance made.Num 17:10Exo 16:9
Names a settled disposition rather than an episode, so it can be pinned on a people as a lasting character. Ezekiel calls Israel a "house of rebellion" again and again, whether they listen or refuse.Ezk 2:5Ezk 12:2Ezk 44:6
Weighed as a grave sin in its own right, put on the same level as the practices Israel was forbidden to touch.1Sa 15:23
Fits one person as easily as a crowd: an individual can be marked by it in the wisdom writings and in Job's protest.Pro 17:11Job 23:2
Describes refusal of God's own instruction and covenant demands, not resistance to a hardship, and it reaches far beyond the wilderness years into the prophets and the later confessions.Deu 31:27Isa 30:9Neh 9:17
צְעָקָהan outcry forced out by real suffering and aimed at God for rescue, which he answers; this word is complaint aimed against him, which he answers with judgment
This is complaining with content, repeatable words of dissatisfaction over food and living conditions, aimed at the men in charge rather than wrung out by injury.Exo 16:7Exo 16:8Exo 16:9
Though the words are spoken against Moses and Aaron, God counts them as aimed at himself, which makes the complaining a matter of loyalty rather than of grief.Exo 16:8Num 17:5
What it draws from God is rebuke and a demand that it stop, never rescue: he asks how long he must put up with it, and he sets up a sign to end it for good.Num 14:27Num 17:10
Both
Both name the raised voice of a whole group under strain, and in each case God says plainly that he has heard it before he acts.Exo 3:7Exo 3:9Exo 16:12Num 14:27
Both are directed at somebody: the text normally names the party the noise is against, so it works as a charge laid at someone's door and not just distress hanging in the air.Gen 18:21Neh 5:1Exo 16:8Num 17:5
This is the sound of pain itself, a scream forced out by loss or terror rather than a set of complaints anyone could repeat afterward.Gen 27:34Exo 11:6Exo 12:30
It is the noise made by people who are being wronged, and the text treats it as evidence: God goes down to see whether the charge is true, and he promises to answer it on the victims' side.Gen 18:21Exo 22:23Job 34:28Isa 5:7
It is not tied to Israel at all: prophets use it for the shrieking of foreign towns and their leaders on the day disaster reaches them.Jer 25:36Jer 48:3Jer 49:21Zep 1:10
שִׂיחַthe trouble a person spreads out before God in prayer, spoken to him and welcome; this word is complaint the community speaks against him
It covers ordinary talk and quiet musing that carries no grievance at all, including happy thoughts a person hopes God will enjoy hearing.Psa 104:341Ki 18:272Ki 9:11
It belongs to one person's inner life: a single sufferer putting his own misery into words about his own life, never a crowd speaking as one.Job 10:1Job 23:21Sa 1:16
It can be carried to God as prayer, something a person deliberately pours out in his presence and is welcomed for, not something he is blamed for saying.Psa 142:2Psa 102:0Psa 64:1
telunah in the other biblical languages
γογγυσμόςGreek“murmuring”the Greek noun for grumbling that the Septuagint used to render this word; the New Testament reaches for it when warning believers not to repeat the wilderness generation's complaining
confined entirely to Israel's wilderness rebellion: every occurrence is the nation's grumbling against the LORD and against Moses and Aaron in the desert, so the word is effectively a technical term for that revoltExo 16:7Num 14:27
the complaint is aimed at God himself even when spoken against his appointed leaders, treated as a direct affront the LORD hears and answers with judgmentExo 16:8Num 17:10
Both
both name low, grudging discontent muttered as an undertone rather than voiced as open confrontationPhp 2:14Exo 16:9
the Greek word is the very term the Septuagint used to render the Hebrew wilderness-murmuring word, so the New Testament writers reach for it carrying the same charge of rebellious grumbling1Pe 4:9Num 14:27
ranges over ordinary human settings, not only complaint against God: a crowd muttering about whether Jesus is good or a deceiver, and grumbling within a community about how people treat one anotherJhn 7:121Pe 4:9
