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Forty Years in the Wilderness[a]

11 Departure from Sinai.[b]On the twentieth day of the second month of the second year, the cloud was lifted up from the tabernacle of the Testimony. 12 The people of Israel set out from the Sinai Desert and traveled until the cloud came to rest in the Desert of Paran.[c]

13 They set out this first time in accord with the command of the Lord received through Moses.

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Footnotes

  1. Numbers 10:11 In this section, the Book of Numbers takes up the story begun in the Book of Exodus. As the Hebrews journey through the wilderness, they suffer and rebel, thereby bringing down divine punishment on themselves. The Church, the new Israel, is subject to analogous vicissitudes in the course of its history.
  2. Numbers 10:11 So orderly an advance has the appearance more of a liturgical procession than of a movement of nomads; it is reminiscent of the solemn transfers of the Ark under David and Solomon (2 Sam 6:12f; 1 Ki 8:3f).
  3. Numbers 10:12 The Desert of Paran is northeast of the Sinai.