ראשית חכמה קנה חכמה ובכל קניניך קנה בינה, “The beginning of wisdom is: ‘acquire wisdom!’ With all your acquisitions acquire insight.” (Proverbs 4,7)

In this verse Solomon taught the people that the first kind of wisdom they are to acquire is the wisdom dispensed by the Torah. This is the meaning of ראשית חכמה in the verse we quoted. Once a person has acquired this wisdom he also needs to acquire insight, discernment, in order for him to understand the connection between different phenomena. Wisdom is always totally incomplete unless accompanied by a measure of such ability to discern relationships. Seeing that the attribute (or emanation) בינה insight, discernment, is so crucial, Solomon advises a person to spend his entire fortune in his search to acquire בינה. The words: “with all your acquisitions acquire insight,” mean that “even if you have to spend all your money in order to acquire this attribute, do so, for true wealth is בינה, not money.” Wisdom is also portrayed as shouting (to its owner) (Proverbs 8,18) “riches and honor belong to me, enduring wealth and success. Solomon was forced to inform us here that the first and foremost requirement for his נפש, personality, is the acquisition of Torah knowledge before learning any other disciplines. If he were to acquire other kinds of knowledge first, these are apt to turn his heart away from true wisdom and implant in his mind worthless ideas. However, if a person studies Torah first and makes it the mainstay of his outlook in life he is then permitted to study other disciplines, sciences, etc., seeing that if he has built a sound base of Torah knowledge for himself he is not liable to be corrupted by the philosophically negative elements which are part of other disciplines. Torah knowledge will always remain “floating” on top just as does purified silver. This is also what David had in mind when he described G’d’s words as pure, i.e. just “like refined silver purged in an earthen crucible, refined sevenfold,” not containing any dross (Psalms 12,7). The meaning of that verse in Psalms is that although all disciplines (wisdom) are comparable to silver [when compared to ignorance, Ed.], Torah wisdom is like silver which has been refined seven times over. All other wisdom contains elements comparable to dross, impurities, which have a tendency to invalidate that wisdom. Our Torah, by contrast, will not lead man to sustain losses either in money or through misleading him philosophically. When Solomon demands that Torah must be the first subject studied, he means that unless one learns about the meaning and purpose of miracles one may fall victim to the theory that nature preceded the Lawgiver chronologically, that the universe was not created by Hashem. The reason that in Hebrew nature is known as טבע is that if one delves into the study of nature before having studied Torah such study is liable to swallow a person, he will “sink into a morass,” just as people who are drowned by the sea, טובעו, were drowned, because they had not learned to swim first. A person who has studied Torah and early Jewish history summarized in the Torah knows that in addition to “nature” and natural laws, the Creator Who is totally free has demonstrated on many occasions that He is the master of what we call “laws of nature” by temporarily suspending these so-called eternal laws and thus demonstrating that it must have been He who had created and formulated them in the first place. Scientists, i.e. people who study nature, believe only the evidence of their eyes. When they read about the miracles which the Torah records they assume that the desert through which the Israelites marched must have been a very benign strip of land, capable of producing crops, etc., etc. They totally deny what the Torah describes as “this great and terrible wilderness inhabited by fierce serpents, etc., etc., through which the Lord your G’d has led you” (Deut. 8,15). The point made by the Torah is precisely hat the deserts through which the Israelites marched was even more hostile to human habitat than regular deserts. This is why the Torah stresses beyond doubt “it was not a place where one could sow or expect to plant fruit-bearing trees such as figs, pomegranates, etc.” There were no wells. The prophet Jeremiah testifies that even by his time, 1000 years later, that region had not been one in which people set foot voluntarily. The experience of the Jewish people therefore was by itself so miraculous that unless we study it before we study general subjects we would not appreciate the greatness of G’d and His works. This explains why the Torah took pains in our portion to list so many details of the places where the Israelites stopped in their trek through this inhospitable country. That information contained many valuable lessons both for the nations of that period and for us the descendants of the generation which experienced the Exodus and the wanderings through the desert on the way to the Holy Land.

אלה מסעי בני ישראל אשר יצאו מארץ מצרים לצבאותם ביד משה ואהרן, “These are the journeys of the Children of Israel, who went forth from Egypt according to their hosts, under the leadership of Moses and Aaron.”

למסעיהם על פי ה', “according to their journeys at the command of Hashem.” The Torah states: 1) the journeys themselves were all at the command of G’d; 2) Moses recorded them all at the express command of G’d. The purpose of these records was what we discussed already in our introduction. There was an additional purpose, namely to demonstrate the many acts of loving kindness performed by Hashem, who, though He had decreed that they were to travel through the desert (although alternate routes were available) did not subject them to the discomforts associated with travel through such inhospitable country. Moreover, by having listed all the places where the Israelites camped, we realise that the people did not move around in the desert constantly, like someone escaping from a pursuer, but that during the entire 40 years (counting from the crossing of the sea until the death of Moses) there were actually fewer than 40 stops, so that they usually could stay put in a camp for more than a year at a time.

