Deuteronomy 10 · a question people ask
Why does a travel note break into Moses' story?
In 10:1-5 Moses speaks as "I": "I turned and came down from the mountain" (10:5). In 10:10 he goes on: "I stayed on the mountain, as at the first time, forty days and forty nights" (10:10). In between, 10:6-7 speak of Israel as "they": "The children of Israel traveled from Beeroth Bene Jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died, and there he was buried; and Eleazar his son ministered in the priest’s office in his place" (10:6), and "From there they traveled to Gudgodah" (10:7). The WEB prints 10:6-9 inside parentheses. Then: "At that time the LORD set apart the tribe of Levi" (10:8). The text doesn't say which time "that time" is; the same words open the chapter, for the second tablets (10:1). In Numbers the LORD takes the Levites while Israel is still in the wilderness of Sinai (Numbers 1:1, 3:12), and Aaron dies "in the fortieth year" (Numbers 33:38). Deuteronomy doesn't say why the note stands here. Deuteronomy itself also names Mount Hor as where Aaron died (32:50). Numbers 20 sets Moserah and Mount Hor side by side; neither book says how the two names relate.
The verses
“At that time the LORD said to me, “Cut two stone tablets like the first, and come up to me onto the mountain, and make an ark of wood.”
“The LORD spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying,”
““Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel instead of all the firstborn who open the womb among the children of Israel; and the Levites shall be mine,”
“Aaron the priest went up into Mount Hor at the commandment of the LORD and died there, in the fortieth year after the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt, in the fifth month, on the first day of the month.”