Numbers/Bamidbar -10- Two silver trumpets, not the Shofar . . .

“And the sons of Aaron, the priests, shall sound with the trumpets
and this shall be an ordinance forever, throughout your generations” – Numbers 10:8

[Here’s a thorough discussion of the 2 silver trumpets: The Two Silver Trumpets of the Levite Priests MusicoftheBible.com / www.musicofthebible.com/extra_trumpets.htm‎l

Commentary from Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H.Hertz, additional commentary by Seymour Rossel, The Torah Portion by Portion; translation by EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.  “ER” is Everett Fox comment, while “RA” is Robert Alter commentary, both have written English translations of the Torah.—Admin1.]

Numbers/Bamidbar 10

They were for summoning the congregation or the princes to the Sanctuary, as well as signals to begin the journey or in times of war.  The clarions were long and narrow, with an expanded mouth, as distinct from the Shofar, or ram’s horn of the Jubilee (Lev. XXV,9).  There is an illustration of these clarions among the spoils of the Temple, on the Arch of Titus.

of beaten work. Made out of a single plate of silver.

[RA]  two silver trumpets.  After all the lists of the early chapters of Numbers, the visual pageantry of the Tabernacle furnishings, and the deployment of the tribal troups with their banners, sound enters the text–in essence, musical flourishes, a pageantry of sound.  These particuar sounds are in the first instance the signal for the forward movement of the camp, and so propel the whole story from the long stasis of the stay at Sinai into the narrative of wanderings that constitutes much of what follows.  The hammered silver trumpets are more artfully wrought wind instruments than the shofar, the ram’s horn, with which they shasre some functions.  The shofar is used for the call to battle, and for coronations; these trumpets serve the distinctive purposes of signalling the march in the wilderness and accompanying cultic celebrations.

all the congregation. i.e. the representatives of the congregation, and the heads of families.

but with one.  A blast on one clarion was the signal for an assembly of only the princes of the tribes; on both, for all the congregation.

and when ye blow an alarm. Heb. teruah; a succession of short, sharp, separate notes.

camps . . . east side. Judah, with Issachar and Zebulun.

[RA] a long blast.  There is no scholarly agreement as to whether the Hebrew teru’ah  means “a long blast” and the other term teqi’ah “a short blast,” or the other way around.  The verb taqa’ has the primary meaning of “stab,” and by extension, a stabbing or penetration of breath through the aperture of a wind instrument.  This sense might perhaps lend itself better to the idea of a short blast.  Teru’ah also means “shout,” without the aid of an instrument, and might be more prolonged.

camps . . . south side.  Reuben, with Simeon and Gad.

an alarm for their journeys. i.e., a separate signal was to be blown for the startings on their journeys for each of the four groups of tribes (Nachmanides).

statute for ever. That only the priests may sound these sacred clarions.

[EF]  a law. That is, the priests will function as an institution in their capacity as trumpet-blowers.

remembered before the LORD your God.  The music of these clarions, by infusing both courage and cheerfulness in the hearers, will be the means of invoking the Divine aid against the foe; and thus shall Israel in this hour of danger ‘be remembered’ of God and saved.  That the usage of trumpets in war was viewed from this spiritual standpoint is attested by II Chron. XIII,12-16, as well as I Macc. IV,40;v,33.

[RA] let out a long blast  . . . and be remembered before the LORD.  Here the function of the trumpets is identical with that of the shofar.  The trumpet blast rallies the troops, perhaps frightens the enemy, and is imagined as a means for alerting God’s attention to Israel, calling them to mind, being a “remembrance” before Him.

day of your gladness.  Any public rejoicing, such as after a victory.  Tradition here confines the term to Sabbaths.

appointed seasons.  Passover, Feast of Weeks, the Day of Memorial, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles.  These were all distinguished by special sacrificies; Lev. XXIII and Num. XXVIII and XXIX.

