The Road Is Recorded, and the Land Is Not Yet Secure

“With their armies” is letsiv’otam, “by their hosts”, the military word Exodus 12:41 and 12:51 use for the night Israel left Egypt. The list is framed as the march of an army in formation, “under the hand of Moses and Aaron”, the two brothers who began it.

The Torah rarely says that Moses wrote something down: the war with Amalek (Exodus 17:14), the book of the covenant (Exodus 24:4), the song and the law of Deuteronomy 31. The verse turns its own phrase round, “goings out according to their journeys... journeys according to their goings out”, a mirror at the head of the list.

“On the morrow after the passover” is the phrase Joshua 5:11 uses for the day Israel first ate the produce of Canaan. The exodus and the end of the wilderness are dated by the same words. “An high hand” means openly and defiantly, as in Exodus 14:8.

The Hebrew participle means “were burying”: Egypt was burying its dead as Israel walked out. The line on Egypt’s gods fulfils Exodus 12:12, “against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment”, said on the night before.

Rameses is one of the two store cities Exodus 1:11 says Israel was forced to build. The march begins from a city of their own bondage. Succoth means booths or shelters, a camp name before it was a town.

Etham, “in the edge of the wilderness”, is where Exodus 13:20–22 first shows the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. The itinerary records the camp and leaves the pillar out.

“Turned again” is the doubling back of Exodus 14:2–3, meant to make Pharaoh think Israel was lost. Migdol means “tower”, the word for an Egyptian frontier fort. Baal-zephon is named for a Canaanite storm god, “lord of the north”, whose shrine stood by the sea.

The crossing of the sea takes one clause, and no more is said. Exodus 15:22 calls the desert beyond it “the wilderness of Shur”; here it is “the wilderness of Etham”, the district of the camp before the crossing. Marah means bitter, for the water Moses sweetened with a tree.

Elim means “great trees”, likely terebinths or palms, a fitting name for an oasis. It is the one stop in the list where the text says only good things. Exodus 16:1 dates the arrival in the wilderness of Sin after it to one month after leaving Egypt.

A camp “by the Red sea” after Elim appears nowhere in Exodus, which moves straight from Elim to the wilderness of Sin (16:1). The itinerary knows a stage the account in Exodus skipped, probably along the shore of the Gulf of Suez.

The manna was first given in the wilderness of Sin (Exodus 16), and the itinerary does not say so. Sin here is a place name, not the English word; it may be related to the name Sinai.

Dophkah occurs only here and in the next verse. Some scholars have linked it to the Egyptian word for turquoise and the mines at Serabit el-Khadim in western Sinai; that is a conjecture from the sound, not a settled identification.

Alush, like Dophkah, is not in Exodus. Between the wilderness of Sin and Rephidim, Exodus 17:1 says only that Israel journeyed “after their journeys”, and this list fills in two of them.

At Rephidim Amalek attacked, Joshua first appears in Scripture leading the fight, and Jethro came to Moses (Exodus 17–18). The itinerary keeps only one fact about the place: the lack of water that gave it the names Massah and Meribah.

Israel arrived at Sinai in the third month (Exodus 19:1) and left on the twentieth day of the second month of the second year (10:11). The best part of a year, the giving of the law and the building of the tabernacle, is one line in the list.

Kibroth-hattaavah means “the graves of craving”, the name given after the quails in 11:34. Taberah, where fire burned in the camp in 11:3, is missing; it was probably a place within the same stage, not a separate camp.

Hazeroth means enclosures or settlements. Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses there, and Miriam was shut out of the camp seven days while the people waited (12:1–16). The list gives the place and not the quarrel.

Rithmah comes from rotem, the broom bush, the shrub Elijah lay under in 1 Kings 19:4, where the King James says “juniper”. Rabbinic tradition placed the sending of the spies here, since 12:16 has Israel go from Hazeroth into Paran; the text of Numbers 33 does not say so.

Rimmon-parez means “pomegranate of the breach”. From Rithmah to Ezion-gaber runs a stretch of eighteen stations almost unknown outside this list; only Deuteronomy 2:8 and 10:6–7 name any of them again.

Libnah means whiteness, perhaps from white poplars or pale rock. It is not the Libnah in the lowlands of Judah that Joshua took (Joshua 10:29); the name was simply common.

Rissah is known only from this verse and the next. Its meaning and site are uncertain, and the list gives no event. It is one of the places where the only fact preserved is a night or a season under canvas.

Kehelathah comes from qahal, assembly. Some rabbinic readers placed Korah’s gathering of the congregation against Moses here, because the name means “assembling”; that is a reading of the name, not a record.

Mount Shapher, “the mountain of beauty” or “pleasantness”, is the only mountain named between Sinai and Hor. Its site is unknown.

Haradah comes from charad, to tremble or be afraid. The name may describe the place or recall something that happened there; the list gives only the stop.

Makheloth means “assemblies”, from the same root as Kehelathah three stops before. Two camps in quick succession were named for gatherings, which suggests places where the tribes came together after being spread out.

Tahath means “beneath” or “the low place”. It is also a personal name among the Kohathites and Ephraimites in 1 Chronicles 6:24 and 7:20, a reminder that places and people often shared names.

Tarah is spelled in Hebrew exactly like Terah, the name of Abraham’s father (Genesis 11:24). The King James distinguishes them by vowel only. Nothing else is known of the place.

Mithcah means sweetness, from matoq, sweet. Near the start of the list stood Marah, bitter; now a station bears the opposite name.

