🔢WEB · Numbers 21:10
What does Numbers 21:10 mean?
"The children of Israel traveled, and encamped in Oboth."
— Numbers 21:10 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
The people came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against Yahweh, and against you. Pray to Yahweh, that he take away the serpents from us.” Moses prayed for the people.
Yahweh said to Moses, “Make a venomous snake, and set it on a pole. It shall happen, that everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.”
Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it on the pole. If a serpent had bitten any man, when he looked at the serpent of brass, he lived.
The children of Israel traveled, and encamped in Oboth.
They traveled from Oboth, and encamped at Iyeabarim, in the wilderness which is before Moab, toward the sunrise.
From there they traveled, and encamped in the valley of Zered.
From there they traveled, and encamped on the other side of the Arnon, which is in the wilderness, that comes out of the border of the Amorites: for the Arnon is the border of Moab, between Moab and the Amorites.
Explanation
Numbers 21:10 is a brief statement of fact: the Israelites broke camp, moved on, and set up their tents at a place called Oboth. On the surface, it is simply a travel notice, one line in a long list of stops that mark Israel's journey through the wilderness. There is no miracle recorded here, no speech from Moses, no divine intervention described—just the plain movement of a people from one location to another.
The book of Numbers as a whole is traditionally attributed to Moses, and it recounts Israel's forty years of wandering between Mount Sinai and the plains of Moab, just before they enter the Promised Land. This particular verse comes after the account of the bronze serpent (Numbers 21:4-9), where the people had complained against God and Moses, been afflicted with venomous snakes, and were healed through looking at the bronze serpent Moses lifted up. Immediately after this dramatic episode of judgment and mercy, the text resumes its travel log, recording the stops along the way: Oboth, then later Iye Abarim, the valley of Zered, and so on. These itinerary notices appear throughout Numbers and later summarized again in Numbers 33, functioning almost like a journal of the journey.
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