Numbers10chapter 10

Numbers 10:1-2

The instrument commanded here is the silver trumpet, and it is a different thing from the ram's horn that sounded at Sinai in Exodus 19:16. Of a whole piece renders the word used of the candlestick at Exodus 25:31, beaten out of one mass rather than assembled from parts. The verse names two uses in one breath, calling the assembly and moving the camps, so worship and marching orders come from the same pair of instruments.

Numbers 10:3-4

Both trumpets blown together bring the whole nation to the door of the tent, and one trumpet brings the princes only. The signal carries its own address, so a man knows from the sound whether he is the one being called. The gathering place is the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, which Exodus 29:42 had already named as the place where God meets them.

Numbers 10:5-7

The alarm is a broken quavering blast and the ordinary call is a long even note, and verse 7 states the difference outright, ye shall blow, but ye shall not sound an alarm. One alarm moves the east standard and a second alarm moves the south. The Hebrew text stops at two, while the Septuagint carries signals for the west and the north as well, which is why Barnes and Clarke reckon a third and a fourth alarm were blown.

Numbers 10:8-10

The trumpets belong to the priests and to nobody else, and the ordinance runs through the generations, so 2 Chronicles 5:12 has a hundred and twenty priests sounding them at the temple. Verse 9 gives the trumpets to war and verse 10 gives them to gladness, new moons and sacrifices, and both uses are called a memorial before God. Numbers 31:6 sends Phinehas to battle with the trumpets in his hand, and at 2 Chronicles 13:12 Abijah points to the priests with the sounding trumpets as the reason Judah cannot be fought.

Numbers 10:11-12

on the twentieth day of the second month: Exodus 19:1 brought Israel to Sinai in the third month of the first year, and this verse dates the departure to the twentieth day of the second month of the second year, so the camp at the mountain stood close to eleven months. Everything from Exodus 19 through Numbers 10:10 happens in that one place. The cloud is taken up and the nation moves, which is the rule laid down at Numbers 9:17-23, and no man gives the order.

Numbers 10:13-14

Judah leads, as Numbers 2:3 had set it, pitched on the east toward the rising of the sun, and that precedence runs back to Genesis 49:10. The captain named is Nahshon the son of Amminadab, whose sister Elisheba married Aaron at Exodus 6:23 and whose name stands in the line of David at Ruth 4:20 and in the line of Christ at Matthew 1:4. Matthew Henry reads the leading standard as an early pledge of the sceptre afterward committed to David.

Numbers 10:15-17

Issachar and Zebulun complete the east standard, and then the tent itself comes down. Gershon and Merari carry the structure directly behind Judah on the six wagons given them at Numbers 7:7-8, which puts the frame of the tabernacle six tribes ahead of the holy things it houses. Verse 21 gives the reason for that spacing.

Numbers 10:18-20

Reuben, Simeon and Gad move next, the south standard of Numbers 2:10-16. Reuben was the firstborn and walks fourth in the column, which Genesis 49:3-4 had explained and Numbers 2 had already fixed. The order of the march is the order of the camp down to the last name, so the arrangement holds when the nation is in motion.

Numbers 10:21

The Kohathites carry the ark and the holy furniture on their shoulders, a rule made at Numbers 7:9 by giving them no wagons at all, and 2 Samuel 6:3-7 is where the rule is set aside and a man dies for it. They walk six tribes behind the frame of the tent, and the last clause of the verse explains the gap, the other did set up the tabernacle against they came. The house stands ready before its furniture arrives.

Numbers 10:22-24

Ephraim, Manasseh and Benjamin make the west standard of Numbers 2:18-24, and all three descend from Rachel. Ephraim goes before Manasseh here, the order Jacob set with crossed hands at Genesis 48:14-20 over Joseph's objection. The three captains are the same men who brought the offerings on days seven, eight and nine in Numbers 7.

Numbers 10:25-28

Dan, Asher and Naphtali close the column as the north standard of Numbers 2:25-31. Rereward is the rear guard, and the older commentators note that the Hebrew behind it carries the sense of a gathering party, the men who took up what the camps ahead had left. Verse 28 closes the roll with a summary, and the whole list from verse 14 repeats Numbers 2 without altering a name or a position.

Numbers 10:29-30

Who Hobab is has been argued for centuries, since the Hebrew word rendered father in law covers a range of relations by marriage. Barnes and Wesley read Hobab as the son of Reuel and the brother in law of Moses, while Jamieson, Fausset and Brown identify Reuel with Jethro and take Hobab for his son. What Moses offers him is a share in a promise rather than wages, come thou with us, and we will do thee good, and Hobab answers with a refusal and the pull of his own land and kindred.

Numbers 10:31-32

Moses asks a Midianite to be to them instead of eyes one chapter after the cloud was given as their guide at Numbers 9:17-23, and the text sets the two beside each other and explains nothing. Barnes calls instead of eyes a desert proverb for the man who knows where water, fuel and pasture lie, while Henry suggests Moses spoke to give Hobab a use among them. The offer at verse 32 is measured out, what goodness the Lord shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee, so Moses promises exactly what he expects to receive. Numbers never records whether Hobab went, though Judges 1:16 and 4:11 have his descendants settled in the land.

Numbers 10:33-34

Three days out from the mountain the ark goes ahead of the column to search out a resting place, while Numbers 2:17 and verse 21 of this chapter put the ark in the middle of the host. Barnes marks the difference and both statements stand in the same chapter. The cloud is over them by day, which began at Exodus 13:21 and which Numbers 9 made the rule governing every move.

Numbers 10:35

Two sentences from Moses frame every move of the ark, and this is the first of them. Psalm 68:1 opens with the same words, Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered, so the sentence outlives the wilderness and is sung over the ark in David's day. The Hebrew scribes set an inverted letter before verse 35 and after verse 36, and the reason for the mark is disputed. Ancient Jewish teachers treated the two verses as a small book of their own, which would make seven books in the Torah rather than five.

Numbers 10:36

The resting sentence asks God to come back to the people rather than asking the people to settle. Many thousands is literally ten thousand thousands, and Barnes reads the line as a plea that the Lord restore the ten thousands of the thousands of Israel, taking the verb in the sense it carries at Psalm 85:4. Solomon prays the resting half of this pair at the dedication of the temple in 2 Chronicles 6:41, and Psalm 132:8 keeps it in nearly the same words, Arise, O Lord, into thy rest, thou, and the ark of thy strength.