can name friction between people or groups rather than rebellion against a leader: one group's complaint against another over unfair treatment, or the everyday grumbling a believer is told to dropAct 6:1Php 2:14
What scholars say about telunah
תְּלֻנָּה is a feminine noun with a t-preformative built on the root of לוּן II, and a number of scholars judge the noun morphologically primary and the verb a secondary denominative, since that verb appears only in Niphal and Hiphil and never in Qal. Allan Harman (NIDOTTE) describes the word group as a technical term for Israel's rebellious complaint against divinely appointed leadership. The distribution is tightly clustered and wholly priestly in character: Exod 16:7, 8 (twice), 9, 12; Num 14:27; 17:5, 10 (Heb 17:20, 25). George Coats (Rebellion in the Wilderness, 1968) argued that the murmuring motif is a secondary literary layer imposed on older traditions of divine provision, and noted that the preposition עַל distinguishes complaint against Moses and Aaron from complaint against YHWH, a distinction the priestly redaction deliberately collapses at Exod 16:7-8. Brevard Childs resisted Coats's developmental account while stressing the motif's canonical function as the deep structure of Israel's covenant failure. David Frankel (The Murmuring Stories of the Priestly School, 2002) restratified the priestly material and observed that a bare report of complaint with this root is not inherently culpable, citing Josh 9:18 where the congregation's complaint against the leaders is justified; the negative theological coloring comes from context and from the speeches placed in the people's mouths. Baruch Levine reads Num 17:20 (Eng 17:5) as programmatic Aaronide legitimation, the staff test permanently stilling the murmurings directed at the priestly line. Cornelis Houtman stresses the rumbling, low-voiced character of the word group, semi-public muttering rather than open shouting. The Septuagint renders it γογγυσμός, the term through which wilderness murmuring passes into 1 Cor 10:10, John 6, and Jude 16.
Where scholars disagree about telunah
Whether this noun and its verb belong to the ordinary root meaning "to spend the night" or to a separate root that merely looks like it. Most modern scholarship treats the grumbling word group as its own root, pointing to the doubled consonant in the verb's causative forms, the absence of any plain active form, the consistently shorter spelling in the Samaritan Pentateuch, and the lack of a convincing relative in any other Semitic language. Medieval Jewish grammarians instead read a single root stretched by metaphor, the grumbler being someone who lingers stubbornly in complaint, and that older reading still survives in some popular reference works.
majorityTwo separate roots that happen to look alike; the grumbling word group is unrelated to the verb for spending the night.; Th. Nöldeke, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 37 (1883), 525-540; BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1906), s.v. לוּן; HALOT, s.v. לוּן II; J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament (Clarendon, 1968)
minorityOne root extended by metaphor, grumbling being a stubborn lingering in complaint.; Ibn Janah, Kitab al-Usul (Sefer ha-Shorashim), ed. W. Bacher (Berlin, 1896), s.v. לון; D. Kimhi (Radak), Sefer ha-Shorashim, ed. Biesenthal and Lebrecht (Berlin, 1847), s.v. לון
Sources
BDB, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1906), s.v. תְּלוּנָהlexicon
HALOT, s.v. תְּלֻנָּהlexicon
A. Harman, לון, in NIDOTTE (Zondervan, 1997)dictionary
G. W. Coats, Rebellion in the Wilderness: The Murmuring Motif in the Wilderness Traditions of the Old Testament (Abingdon, 1968)monograph
B. S. Childs, The Book of Exodus (Old Testament Library; Westminster, 1974)commentary
D. Frankel, The Murmuring Stories of the Priestly School (VTSup 89; Brill, 2002)monograph
B. A. Levine, Numbers 1-20 (Anchor Bible; Doubleday, 1993)commentary
C. Houtman, Exodus (Historical Commentary on the Old Testament; Kok, 1993-2002)commentary
Th. Nöldeke, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 37 (1883), 525-540article