Numbers33chapter 33

Numbers 33:1-4

The list opens with a statement about itself, that Moses wrote these stages by the commandment of the Lord, so the keeping of the record was commanded work rather than a private memorandum. Verse 4 supplies a line the Exodus account never gave, that upon their gods also the Lord executed judgments, reporting as done what Exodus 12:12 had said would be done. The departure is dated to the fifteenth day of the first month, on the morrow after the passover, and Israel goes out with an high hand while Egypt is burying its firstborn.

Numbers 33:5-11

These first stages track Exodus 12 to 16 name for name, Succoth, Etham, Pi-hahiroth before Migdol, the crossing of the sea, Marah and Elim with its twelve fountains and seventy palm trees. Verse 10, the camp by the Red sea, has no place in the Exodus narrative, which moves straight from Elim to the wilderness of Sin at Exodus 16:1. John Gill marks the omission where it falls. The list keeps camps the story had no occasion to mention.

Numbers 33:12-15

Dophkah and Alush are named here and nowhere else in Scripture, so two camps of the exodus survive in this list alone. Verse 14 breaks the pattern with a clause about the place rather than the move, where was no water for the people to drink, and Exodus 17:1-7 is the account standing behind it. The wilderness of Sinai at verse 15 is one line for everything from Exodus 19 to Numbers 10, close to a year of the story.

Numbers 33:16-20

Two of these camps carry their own stories, the graves of the people that lusted at Kibroth-hattaavah in Numbers 11:34 and the seven days Miriam was shut out of the camp at Hazeroth in Numbers 12:14-15. The first of those names was given by the event itself. After Hazeroth the record goes quiet, and Rithmah, Rimmon-parez and Libnah are given with no word of what happened at them. Nothing in the list marks the sentence passed at Kadesh, which decided the rest of the book.

Numbers 33:21-29

Nine camps in nine verses with nothing but names attached. Most cannot be located now, and Adam Clarke marks Kehelathah utterly unknown while giving the distances the older writers assigned to the rest. These stations belong to the years under the sentence of chapter 14, which Deuteronomy 2:14 counts at thirty and eight from Kadesh-barnea to the brook Zered. The record keeps the movements of a generation whose story the narrative had stopped telling.

Numbers 33:30-35

Deuteronomy 10:6-7 names these same camps in the other order, from Beeroth of the children of Jaakan to Mosera, then Gudgodah and Jotbath, and it puts Aaron's death at Mosera while verse 38 here puts it at mount Hor. Both accounts stand in the canon. Keil and Delitzsch read Moserah as the district in which mount Hor stands, and others take the two lists to record the same ground crossed twice. The chapter gives its own order and explains nothing about the other.

Numbers 33:36-40

in the wilderness of Zin: The second and last date in the chapter is a death, the first day of the fifth month in the fortieth year, and Aaron at a hundred and twenty and three years is the only man whose dying this list records. Numbers 20:22-29 gives the account, the garments taken off Aaron and put on Eleazar on the mountain in sight of the congregation. Verse 40 breaks in with a Canaanite king who hears of their coming and then says nothing further, and Numbers 21:1-3 finishes that matter with the vow and the name Hormah. The fortieth year named here fixes the near end of the forty years passed in chapter 14.

Numbers 33:41-49

Zalmonah and Punon fall between mount Hor and Oboth, which is the stretch where Numbers 21:4-9 sets the fiery serpents and the serpent of brass that John 3:14-15 takes up by name. The mountains of Abarim before Nebo at verse 47 is the ground where Moses will be shown the land and die, in Deuteronomy 34:1-5, and the list names the place without saying so. Abel-shittim at verse 49 is the Shittim of Numbers 25:1, where Israel joined itself unto Baal-peor. The record of the stages stops at the camp where the plague of chapter 25 fell.

Numbers 33:50-54

The order is given before Jordan is crossed and it names three things to be destroyed, their pictures, their molten images and their high places, so the shrines go with the images. Adam Clarke reads the word rendered pictures as carved or figured stones set up for worship. Verse 53 grounds the dispossession in a gift already made, for I have given you the land to possess it. Verse 54 holds two methods together, the lot deciding the place and the size of a tribe deciding the amount, which Numbers 26:53-56 had already set out.

Numbers 33:55-56

not drive out the inhabitants: Judges 2:1-3 quotes this warning back and reports the outcome, the nations left in the land becoming thorns in their sides and their gods a snare, and Judges 3:5-6 names the marriages that followed. Verse 56 turns the sentence around, so that what was purposed for the inhabitants falls on Israel instead. The record of the wandering closes with the terms of staying in the land.