How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance, and your burden, and your strife? His meaning is, that he could not hear and try all their causes, and determine all their law suits, and decide the strifes and controversies which arose between them; it was too heavy for him, and brought too much trouble and incumbrance upon him.

"How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance, and your burden, and your strife?" The burden and cumbrance of the nation are the nation itself, with all its affairs and transactions, which pressed upon the shoulders of Moses.

How can I myself alone {i} bear your cumbrance, and your burden, and your strife?

(i) Signifying how great a burden it is, to govern the people.

1:12 Your burden - The trouble of ruling and managing so perverse a people. Your strife - Your contentions among yourselves, for the determnination whereof the elders were appointed.

1:9-18 Moses reminds the people of the happy constitution of their government, which might make them all safe and easy, if it was not their own fault. He owns the fulfilment of God's promise to Abraham, and prays for the further accomplishment of it. We are not straitened in the power and goodness of God; why should we be straitened in our own faith and hope? Good laws were given to the Israelites, and good men were to see to the execution of them, which showed God's goodness to them, and the care of Moses.