What were conditions actually like in Egypt that the Israelites forgot when they wanted to return?
The conditions were cruel taskmasters, work from sunup until dark, and only enough compensation to stay alive for the next day's labor. At the threshold of the land of milk and honey, the Israelites looked back and treated Egypt as heaven on earth.
Les explains from Numbers 14:4 that after Israel said, "Let us make a captain, and let us return to Egypt," they had already forgotten what Egypt was really like. Their taskmasters were cruel; they worked from sunup until dark and received only enough compensation to keep them alive to work the next day. Yet on the threshold of the land of milk and honey, they looked back and thought Egypt was heaven on earth. Les applies this to the present: people make excuses and despise what God has promised, and the human race is the same from start to finish. At bottom, it is unbelief.
And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return into Egypt.