FROM SINAI TO MOAB

X,11-34.  THE DEPARTURE FROM SINAI

Ten months and nineteen days after the arrival at Sinai, the journeying towards Moab and the Holy Land began.  Guided by the Cloud they, in due course, encamped in the wilderness of Paran.

their stages.  As in XXXIII,2.  Most Jewish commentators take it to mean the order in which the journeying took place.

abode in the wilderness.  As a sign that they were to halt there.

Paran. North of the Sinai Peninsula.  Its eastern border is a line drawn from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Akaba, apparently corresponding to the modern et-Tih.  Paran formed an important stage in the wanderings across the wilderness.  Before it was reached, there were two halting places, at the ‘Graves of Lust’ (XI,34-5) and Hazeroth (XII,16). 

[RA]  And the Israelites began on their journeyings. The marching order of hte tribes laid out in the next fifteen verses is a precise implementation of the tribal deployment detailed in chapter 2.

[EF]  first: This and other number designations in thsi passage refer to position, not time.

was taken down. i.e. used to be taken down, and apart, for the journey; the fabric of it, the boards, curtains, and other heavy portions that were packed upon the six wagons provided for the purpose (XII,3-9).

the bearers of the sanctuary. i.e. the holy things of the Sanctuary.

against their coming. i.e. before the arrival of the sons of Kohath with the Ark and the other holy vessels.  Finding the Tabernacle properly set up, the sons of Kohath would deposit therein the Ark and the other holy vessels.

[RA] bearers of the sanctuary. In contradistinction to the Gershonites and the Merarites, “bearers of the Tabernacle,” the burden of the Kohathites is not the structure itself but the cultic paraphernalia of the sanctuary.

and they would set up the Tabernacle by the time they came.  As elsewhere, biblical idiom is parsimonious in stipulating the antecedents of pronouns.  The first “they ” would have to refer to the Gershonites and Merarites, who carry the Tabernacle, the second “they ” would be the Kohathites.

the rearward. The work of such a rearguard would consist in collecting stragglers, in taking charge of such as had fainted by the way, and in finding and restoring lost articles.

29-32.  HOBAB

Moses requests his father-in-law to remain with them and act as their guide.

Hobab, the son of Reuel. According to Rabbinic tradition, Hobab is identical with Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses.  Reuel was the father of Jethro, or Hobab.  Exod. II,18, where the daughters of Jethro call Reuel their father, presents no difficulty.  The Rabbis rightly explain that children oft-times call their grandfather ‘father’.

[EF] Hovav:  There is some confusion about the name.  One tradition holds that he is identical to Yitro in Ex. 2:18f; yet there, Re’uel is Moshe’s father-in-law, while here he is a generation removed.

[RA] And Moses said to Hobab son of Reuel the Midianite.  We now leave the Priestly tabulations and pomp and ceremony and enter the first actual narrative episode of the Book of Numbers.  The name of Moses’s Midianite father-in-law is a bafflement that has been resolved not only by rather contorted harmonizing explanations.  In Exodus, he is called Jethro, who also seems to be identical with Reuel, while here he is Hobab son of Reuel.  It seems likely that these narratives draw on authentic ancient traditions about an alliance and kinship between Moses and the Kenite clan of the Medianites, and those traditions provided an etiological explanation for the peaceful cohabitation of the Kenites with the Israelites (compare Judges 4:17-22).  In the traditional variants of these stories about the Kenites.  Moses’s father-in-law may have been assigned different names.

We are journeying to the place.  No foreshadowing is allowed to intrude.  At this point, Moses, unwitting of the disasters that lie ahead, imagines that both he and the people he is leading are about to corss the wilderness and enter into the promised land.

the LORD has spoken a good thing.  Literally, “spoken good,” with the obvious sense of “promised to confer all manner of good things.”  By repeating the root in both verb and noun, Moses twice emphasizes (the second time in verse 32) that he means to have Hobab share in the good that God has promised Israel.

