Matthew Henry on Numbers 10:11-28
Here is, I. A general account of the removal of the camp of Israel from mount Sinai, before which mountain it had lain now about a year, in which time and place a great deal of memorable business was done. Of this removal, it should seem, God gave them notice some time before (Deu 1:6, Deu 1:7): You have dwelt long enough in this mountain, turn you and take your journey towards the land of promise. The apostle tells us that mount Sinai genders to bondage (Gal 4:24), and signifies the law there given, which is of use indeed as a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, yet we must not rest in it, but advance towards the joys and liberties of the children of God, for our happiness is conferred not…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Numbers 10:11
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 Exo 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…
Read the whole note in the consoleJohn Gill on Numbers 10:11
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 wen…