A careful analysis shows that 14 of the total of 42 stops were made during the first year of their journeying. Eight more stops are recorded after the death of Aaron which occurred in the 40th year, so that during the 38 years after the sin of the spies until the death of Aaron there were only 20 stops. According to our tradition the “many years” which the Israelites are reported as having remained stationary in Kadesh (Deut. 1,15) were equivalent to the total of the years they journeyed from there, i.e. 19 years. This effectively reduces the period of wanderings or journeying to 19 years during which they broke camp 19 times. There was clearly no human planning at work in the strategy governing these journeys, why else would the Torah describe that sometimes the people would stay in one place for only a single night (Numbers 9,21)? The people never knew for how long the cloud would remain stationary signaling that they were to remain in their present location. All their journeys were determined by G’d’s strategy, not their own or that of Moses. We may illustrate the matter by means of a parable. A king had a sick child. He took that child from one place to another to find a cure for him. After the father returned from these exhausting trips and the child had been cured, he would remind himself and the child of what happened at each location that he and his sick child had stopped on the way. He would remind his son: ”here we were freezing cold;” “here we were resting comfortably,” “here you suffered from a headache,” etc., etc.

There is a third purpose in the Torah recording all these details which appear irrelevant to us the reader of these lines three millennia afterwards. Every journey was triggered by certain events or certain tendencies displayed by the people at that location. This is the reason the Torah does not merely give us the number of the way stations but names each one of them. [Clearly most of these places being in the middle of the desert had not been named before and only were so named after the Israelites had stopped there to commemorate this. Ed.] If the reason that G’d decided to move the people from one location to another was because they had conducted themselves properly, then the name of the location at which they arrived next reflected this, such as ויחנו בהר שפר (verse 23). If the reason G’d made them break camp was because the people had misbehaved, the place where they encamped reflected this, such as ויחנו בחרדה, a name reflecting fear, disquiet. When the name of the place suggests something pleasant, positive, it means that the move had been orchestrated by the attribute of Mercy, whereas if the name of the place suggests a negative connotation this reflects the fact that the attribute of Justice had orchestrated that particular journey. Concerning this matter the sages in the Jerusalem Talmud said that when the Israelites had been complaining about their fate, the watchmen surrounding the camp would tremble all night long. This teaches that the different attributes of G’d were very much in evidence, and that the moods of the people kept on changing. This is what Solomon spoke of in Song of Songs 3,8: “to protect him from the fear during the nights.” He meant that the Israelites were afraid of the attribute of Justice.

Still another purpose of the Torah providing us with all these details about the Israelites’ journeying is that it contains allusions to the future. All the predictions of our prophets concerning the redemption of the future clearly indicate that this redemption will largely reflect earlier redemptions. The more we know about the redemption from Egypt, etc., the better we can picture how the redemption of the future will develop. Just as when the Israelites departed from Egypt they marched into the desert, so in the final redemption many Jews would also march into the desert on their way to their home and this is what the prophet Ezekiel 20,34-35 spoke about when he quoted G’d as saying: “I shall take you out from the nations, and gather you from the lands into which you were scattered....and I will bring you to the wilderness of the nations.” In our verse there is an allusion to this as the word מוצאיהם, “the place from which they set out,” is repeated. Ezekiel speaks of the final redemption and means that in the interval between the Israelites leaving lands in which they sojourned as exiles, the Lord will guide them and provide for them as He had done after the Exodus from Egypt. The apparently redundant repetition of the words ואלה מסעיהם למוצאיהם are an allusion to the way the redemption of the future will materialise. Seeing the paragraph had commenced with אלה מסעי, the Torah employs the same syntax when alluding to the journeys in the future. The conjunctive letter ו at the beginning of the words ואלה מסעיהם למוצאיהם indicates that these words refer to journeys in the future.

