Numbers 2:34

Num 2:34. So they pitched by their standards — Their order was so beautiful, that when Balaam beheld the camp of Israel from an eminence, he exclaimed with admiration, How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! thy tabernacles, O Israel! As valleys are they spread forth, as gardens by the river’s side? Num 24:5-6.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

2:34 The Hebrews initially obeyed God by camping and marching in the manner Moses had specified, but this obedient spirit did not last for long.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

For under every one of the four principal standards were divers signs to keep every band.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

And the children of Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses,.... Formed themselves into camps, so many tribes to a camp, and over each tribe or host appointed a captain, and erected a standard to each camp, by which they pitched as directed, which is next particularly observed:

so they pitched by their standards; every tribe, and every person in the tribe, as they were ranked, pitched by the standard to which they belonged:

and so they set forward, after their families according to the house of their fathers; the camps, and the tribes in them the families in those tribes, and the houses or lesser families under them, when they marched, proceeded in this regular order, as they did on the twentieth of this month; see Num 10:11.

Next: Numbers Chapter 3

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

By their standards, i.e. each of them under his principal standard.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

So they pitched. The Targum of Palestine (which embodies the traditional learning of the Palestinian Jews of the 17th century) says that the camp covered a space of twelve square miles. Modern writers, starting from some measurements of the Roman camps given by Polybius, compute the necessary space at three or three and a half miles square. This would require the strictest discipline and economy of space, and makes no provision for cattle; but supposing that the women and children were closely packed, it might suffice. It is, however, evident that there would be very few places in the wilderness, if any, where more than three square miles of fairly level ground could be found. In the plains of Moab the desired room might perhaps have been found, but scarcely anywhere in the wilderness of Paran. We must conclude, therefore, that this order of encampment was an ideal order, beautiful indeed by reason of its faultless regularity and equality, but only to be attained in practice as circumstances should permit, more or less. Indeed, that the foursquare symmetry of the camp had an ideal meaning and significance more really, because more permanently, important than its actual realization at the time, is evident from its recurrence again and again in the Apocalyptic writings. (see Eze_48:20, and especially Rev_21:16) It is impossible to help seeing that the description of the heavenly Zion is that of a city, but of a city modeled upon the pattern of the camp in the wilderness. Here is one of those cases in which the spiritual significance of an order is of such importance that it matters comparatively little whether it could be literally carried out or not.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

They went out from the camp

This refers to when they would travel to another place. AT: "When they traveled, they went out from the camp" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

clan

family

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.