The Cloud Moves

At the first anniversary of the Exodus, Israel keeps Passover. But some men are unclean from a dead body. "Wherefore are we kept back, that we may not offer an offering of the LORD in his appointed season?" Moses asks God, who answers: anyone unclean, or far away on a journey, may keep it on the fourteenth day of the second month. But whoever is clean and not traveling and simply fails to keep it "shall be cut off." The stranger who wishes may keep it too: "ye shall have one ordinance."

"At the commandment of the LORD the children of Israel journeyed, and at the commandment of the LORD they pitched." Whether the cloud stayed two days, a month or a year, they stayed; when it lifted, they moved.

"Make thee two trumpets of silver; of a whole piece shalt thou make them." Both blown together gather the congregation; one, the leaders. An alarm sets the camps moving, east first, then south. In war, "ye shall blow an alarm… and ye shall be remembered before the LORD your God." On feast days and new moons, they are blown over the offerings.

On the twentieth day of the second month of the second year, the cloud lifts. Israel leaves Sinai for the wilderness of Paran, Judah's banner first. Moses asks his brother-in-law Hobab to guide them: "thou mayest be to us instead of eyes."

"And it came to pass, when the ark set forward, that Moses said, Rise up, LORD, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee. And when it rested, he said, Return, O LORD, unto the many thousands of Israel."

Tutankhamun's trumpets

Two trumpets were found in Tutankhamun's tomb (c. 1323 BC): one of silver, one of bronze or copper, with wooden stoppers. They are the oldest playable trumpets in the world, and were sounded on BBC radio in 1939. They show what a Late Bronze Age silver trumpet, "of a whole piece," looked like. Egyptian trumpets were used in war and in religious processions.

The Temple trumpets appear among the spoils on the Arch of Titus in Rome, leaning against the table of the bread. The Dead Sea Scrolls' War Scroll describes trumpets inscribed with slogans for each stage of battle; Bar Kokhba revolt coins show a pair of trumpets.

The upside-down letters

In Hebrew Bibles, Numbers 10:35–36 is framed by two inverted letter nuns (׆). The Talmud records a debate: the marks show that the passage is out of place (belonging after the camp arrangement in chapter 2), or that these two verses are a book of their own, making the Torah seven books rather than five. In many Septuagint manuscripts, the verse about the cloud (10:34) comes after the two prayers instead of before them. Follow the passage to see the witnesses.

"Let God arise"

Moses' first prayer opens Psalm 68: "Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered." The prayers became part of the synagogue service: "Rise up, LORD" is sung when the Torah scroll is taken out of the ark, and "Return, O LORD" when it is put back.

A second chance, within limits

The "second Passover" (Pesach Sheni) is the only festival given a make-up date, and only for the unclean or the traveler. King Hezekiah used the same principle when the priests were not ready (2 Chronicles 30:2–3, 18–20): "The good LORD pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God." Jews still mark the 14th of the second month (Iyar) as Pesach Sheni.

Trumpets and shofars

The silver trumpets (chatsotsrot) are made by craftsmen and blown by priests. They are different from the shofar, a natural ram's horn, which anyone could blow and which sounded at Sinai and at Jericho.

Who was Hobab?

Numbers 10:29 calls Hobab "the son of Raguel [Reuel] the Midianite, Moses' father in law"; Judges 4:11 calls Hobab himself "the father in law of Moses"; Exodus calls Moses' father-in-law Reuel (2:18) and Jethro (3:1; 18:1). Interpreters suggest that Jethro and Reuel are one man with two names and Hobab his son; that Reuel was Zipporah's grandfather; or that the Hebrew word can mean a broader in-law. The Bible does not settle it, and we do not either.