A Midrashic approach based on Tanchuma Massey 3: Why were all these journeys spelled out in the Torah? It was a reward for these parts of the earth which willingly accepted the people of Israel on their soil. This region, though it had always been barren, etc., will flourish in the future after the final redemption of the Jewish people as we know from Isaiah 35,1-2: “the arid desert shall be glad, the wilderness shall rejoice and shall blossom like a rose. It shall blossom abundantly, it shall also exult and shout. It shall receive the glory of Lebanon, the splendour of Carmel and Sharon. They shall behold the glory of the Lord, the splendor of our G’d.” If the desert will receive so much reward for merely tolerating the Jewish people on its surface, how much more will he be rewarded who welcomes Torah scholars into his home. You find that whereas on the one hand some deserts will be transformed into habitable regions, there are regions which were always habitable and will be made into desolate, arid land. This is the meaning of Malachi 1,3: “I have hated Esau; I have made his hills a desolation, his territory a home for beasts of the desert.” Isaiah 41,18 says specifically that the desert will become a pool of water. You know that nowadays there are no trees to be found in the desert. In the future trees will grow there. We have this on the authority of Isaiah 41,19: “I will plant cedars in the wilderness, acacias and myrtles and oleasters; I will set cypresses in the desert, box trees and elms as well.” Whereas nowadays people are fearful to travel through these regions, in due course “I will make a path through the wilderness, rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43,19).

ממחרת הפסח, "on the day following the Passover-offering" The reference is not to the festival but to the day on which the lamb was slaughtered in anticipation of the Exodus. This occurred on the afternoon of the 14th of Nissan; the Israelites left Egypt on the morning of the 15th.

ובאלוהיהם עשה ה' שפטים, “and the Lord had inflicted punishments on their deities.” G’d had kept His promise made in Exodus 12,12 “and on all the gods of Egypt I will inflict judgments.” How did these judgments or punishments become manifest? If the images were made of silver or gold they would simply melt; if they were made of wood, the wood would rot; if they were made of stone, the stone would crack in many places. The word שפטים also includes that these idols would be found by their worshippers in embarrassing positions as described in Samuel I 5,4: “Dagon was again lying prone on the ground in front of the Ark of the Lord. The head and both hands were cut off.” (The Philistines had taken the Holy Ark captive from the Israelites).

וישב על פי החירות. The word וישב in the singular is the same here as וישובו, “they turned back.” Alternatively, the word may refer to the cloud traveling above the people. This would account for the singular וישב.

ויסעו מפני החירות ויעברו בתוך הים המדברה, “they journeyed away from Pi Hachirot and they crossed the sea into the desert.” The Torah repeats that the people journeyed from Eylim and encamped by the Sea of Reeds to teach us that they returned to the side of the sea they had already passed previously.

ויסעו מים סוף ויחנו במדבר סין, “They journeyed from the Sea of Reeds and encamped in the desert of Sin.” The desert mentioned here was not the desert of Sinai seeing the Torah goes on to write in verse 15 that when the people journeyed away from Refidim they encamped in the desert of Sinai.” The desert known as “Sin” is situated between Eylim and Sinai, just as reported in Exodus 16,1

ויחנו בקברות התאוה, “they camped at Kivrot Hata'avah” — a place otherwise known as Kadesh Barnea. [The name mentioned here was in commemoration of the people who died because they overindulged their craving for meat.]

ויחנו בחר הגדגד, “they encamped in Char Hagidgad.” The word חר is not to be confused with הר.

ויסעו מקדש, “They journeyed from Kadesh.” This was the name of a town.

בחדש החמישי באחד לחודש, “in the fifth month on the first of the month.” This was the New Moon on which Aaron died. On the ninth of that month (many hundreds of years later) the Temple was burned and the Torah with it. On the 7th of the month of Adar following Moses died, as is reported in Joshua that the Children of Israel crossed the river Jordan on the tenth of the first month (Nissan). You may deduct the three days that the people prepared food for the crossing and 30 days during which the people mourned their leader and you will find that Moses must have died on the 7th of Adar (compare Joshua 4,19 and 1,11).

וישמע הכנעני מלך ערד, “the Canaanite, i.e. the King of Arad heard.” This verse follows mention of Aaron’s death to teach that when the Canaanite noticed that Aaron had died and that the protective cloud-cover over the camp of the Israelites had disappeared, they assumed that it was now permissible to attack this nation.

ויחנו על הירדן מבית הישימות עד אבל השטים בערבות מואב, “they made camp by the river Jordan, from Bet Yeshimot until the plains of Shittim in the wilderness of Moav. The Torah describes the length of the camp, i.e. 12 “mils” (13,5 km.) We have the personal testimony of Rabbi Bar bar Chanah who was shown this site (Eiruvin 55). This is when G’d gave the direct order to disinherit (exterminate) the people residing in the land of Canaan at that time, as the people had now come very close to carry out this directive by crossing the river.

והורשתם את הארץ, “you shall drive out the land.” The meaning is to drive out the inhabitants of the land. Once you have done this, you will be able to settle in it. If you fail to drive out the present inhabitants you will not be able to stay in the land for long.