Hashmonah sounds like Heshmon, a town in the south of Judah (Joshua 15:27), and like Hashmon, the ancestor after whom Josephus says the Hasmonean family was named. No link has been shown; the likeness is only in the sound.

Moseroth means bonds or fetters. Deuteronomy 10:6 says “Mosera: there Aaron died, and there he was buried”, while this chapter puts his death on Mount Hor. Mosera may be the district in which Mount Hor lay; the two lists take the stations in different order.

Bene-jaakan means “the sons of Jaakan”, a clan name, Akan among the Horites of Seir in Genesis 36:27. Deuteronomy 10:6 calls it “Beeroth of the children of Jaakan”, the wells of that clan, so the place was named for the people who owned its water.

Hor-hagidgad, “the hollow of Gidgad”, is the Gudgodah of Deuteronomy 10:7. The two lists are clearly using the same route, even as their spellings differ.

Jotbathah is the one station in this stretch that Scripture describes. Deuteronomy 10:7 calls it “Jotbath, a land of rivers of waters”, a wadi of running streams in a dry country.

Ebronah comes from the root avar, to cross over, and may mean a ford or a passage. It is named only here and in the next verse.

Ezion-gaber, at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, later became Solomon’s port: he “made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red sea” (1 Kings 9:26). Jehoshaphat’s fleet was wrecked there (1 Kings 22:48).

From Ezion-gaber on the gulf to Kadesh is a long march north. Miriam died at Kadesh (20:1); the itinerary records Aaron’s death two verses later but not hers.

“In the edge of the land of Edom” marks the border because Edom had refused Israel passage (20:14–21). Josephus placed Mount Hor near Petra, the present Jebel Harun; many scholars prefer a hill nearer Kadesh, given the wording here and at 20:22–23.

The day, the month and the year are all given. No other death in the Torah is dated so exactly. The first of the fifth month is still kept in Jewish tradition as the anniversary of Aaron’s death.

The number checks against Exodus 7:7, where Aaron was eighty three when he spoke to Pharaoh. Forty years later he is a hundred and twenty three. Moses, three years younger, will die at a hundred and twenty (Deuteronomy 34:7).

The King James makes “king Arad” a man’s name here and in 21:1; the Hebrew reads “the Canaanite, the king of Arad”, a town in the Negev. The verse interrupts the list with a notice and leaves the reader to recall what followed at Hormah (21:3).

Zalmonah may come from tsel, shade. Some interpreters placed the fiery serpents of 21:4–9 around this stretch, which ran south round Edom by the road of the Red Sea; the list names no event.

Punon is generally identified with Feinan in the Arabah, one of the great copper mining districts of the ancient Near East. Moses made the serpent of nechoshet, copper or bronze (21:9); whether it happened near Punon the text does not say, but the metal was at hand.

Oboth appears in 21:10–11 as well. From here the two accounts of the route run together, and chapter 21 adds a song of the well and stations of its own that this record leaves out.

Ije-abarim means “the ruins of Abarim” or “the heaps of the regions beyond”, on the border of Moab. The next verse shortens it to Iim, “heaps”, as though the place had a nickname.

Dibon-gad takes its second name from the Gadites who rebuilt it (32:34). The itinerary calls the town by the name it came to bear under Israel’s occupation, not by its Moabite name alone.

Almon-diblathaim means something like “Almon of the two fig cakes”, from develah, a pressed cake of figs. Jeremiah 48:22 names Beth-diblathaim among Moab’s towns, and Mesha’s inscription says he built it.

Nebo is the summit from which Moses will look over the land and die (Deuteronomy 34:1). The camp in the mountains “before Nebo” brings Israel within sight of the place where the book of Deuteronomy ends.

From Rameses to the plains of Moab the chapter names forty two places. Everything from 22:1 to the end of Deuteronomy happens at this last one, with Israel camped on the valley floor opposite Jericho.

Abel-shittim, “meadow of acacias”, is the Shittim where the people “began to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab” (25:1). It is also the camp from which Joshua sends two spies to Jericho (Joshua 2:1). Beth-jesimoth means “house of the wastes”.

The phrase “in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho” opens this speech and 35:1 and closes the book at 36:13. The last laws of Numbers are all given at the camp the itinerary has just reached.

“When ye are passed over” is a participle in Hebrew, “when ye are crossing”, as if the crossing were already under way. The same Hebrew wording opens the law of the cities of refuge in 35:10.

“Quite pluck down” means pull down completely; in 1611 “quite” meant entirely. The bamot, high places, were hilltop shrines. Israel’s own kings would later worship at them, Solomon among them (1 Kings 3:3), until Josiah defiled them (2 Kings 23:8).

“Dispossess” and “possess” are the same Hebrew verb, yarash, in two forms: to drive out an occupant and to take the place as heir. The land changes hands in one word, and the reason given is simply “I have given you the land”.

“Where his lot falleth” is literally “to where the lot goes out for him”, the lot coming out of a jar or fold of a garment. Joshua 19:1 uses the same verb: “the second lot came forth to Simeon”. The rule of 26:54 is restated almost word for word.

The judgment came at Bochim: “they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you” (Judges 2:3). “Pricks” is sikkim, a word found only here, a thorn or splinter driven into the eye.

Leviticus 18:28 had already warned “that the land spue not you out also... as it spued out the nations that were before you”. “I thought to do” is dimmiti, “I intended” or “planned”. The warning closes the itinerary with the prospect of another departure.