Moses' life

Born by the Nile, and the flight to Midian

Exodus 2

A basket daubed with pitch among the reeds at the river's edge, and Pharaoh's daughter coming down to bathe. Grown up, he kills an Egyptian, is found out, and runs — out of Egypt altogether, to Midian, where he sits down by a well and meets the family he will belong to for the next forty years.

1. Exodus 2:3A basket in the reeds, on the river every Hebrew son was ordered thrown into
2. Exodus 2:15A prince of Egypt runs for his life, and sits down by a well in Midian

The bush at Horeb, and back to Egypt

Exodus 3–4

He takes Jethro's flock to the far side of the wilderness and comes to Horeb, the mountain of God, where a bush is burning and not burned up. He is sent back to the country he fled, his wife and sons on a donkey, and Aaron walks out into the wilderness and meets him at the same mountain.

1. Exodus 3:1The far side of the wilderness, and a shepherd at the mountain of God
2. Exodus 4:20The road he fled down, walked back with a wife, two sons and the staff of God

Pharaoh, and the plagues on Egypt

Exodus 5–11

Bricks without straw, and then ten blows on one country. The ground is the point of several of them: the Nile turned to blood, the land of Goshen set apart where the flies and the hail do not come, and a west wind that lifts the locusts and drives them into the Red Sea.

1. Exodus 7:20The first plague falls on the river the whole of Egypt lives by
2. Exodus 9:26A line drawn across Egypt, with the hail on one side of it and Israel on the other
3. Exodus 10:19The sea's first appearance in Exodus, as the water the locusts are drowned in

The Passover, and out of Rameses

Exodus 12–13

The night of the Passover, and six hundred thousand men on foot from Rameses to Succoth. God does not take them by the short road through the Philistines' country, in case war turns them back; they go round by the wilderness toward the Red Sea, and camp at Etham on the edge of it.

1. Exodus 12:37Six hundred thousand on foot, and the first stage of the road out of Egypt
2. Exodus 13:18The long way round, taken instead of the short road through Philistine country
3. Exodus 13:20The last camp before the sea, and the first one the sources cannot agree on

The crossing of the sea

Exodus 14

Turned back to camp by the sea at Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon — three landmarks nobody has agreed on since — with Pharaoh's chariots behind them. The chapter has a map of its own, which draws every proposed crossing and the reading each one belongs to.

Marah, Elim, and Rephidim

Exodus 15–18

The song on the far shore, and then three days in the wilderness of Shur with no water, and bitter water at Marah when they find it. Twelve springs and seventy palms at Elim, bread from heaven in the wilderness of Sin, water from the rock at Rephidim and a battle with Amalek there, and Jethro coming to the camp at the mountain of God with Moses' wife and sons.

1. Exodus 15:22Out of the sea into three days of wilderness, from whichever shore it was
2. Exodus 15:23The first water after the sea, and too bitter to drink
3. Exodus 15:27Twelve springs and seventy palms, and the best-agreed camp on the road
4. Exodus 16:1Between Elim and Sinai — which places Sin only as well as it places Sinai
5. Exodus 17:1Moved on by stages to a camp with no water, the last before the mountain
6. Exodus 17:8The first battle of the wilderness, fought at the last camp before the mountain

At Sinai

Exodus 19:1 – Numbers 10:10

Almost a year in one place. They camp before the mountain in the third month, Moses goes up into the cloud, and everything from the Ten Words to the last law of Leviticus and the census of Numbers is given at its foot. On the map it is one camp and one summit; nothing moves until the cloud lifts.

1. Exodus 19:2The camp before the mountain, and four answers to which mountain
2. Exodus 19:20Fourteen summits proposed for the mountain Moses went up

From Sinai to the wilderness of Paran

Numbers 10:11–12:16

The cloud lifts and the camp moves for the first time in a year, three days' journey out from the mountain. The stops on the way are named for what went wrong at them — Taberah for the fire, Kibroth-hattaavah for the graves of the craving — and at Hazeroth Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses before the camp comes into the wilderness of Paran.

