In the wilderness

The story of the Israelite's exodus into the wilderness finesses the question of human ecological pressure on the environment. The nation of Israel would certainly have overwhelmed the fragile ecology of any wilderness locale they occupied. God however intervenes super-naturally by delivering the mannah. He thereby, for the duration of their residence in the wilderness, eliminates from the responsibility of the people of Israel the need to deal with the problem of environmental pressure. 

The experience of the Children of Israel in the Sinai wilderness does not address any of the real matters of creative challenge for a people that needs to struggle to make a home and to make a living in their own land. In some sense, the Israelites in the desert are living through their own version of the resource curse. They are dependant on their strongman ruler for a sustenance that comes to them not through the toil of their own labor (unless you want to call going out every day and scooping up mannah, toil) but through the distribution of the central government (in this case, God's providence (in the sense of provide-ence) through the administration of Moshe). Nor did the Israelites accumulate the stock of their wealth through their own devices. It was, rather, handed to them by the Egyptians as the Israelites walked out of Egypt. 

If we denote God's agency, however, as the embodiment of the people's creative energy then the story works better. Then what the story is saying is that the people must unite in creative enterprise in order for them to be able to survive in a ecologically challenged environment.