And it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle of the testimony.

The second year, in the second month, the twentieth day of the month, the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle of the covenant.

And it came to pass in the second year, in the second month, on the twentieth of the month, that the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle of the testimony.

And it cometh to pass, in the second year, in the second month, in the twentieth of the month, the cloud hath gone up from off the tabernacle of the testimony,

Now in the second year, on the twentieth day of the second month, the cloud was taken up from over the Tent of witness.

In the second year, in the second month, on the twentieth day of the month, the cloud was lifted up from the tabernacle of the covenant.

Fuit autem anno secundo, mense secundo, vicesima mensis, ascendit nubes a tabernaculo testimonii.

And it came to pass on the twentieth day Moses records that after leaving Mount Sinai, the camp was first pitched in the wilderness of Paran; and although the distance was not great, -- being, as we shall soon see, a three days' journey, -- still the fatigue was sufficient to harass and weary the people. It is mentioned in praise of their obedience that they were expeditious in setting forth "according to the commandment of God;" but presently, through failure of the spirit of perseverance, their levity and inconstancy betrayed itself. When it is said that "they journeyed by their journeyings," (profectos esse per suas profectiones,) it refers to their whole progress through the desert. As to the word, I know not why Jerome translated it turmas, (troops,) for its root; is the verb ns nasang, which is used with it; and according to its constant use in Scripture, it plainly means stations, [1] or halting-places. We say in Frealch journees, or gistes.

Footnotes

1 - "Stationibus, vel auspiciis;" the latter being evidently a misprint for hospitiis. -- Lat. "Gistum, hospitium, susceptio; Gall, giste; jus, quod dominis feudalibus competebat in vassallorum suorum praediis, qui staffs ae condietis vicibus eos in domibus suis hospitio, et conviviis excipere tenebantur. Quod quidem jus Mansionaticum sub prima et secunda Regum Francorum stirpe, sub tertia vero Gistum, Procuratio, Coenaticum, Comestio, Pastus, Prandium dictum suis locis observamus." -- Adelung's Du Cange.

At this point commences the second great division of the book, extending to the close of Numbers. 14. The remaining verses of the present chapter narrate the actual break up of the camp at Sinai and the order of the march.

The twentieth day of the second month - The Israelites had lain encamped in the wilderness of Sinai about eleven months and twenty days; compare Exodus 19:1 with this verse. They now received the order of God to decamp, and proceed towards the promised land; and therefore the Samaritan introduces at this place the words which we find in Deuteronomy 1:6-8 : "The Lord our God spake unto us in Horeb, saying: Ye have dwelt long enough in this mount, turn and take your journey," etc.

And it came to pass, on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year,.... Which was the twentieth of the month Ijar, in the second year of the coming of the Israelites out of Egypt; who, as it appears from hence, compared with Exodus 19:1; had been in the wilderness of Sinai twelve months wanting ten days; so Jarchi and other Jewish writers (m), with whom Aben Ezra agrees, who says it was near a year:
that the cloud was taken up from off the tabernacle of the testimony; that part of the tabernacle where the ark of the testimony stood, even the most holy place, over which the cloud was, the token of the divine Presence, and which it covered; but now was taken up from it, and went up higher above it, and was a signal for the motion of the camps of Israel to set forward in their journey towards Canaan's land.
(m) Seder Olam Rabba, c. 8. p. 23. Abarbinel, &c.

After the Israelites had continued nearly a year at mount Sinai, and all was settled respecting their future worship, they began their march to Canaan. True religion begins with the knowledge of the holy law of God, and humiliation for sin, but we must go on towards perfection, in acquaintance with Christ and his gospel, and those effectual encouragements, motives, and assistances to holiness, which it proposes. They took their journey according to the commandment of the Lord, Deuteronomy 1:6-8, and as the cloud led them. Those who give themselves to the direction of God's word and Spirit, steer a steady course, even when they seem bewildered. While they are sure they cannot lose their God and Guide, they need not fear losing their way. They went out of the wilderness of Sinai, and rested in the wilderness of Paran. All our removes in this world are but from one wilderness to another. The changes we think will be for the better do not always prove so. We shall never be at rest, never at home, till we come to heaven, but all will be well there.

It came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, &c.--The Israelites had lain encamped in Wady-Er-Rahah and the neighboring valleys of the Sinaitic range for the space of eleven months and twenty-nine days. (Compare Exodus 19:1). Besides the religious purposes of the highest importance to which their long sojourn at Sinai was subservient, the Israelites, after the hardships and oppression of the Egyptian servitude, required an interval of repose and refreshment. They were neither physically nor morally in a condition to enter the lists with the warlike people they had to encounter before obtaining possession of Canaan. But the wondrous transactions at Sinai--the arm of Jehovah so visibly displayed in their favor--the covenant entered into, and the special blessings guaranteed, beginning a course of moral and religious education which moulded the character of this people--made them acquainted with their high destiny and inspired them with those noble principles of divine truth and righteousness which alone make a great nation.