[RA] to may land and to my birthplace I shall go.  These words are probably an explicit allusion to God’s first command to Abraham, “Go forth from your land and your birthplace” (Genesis 12:1). Hobab asserts the desire to reverse that direction, to go back to his own homeland instaed of forging on to the land God has promised Israel.

instead of eyes.  As Midian bordered on Sinai and Paran, he was thoroughly familiar with that desert.  The Cloud, IX,15, was not a guide; it only indicated the times of breaking up and of resting. Hobab’s answer is not given; but it may be inferred from Judges I,16,IV, 11, that he yielded, and consented to be ‘eyes’ unto them in the desert.

[EF] you shall be for us as eyes:  More idiomatically, “you shall serve as our eyes.”

[RA]  do you not know our encampment in the wilderness?  Previously in Numbers, and before that in Exodus, there was a heavy stress on the idea that the cloud over the Tabernacle would guide the people. Here, by contrast, human agency is stressed:  Hobab, himself indigenous to the great wilderness to the south of Canaan, is to act as a native guide through this forbidding territory.  It is conceivable that this story registers an actual historical memory of receiving help of this sort from the Medianites.  Hobab’s response to Moses is not stated, but the later presence of his descendants among the Israelites suggests that he agreed to accompany them.  Perhaps the end of this story was excised editorially in order not to diminish the idea conveyed in the next two verses that it was the Ark with the accompanying cloud that led Israel through the wilderness.

33-34.  ON THE JOURNEY

they set forward.  These words mark the moment of actual departure from Sinai, which has been anticipated in the general statement of v.12.

three days journey. ‘When God commanded Israel to set out from Sinai, where they had received many laws, and continue their march, the Israelites were glad.  Instead of making a day’s march from Sinai as God had commanded them, they marched incessantly for three days.  They behaved like a boy who runs quickly away after dismissal from school, that his teacher might not call him back’ (Midrash).

the ark. On this special occasion only, when they started the journey, did the Ark go in front, in order to inspire them with confidence and courage (Ibn Ezra).  Otherwise the Ark and its appurtenances were carried by the Kohathites in the middle of the line of march.

went before them in the three days’ journey. this is the rendering of the AV (and Sforno, Luzzatto), and is a departure from the AJ which omits the words ‘in the’, and thereby attaches an impossible meaning to the text.

[RA] the ark . . . journeying before them a three day’s march.  Though the Ark was to lead the way, this three day’s distance is baffling, for in that case the Ark would not have been visible to the people who were supposed to follow it.  A common scholarly solution to the problem is to see the second occurrence of “a three days’ march” as an inadvertent scribal repetition (dittography) of the first.

was over them by day.  This phrase, taken in conjunction with Psalm CV,39, ‘He spread a cloud for a screen,’ would seem to indicate that the Cloud not only served the purpose of a signal but also of a shade, protecting the wanderers from the burning heat of the sun.

35-36  INVOCATION PRAYERS

These verses preserve the invocation prayers in connection with the going forward and the resting of the Ark in the wilderness; and we still feel the thrill of sacred enthusiasm that animated the men of old on hearing them.  They are used to this day at the opening and closing of the Ark, whenever the Torah is read in the synagogue.  These two verses are enclosed in inverted Nuns, to indicate either that they are not here in their original place (Talmud); or that they are taken from another source (possibly from ‘The Book of the Wars of the LORD’, see XXI,14) and form a distinct section, scroll, or even ‘book’ of the Torah.  Some of the Rabbis thought of the Book of Numbers as consisting of three parts (I-X,34; X,35,36;XI-XXXVI), and, in consequence, counted seven books of the Torah.  Thus, according to Rabbi Johanan, ‘Wisdom hath hewn out her seven pillars ‘ (Prov. IX,1) referred to the Seven Books of the Torah.

