Rabbi Elazar Hamodai offered a surprising claim about what life was actually like for the Israelites in Egypt. Contrary to what one might expect from a nation of slaves, Israel lived as servants to kings, and that distinction made all the difference.
Because they served royalty, the Israelites enjoyed privileges that ordinary slaves never had. When they went out to market, they could take bread, meat, fish, and all other provisions, and no one stopped them. When they walked into the fields, they could pick grapes, figs, and pomegranates freely, and no one challenged them. As servants of the king, they carried his authority. Merchants and farmers knew better than to interfere with Pharaoh's workforce.
This teaching from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael casts the Israelites' complaints in the wilderness in a completely different light. When they cried out in (Exodus 16:3), "Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, when we ate bread to satiety," they were not inventing a fantasy. They were remembering a real abundance they once had, even under bondage.
Rabbi Elazar's point is devastating in its honesty. Slavery with full stomachs can seem preferable to freedom with empty ones. The Israelites were not ungrateful without cause. They had traded a life of material comfort under Pharaoh for hunger and uncertainty in the desert. Understanding what they lost makes their struggle in the wilderness far more human and far more painful.