After all the preparations were completed for the journey of the Israelites from Sinai to Canaan, on the 20th day of the second month, in the second year, the cloud rose up from the tent of witness, and the children of Israel broke up out of the desert of Sinai, למסעיהם, "according to their journeys" (lit., breaking up; see at Genesis 13:3 and Exodus 40:36, Exodus 40:38), i.e., in the order prescribed in Numbers 2:9, Numbers 2:16, Numbers 2:24, Numbers 2:31, and described in Numbers 10:14. of this chapter. "And the cloud rested in the desert of Paran." In these words, the whole journey from the desert of Sinai to the desert of Paran is given summarily, or as a heading; and the more minute description follows from Numbers 10:14 to Numbers 12:16. The "desert of Paran" was not the first station, but the third; and the Israelites did not arrive at it till after they had left Hazeroth (Numbers 12:16). The desert of Sinai is mentioned as the starting-point of the journey through the desert, in contrast with the desert of Paran, in the neighbourhood of Kadesh, whence the spies were sent out to Canaan (Numbers 13:2, Numbers 13:21), the goal and termination of their journey through the desert. That the words, "the cloud rested in the desert of Paran" (Numbers 10:12), contain a preliminary statement (like Genesis 27:23; Genesis 37:5, as compared with Numbers 10:8, and 1-Kings 6:9 as compared with Numbers 10:14, etc.), is unmistakeably apparent, from the fact that Moses' negotiations with Hobab, respecting his accompanying the Israelites to Canaan, as a guide who knew the road, are noticed for the first time in Numbers 10:29., although they took place before the departure from Sinai, and that after this the account of the breaking-up is resumed in Numbers 10:33, and the journey itself described, Hence, although Kurtz (iii. 220) rejects this explanation of Numbers 10:12 as "forced," and regards the desert of Paran as a place of encampment between Tabeerah and Kibroth-hattaavah, even he cannot help identifying the breaking-up described in Numbers 10:33 with that mentioned in Numbers 10:12; that is to say, regarding Numbers 10:12 as a summary of the events which are afterwards more fully described.
The desert of Paran is the large desert plateau which is bounded on the east by the Arabah, the deep valley running from the southern point of the Dead Sea to the Elanitic Gulf, and stretches westwards to the desert of Shur (Jifar; see Genesis 16:7; Exodus 15:22), that separates Egypt from Philistia: it reaches southwards to Jebel et Tih, the foremost spur of the Horeb mountains, and northwards to the mountains of the Amorites, the southern border of Canaan. The origin and etymology of the name are obscure. The opinion that it was derived from פאר, to open wide, and originally denoted the broad valley of Wady Murreh, between the Hebrew Negeb and the desert of Tih, and was then transferred to the whole district, has very little probability in it (Knobel). All that can be regarded as certain is, that the El-paran of Genesis 14:6 is a proof that in the very earliest times the name was applied to the whole of the desert of Tih down to the Elanitic Gulf, and that the Paran of the Bible had no historical connection either with the ́ ̀ and tribe of Φαρανῖται mentioned by Ptol. (v. 17, i. 3), or with the town of Φαράν, of which the remains are still to be seen in the Wady Feiran at Serbal, or with the tower of Faran Ahrun of Edrisi, the modern Hammn Faraun, on the Red Sea, to the south of the Wady Gharandel. By the Arabian geographers, Isztachri, Kazwini, and others, and also by the Bedouins, it is called et Tih, i.e., the wandering of the children of Israel, as being the ground upon which the children of Israel wandered about in the wilderness for forty years (or more accurately, thirty-eight). This desert plateau, which is thirty German miles (150 English) long from south to north, and almost as broad, consists, according to Arabian geographers, partly of sand and partly of firm soil, and is intersected through almost its entire length by the Wady el Arish, which commences at a short distance from the northern extremity of the southern border mountains of et Tih, and runs in nearly a straight line from south to north, only turning in a north-westerly direction towards the Mediterranean Sea, on the north-east of the Jebel el Helal. This wady divides the desert of Paran into a western and an eastern half. The western half lies lower than the eastern, and slopes off gradually, without any perceptible natural boundary, into the flat desert of Shur (Jifar), on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The eastern half (between the Arabah and the Wady el Arish) consists throughout of a lofty mountainous country, intersected by larger and smaller wadys, and with extensive table-land between the loftier ranges, which slopes off somewhat in a northerly direction, its southern edge being formed by the eastern spurs of the Jebel et Tih. It is intersected by the Wady el Jerafeh, which commences at the foot of the northern slope of the mountains of Tih, and after proceeding at first in a northerly direction, turns higher up in a north-easterly direction towards the Arabah, but rises in its northern portion to a strong mountain fortress, which is called, from its present inhabitants, the highlands of the Azazimeh, and is bounded on both south and north by steep and lofty mountain ranges. The southern boundary is formed by the range which connects the Araif en Nakba with the Jebel el Mukrah on the east; the northern boundary, by the mountain barrier which stretches along the Wady Murreh from west to east, and rises precipitously from it, and of which the following description has been given by Rowland and Williams, the first of modern travellers to visit this district, who entered the terra incognita by proceeding directly south from Hebron, past Arara or Aror, and surveyed it from the border of the Rachmah plateau, i.e., of the mountains of the Amorites (Deuteronomy 1:7, Deuteronomy 1:20, Deuteronomy 1:44), or the southernmost plateau of the mountains of Judah (see at Numbers 14:45): - "A gigantic mountain towered above us in savage grandeur, with masses of naked rock, resembling the bastions of some Cyclopean architecture, the end of which it was impossible for the eye to reach, towards either the west or the east. It extended also a long way towards the south; and with its rugged, broken, and dazzling masses of chalk, which reflected the burning rays of the sun, it looked like an unapproachable furnace, a most fearful desert, without the slightest trace of vegetation. A broad defile, called Wady Murreh, ran at the foot of this bulwark, towards the east; and after a course of several miles, on reaching the strangely formed mountain of Moddera (Madurah), it is divided into two parts, the southern branch still retaining the same name, and running eastwards to the Arabah, whilst the other was called Wady Fikreh, and ran in a north-easterly direction to the Dead Sea. This mountain barrier proved to us beyond a doubt that we were now standing on the southern boundary of the promised land; and we were confirmed in this opinion by the statement of the guide, that Kadesh was only a few hours distant from the point where we were standing" (Ritter, xiv. p. 1084). The place of encampment in the desert of Paran is to be sought for at the north-west corner of this lofty mountain range (see at Numbers 12:16).