פרשת מטות - מסעי תשכ"ט - סיכום המסעות

These are the stages of the children of Israel, by which they went forth out of the land of Egypt by their hosts under the hand of Moses and Aaron.

אלה מסעי THESE ARE THE JOURNEYS (STAGES) [OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL] — Why are these stations recorded here? In order to make known the loving acts of the Omnipresent: that although He had decreed against them to make them move about and wander in the wilderness, you should not think that they wandered and moved about without cessation from one station to another station all the forty years, and that they had no rest, for you see that there are here only forty-two stages. Deduct from them fourteen, all of which were their stopping places in the first year after they left Egypt, before the decree was made, viz., from the time when they journeyed from Rameses until when they came to Rithmah whence the spies were sent out — as it is said. (Numbers 12:16): “And afterwards the people journeyed from Hazeroth, [and encamped in the wilderness of Paran], whereupon the Lord said unto Moses, (Numbers 13:2) "Send thee men [who may search out the land]”; and here (v. 18) it states, “and they journeyed from Hazeroth and they encamped in Rithmah”, so you learn that it (Rithmah) is in the wilderness of Paran. — Further deduct from them the eight stages which were after Aaron’s death viz., those from Mount Hor to the plains of Moab in the fourtieth year (v. 38). It follows that during the whole of the thirty eight years they made only twenty journeys. This is excerpted from the work of R. Moses the Preacher. — R. Tanchuma gave another explanation of it (of the question why these stages are here recorded). A parable! It may be compared to the case of a king whose son was ill and whom he took to a distant place to cure him. When they returned home the father began to enumerate all the stages, saying to him, “Here we slept, here we caught cold, here you had the head-ache, etc.” (Midrash Tanchuma 4:10:3.

These are the stages of the children of Israel, by which they went forth out of the land of Egypt by their hosts under the hand of Moses and Aaron.

And Moses wrote their goings forth, stage by stage, by the commandment of the LORD; and these are their stages at their goings forth.

These are the stages of the children of Israel, by which they went forth out of the land of Egypt by their hosts under the hand of Moses and Aaron.

אלה מסעי, G’d wanted all the journeys to be recorded in order to compliment the Jewish people who had followed him blindly through the desert where nothing grew, so that as a reward for their faith they would deserve to enter and inherit the land of Israel.

ויכתוב משה, he wrote down the name of the places towards which they were setting out, as well as the name of the places from which they had started that particular journey. [this unusual sequence would justify the Torah mentioning first מסעיהם before מוצאיהם at the end of our verse. Ed.]

The reason why we find sometimes the objective mentioned first and other times the place of departure, is due to the fact that sometimes the people were glad to get away from a certain place where unpleasantness had occurred, whereas other times they were merely glad to arrive at a new destination hoping for a pleasant stay in their new encampment. One of the most vexing aspects of all these journeys was that the new objective had never been announced beforehand, so that the people were always in the dark about what the next day would bring. In spite of all these uncertainties they never refused to follow the cloud and break camp at a moment’s notice when required. The reason that both the breaking of camp and the making of camp are mentioned separately is because both entailed a considerable amount of discomfort.