[EF] the cloud of YHWH was over them by day:  The phraseology is almost identical to the ending of the book of Exodus (40:38)–so everything in between, all of Leviticus and Num. 1-10, is in a sense bracketed.

when the Ark set forward. The Ark going forward at the head of Israel’s tribes typified God in front of His people protecting and helping them, and leading them on to final victory. ‘Through the wilderness Israel went, not knowing from what quarter the sudden raid of a desert people might be made.  Swiftly, silently, as if springing out of the very sand, the Arab raiders might bear down upon the travellers.  They were assured of the guardianship of Him whose eye never slumbered’ (Expositor’s Bible).

said, i.e. would say; the tense is the so-called ‘frequentative’.

rise up . . .be, scattered. ‘The impressive war-cry of truth against error, of righteousness against sin’ (Abrahams).  God’s enemies are the enemies of Israel.  When God arises against the hosts of Israel’s enemies, they scatter as the darkness before the sunlight.

[EF] 35-36 – In Hebrew manuscripts and published Torahs, these verses are enclosed by two inerted Hebrew letters, perhaps indicating some kind of early tradition about this poem as a separate unit that may belong somewhere else.

[RA] Rise O LORD.  These words attributed to Moses are often referred to as the Song of the Ark.  Although one recent scholar, Richard Elliott Friedman, has evidence of poetic structure and diction even in the brief fragment.  Rhythmically, these two versets contain, respectively, for and three stresses, a pattern sometimes found in lines of biblical poetry.  The word pairings, enemies/foes, scatter/flee, are a hallmark of parallelistic poetry.  the concluding line (verse 36) uses a bit of emphatic synonimity, “teeming myriads” (literally “myriads of thousands”) that is marked as poetic diction and also appears, with the order of “myriads” and “thousands” reversed, in the poetic blessing for Rebekah, Genesis 24:60.  “Rise,” as several commentators have noted, aslo has a military sense of “attack,” but the visual image of elevation is important—God, imagined as enthroned on the cherubim carved over the Ark, surges up like a warrior-king as the Ark is lifted to be carried forward.  In the Hebrew text, the unit that verses 35-36 constitute is bracketed off from what precedes and follows by inverted letters nuns.  This is a scribal device known from Late Antiquity for marking a piece of text that is out of place, or quoted from another source.  Some ahve conjectured that the Song of the Ark is actually a quotation from the mysterious Book of the Battles of YHWH mentioned elsewhere.  Whatever the source, the quotation may give only the opening lines of two poems rather than the integral text of the poems.  In any case, this is the first of several fragments of archaic Hebrew poetry quoted in Numbers.

unto the ten thousands of the families of Israel. The second ‘thousands’ is here equivalent to ‘families’ or ‘clans’.  Ehrlich takes the whole phrase as a synonym of God–and renders, ‘O Thou Who art the ten thousands of the thousands of Israel’—a most appropriate invocation addressed to God as the Ark returned from victory; II Kings II,12, where Elijah is addressed as ‘the chariot of Israel, and the horseman thereof’; or the Divine title, ‘the LORD of Hosts.’

‘Long after those desert days, a psalmist laid hold of the old prayer and offered it, as not antiquated yet by the thousand years that had intervened. “Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered; and let them that hate Him flee before Him” (Psalm LXVIII,2).  We too may take up the immortal though ancient words, and, at the beginnings and endings of all our efforts, offer this old prayer — the prayer which asked for a Divine Presence in the incipiency of our efforts, and the prayer which asked for a Divine Presence on the completion of our work’ (Maclaren).

[EF] divisions: Or alternatively, “thousands.”

[RA] Come back O LORD to Israel’s teeming myriads.  There is no explicit “to” in the Hebrew connecting “come back” with Israel’s myriads.  The absence of the preposition has inspired a variety of ingenious interpretations, but one should keep in mind that biblical poetic diction–especially in the case of the more archaic layer of Hebrew poetry–exhibits a great deal of ellipsis, which is, after all, a means of eliminating extra syllables and heightening the compactness of the utterance.  It thus seems reasonable to infer that “to” is implied here.