The Ordered Camp Finally Moves

The last instruction given at Sinai before the camp moves. After nine chapters of arrangements, the book places a short law that is almost a manufacturing order exactly where standing still turns into marching.

“Of a whole piece” renders miqshah, hammered work, the term Exodus 25:18 and 25:31 use for the cherubim and the lampstand: beaten from one mass of metal, not cast or joined. These are chatsotserot, straight metal tubes, not the ram’s horn shofar. Josephus says each was a little under a cubit long.

“Blow” here is the plain blast, taqa, as distinct from the alarm of verse 5. The meeting point is fixed at the door of the tent of meeting, so the whole assembly converges on the one place every tent in the camp plan of chapter 2 already faces.

The princes are the twelve tribal leaders named in 1:5–16 and again at the dedication in chapter 7. “Thousands” is eleph, which can mean a thousand or a clan unit, a word that has carried much of the modern debate over how large the census totals are meant to be.

“Alarm” is teruah, a broken or quavering blast, the word Joshua 6:5 uses for the great shout at Jericho. The east camps are Judah, Issachar and Zebulun (2:3), the side facing the tent’s entrance, so the first alarm moves the division nearest the door.

Only east and south are given their signals. The Hebrew stops at two; the Greek Septuagint adds a third alarm for the west and a fourth for the north, supplying what it took to be missing. The closing clause turns from the list to the general rule.

The same instruments, a different pattern of sound. A gathering must never be mistaken for a departure, so the alarm is forbidden at assembly outright. The Mishnah’s rules for the new year still keep the long plain blast and the broken teruah as separate sounds.

The blowing stays in the priestly family rather than passing to heralds from each tribe. When Israel goes to war with Midian in 31:6, it is Phinehas the priest who goes out “with the holy instruments, and the trumpets to blow in his hand”.

Numbers looks past the wilderness here for the first time in this chapter: the war envisaged is fought “in your land” against an oppressor. “Be remembered” is zakar, the verb of Genesis 8:1 where God remembered Noah, remembrance that issues in rescue.

Three kinds of occasion are named: days of gladness, set feasts, and the new moons. The verse lists burnt offerings and peace offerings only. “Memorial” is zikkaron, from the same root as “remembered” in verse 9, so the war trumpet and the festival trumpet do the same work before God.

Nineteen days after the census began on the first of the second month (1:1), and less than a year after arriving at Sinai in the third month (Exodus 19:1). The tabernacle had stood since the first of the first month (Exodus 40:17); the late Passover of 9:11 fell six days before this.

“Took their journeys” is plural, stages, the word chapter 33 uses for the whole itinerary from Egypt. Paran is the broad wilderness south of Canaan and north of Sinai, but the camp does not formally pitch in it until 12:16, after Taberah, Kibroth-hattaavah and Hazeroth.

“First” may mean the first stage, or that this was the first time they marched in this order. “By the hand of Moses” is the book’s standing phrase for instruction passed through him: the cloud lifted, and the command reached the camps by a man.

Nahshon was Aaron’s brother-in-law, since Aaron married Elisheba the daughter of Amminadab (Exodus 6:23). He brought the first dedication gift in 7:12, and Ruth 4:20 puts him in the line that leads to David. Judah’s camp numbered 186,400 (2:9).

Nethaneel, “God has given”, brought the second gift in 7:18, a day after Nahshon. The order of march repeats the order of dedication exactly, so the twelve days of offerings in chapter 7 were already this procession in miniature.

Not the Reubenite Eliab, son of Pallu, whose sons Dathan and Abiram rebel in chapter 16 (26:8–9). Zebulun, Leah’s sixth and last son, marches third in the front division beside Issachar, its full brother.

The first time the tabernacle is taken down on the march. Gershon carried the curtains and coverings and Merari the boards, bars, pillars and sockets (4:25–32), on the six wagons of chapter 7: two to Gershon, four to Merari, the heavier load given the most oxen.

Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn, heads only the second division; Judah has the front. Elizur means “my God is a rock”. Reuben’s camp lay on the south, so this is the division the second alarm of verse 6 sets moving.

