Numbers 10:11-13
The cloud was taken up
The signal to move is visual and absolute. They journey according to the commandment of the LORD by the hand of Moses, in the order set out.
Places of the Bible
The wilderness of Paran
The open country between the mountain and the border, crossed in the order the cloud decided.
Paran is where the march begins. On the twentieth day of the second month of the second year the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle, and they took their journey out of the wilderness of Sinai, and the cloud rested in the wilderness of Paran. The whole of Numbers 10 is about order: which tribe goes first, who carries what, and two silver trumpets with different signals for assembly and for setting out.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of The wilderness of Paran
- 01
- 02
Numbers 10:29-32
Leave us not, for thou knowest how we are to encamp
Moses asks his wife’s relative to come as their eyes in the wilderness, which sits oddly and honestly beside a cloud that already leads them.
- 03
Numbers 11:4-6
We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely
The list is specific and entirely about taste. Freely is the word carrying the lie, since nothing there was free.
- 04
Numbers 12:1-9
Hath the LORD indeed spoken only by Moses
The complaint starts as being about a Cushite wife and turns out to be about standing. The reply is about how plainly God speaks to him.
- 05
Numbers 13:1-3
Send thou men, that they may search the land
Twelve are sent from Paran, each a ruler of his tribe, and the account names every one of them before anything goes wrong.
Why it matters
What happens in this stretch is the character of the people becoming visible. They complain and fire burns in the outskirts of the camp. They remember the fish they ate in Egypt freely, and the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlick, and the manna is described again immediately afterwards as if in answer. Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses about his wife and about who else God has spoken through. And at the end of the chapter the people remove from Hazeroth and pitch in the wilderness of Paran, which is the sentence that sets up the spies.
4 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
