Numbers 33:2 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Moses wrote their goings out, according to their journeys—and these are their journeys, &c.— Houbigant renders the verse, For Moses wrote, at the command of the Lord, their journeys, according to their several stages; and hence he thinks it may plainly be collected, that a daily journal of their occurrences was written, which was kept as a public deposit, and that the sacred writers (under Divine inspiration) drew their materials principally from these annals. See his note on Deuteronomy 4:34. Bishop Kidder thinks, that the words, by the command of the Lord, may well refer both to their journeyings, which were directed by God, Exodus 13:21; Exodus 14:2 and to Moses's description of them in this place, which tended to render the history more credible, and to perpetuate the memory of God's miraculous and special providence. Moses mentions but forty-two encampments in this chapter; not that the Israelites pitched their tents in no other places, but because these were most remarkable. Observe further, that almost all these places received from God himself, or the Israelites, the names which they bear in this journal; probably they had none before, these vast desarts being too little frequented for the different places to be exactly marked out before the departure from Egypt. We find some here of which Moses makes no mention in Exodus; others are named there in another manner, as will appear in the course of this chapter. But to convince the reader that he would be greatly mistaken if he took the stations, of which Moses speaks, for journeys made from one place to another without stopping, we only beg him to look at the 9th verse, where it is said, that from Morah the children of Israel came to Elim. It is farther from one of these places to the other than from Cairo to the Red Sea, which, says Dr. Shaw, is more than thirty hours journey; or, according to the accounts followed by Vignoles, from twenty-five to twenty-six hours.