Zurishaddai means “my rock is Shaddai”, the old divine title of Genesis 17:1. Simeon counted 59,300 at Sinai (1:23) and would fall to 22,200 at the second census (26:14), the steepest loss of any tribe.

The father is Deuel, as in 1:14 and 7:42, but Reuel in 2:14. The Hebrew letters d and r are nearly identical in shape, so one spelling is almost certainly a copyist’s slip; the Greek has Ragouel in every place.

“The sanctuary” here means the holy things, ark, table, lampstand and altars, which Kohath carried on their shoulders with no wagons at all (7:9). “Against they came” is 1611 English for “in readiness for their arrival”: against in its old sense of before, in time for.

Ephraim, Joseph’s younger son, heads the western division, as Jacob set Ephraim before Manasseh in Genesis 48:20. By 1 Chronicles 7:26–27, Elishama son of Ammihud was the grandfather of Joshua.

Gamaliel means “God is my reward”. Manasseh was the smallest tribe at Sinai with 32,200 (1:35) and would grow to 52,700 by the second census (26:34), the largest gain any tribe makes.

Benjamin, Rachel’s second son, marches with the two tribes of his brother Joseph, so the whole western division is Rachel’s descendants. Abidan means “my father is judge”; Gideoni shares its root with Gideon, “hewer”.

“Rereward” is the old spelling of rearward. The Hebrew is measef, the gatherer, the division that picks up stragglers and anything left behind. Dan was the largest tribe after Judah, 62,700 (1:39), and its camp 157,600 strong (2:31), numbers suited to the rear guard.

Asher was the son of Leah’s maid Zilpah. With Dan and Naphtali, the sons of Rachel’s maid Bilhah, the rear division brings together all three tribes it contains from Jacob’s two secondary wives.

The last name in the order of march. Ahira is hard to read; the plain sense, “my brother is evil” or “brother of evil”, is so strange that some take ra as a divine name. Naphtali closes the column as it closed the dedication on the twelfth day (7:78).

The summary line keeps the census vocabulary: “according to their armies”, tsivotam, hosts. The tribes do not wander off as families but march as the mustered companies of chapter 1.

Hobab is son of Raguel, the Reuel of Exodus 2:18, which leaves “father in law” uncertain: it may describe Raguel, or Hobab himself, as Judges 4:11 reads it. The Hebrew choten is any relative by marriage, not only a wife’s father.

Hobab’s refusal uses the words of Abram’s call in reverse. Abram was told to leave “thy country, and... thy kindred” (Genesis 12:1); Hobab will go back to “mine own land, and to my kindred”, the same word moledet in both.

“Instead of eyes” is how the Hebrew reads, a guide who sees water and pasture. The Greek Septuagint took it differently: “thou shalt be an elder among us”. Judges 1:16 finds the Kenites, descendants of Moses’ father-in-law, settled with Judah, which suggests the family did come.

The doubled “it shall be” is an insistence in the Hebrew as well. The offer is not a wage but a share: whatever good the LORD does Israel, Israel will do to Hobab, a stranger folded into the promise of verse 29.

“The mount of the LORD” is the name Exodus 3:1 gives Horeb, where Moses met God at the bush, and the “three days’ journey” echoes the three days Moses asked Pharaoh for in Exodus 3:18. “To search out” is tur, the verb used for the spies in 13:2.

The cloud is “upon them”, overhead, a canopy as well as a sign. The Greek Septuagint places this verse after verses 35 and 36, a sign that the two sayings that follow were already felt to be an insertion into the account.

Hebrew scrolls set this verse and the next between two inverted letters nun, which the Talmud reads as marking them off as a book of their own. Psalm 68:1 opens with Moses’ cry almost word for word: “Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered.”

“Many thousands” is literally “ten thousands of thousands”. It reverses the blessing on Rebekah in Genesis 24:60, “thousands of millions”, thousands of ten thousands. The prayer asks the LORD to settle among Israel whenever the ark comes to rest.