1. Numbers 10:12After eleven months at the mountain the cloud lifts, and settles again in Paran
2. Numbers 11:3A camp named for a fire, and placed only by the camp after it
3. Numbers 11:34The graves of craving, a long way from the food they wanted back
4. Numbers 11:35One stage on from the graves, to a camp they stayed at
5. Numbers 12:16Out of Hazeroth, and into the wilderness Kadesh stands in

The spies, and the refusal at Kadesh

Numbers 13–14

Twelve men sent up from Paran spy out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, come to Hebron, and cut a cluster of grapes at Eshcol that takes two of them to carry. Ten say the land cannot be taken. The people believe them, are sentenced to forty years in the wilderness, go up anyway the next morning, and are chased back as far as Hormah.

1. Numbers 13:21The whole land in one sentence, from the southern wilderness to the pass of Hamath
2. Numbers 13:22Up through the Negeb to Hebron, a town the narrator dates against Egypt's Zoan
3. Numbers 13:23One cluster of grapes on a pole, cut in a valley the sources place only near Hebron
4. Numbers 13:26Forty days out and back, and the fruit of the land set down at the camp in Kadesh
5. Numbers 14:45Up into the hills without the ark or Moses, and chased back down as far as Hormah

Meribah, Edom's refusal, and Mount Hor

Numbers 20

Thirty-eight years on, the same camp at Kadesh. Miriam dies and is buried there; Moses strikes the rock at Meribah instead of speaking to it, and is told he will not bring the people in. Edom refuses them the King's Highway, and at Mount Hor, on the border of Edom, Aaron dies on the summit.

1. Numbers 20:1The same camp thirty-eight years on, and Miriam buried at Kadesh
2. Numbers 20:21The road through Edom refused, and the King's Highway left untaken
3. Numbers 20:22The last march out of Kadesh, to a mountain the sources put in three places

Around Edom to the plains of Moab

Numbers 21:1–22:1

The long way round: south toward the Red Sea to get past Edom, the bronze serpent, and then a string of camps — Oboth, Iye-abarim, the Zered, over the Arnon, Beer, and on to the top of Pisgah. Sihon comes out to fight at Jahaz and loses everything from the Arnon to the Jabbok, Og is beaten at Edrei, and the camp comes down to the plains of Moab across the Jordan from Jericho.

1. Numbers 21:3The ground of the rout at 14:45, taken this time, and named for what was done there
2. Numbers 21:4The long way round: south to the gulf, because Edom would not let them through
3. Numbers 21:10The first camp after the bronze serpent, placed in the Arabah rather than beyond Edom
4. Numbers 21:11Out of the Arabah and round the north end of Edom, to the desert on Moab's east side
5. Numbers 21:12The gorge between Edom and Moab, where the thirty-eight years run out
6. Numbers 21:13Round Moab's desert side and over its northern border, into the Amorites' country
7. Numbers 21:16A camp named for a well, and the one water in forty years nobody had to complain for
8. Numbers 21:19Three stages in one breath, up from the wells onto the tableland below Nebo
9. Numbers 21:20The last camp of the walk, under the summit Moses will climb to see the land
10. Numbers 21:23Asked for a road, Sihon brings an army out of Heshbon instead
11. Numbers 21:24The first land Israel holds, given by two rivers and stopped at Ammon's border
12. Numbers 21:33North out of Sihon's land to the second king, and a battle at the edge of his plain
13. Numbers 22:1The last camp of the forty years, across the river from the first city of the land

Balaam, and Baal-peor

Numbers 22:2–25:18

The king of Moab sends to the Euphrates for a prophet to curse the camp below him, and takes Balaam from one height to the next — Bamoth-baal, the top of Pisgah, the top of Peor — looking for a place the curse will work from. It never does. What the prophet could not do the camp does to itself at Shittim, with the daughters of Moab and the Baal of Peor.

1. Numbers 22:5Moab sends four hundred miles up the Euphrates road for a man to curse a camp
2. Numbers 22:36The king comes down to his own frontier to meet the man he sent for
3. Numbers 22:41The first height, and from it only the edge of the camp he was paid to curse
4. Numbers 23:14The second summit: the headland Moses will die on, used first to curse his people
5. Numbers 23:28The third summit, and the last: the whole camp below, and the wilderness beyond it
6. Numbers 25:1The last camp before the Jordan, and the curse Balaam could not speak done another way

The land east of the Jordan

Numbers 26–36

A new census on the plains of Moab, a new generation, and the first land Israel holds. Reuben and Gad look at Jazer and Gilead and see cattle country, and Moses gives them the kingdoms of Sihon and Og on condition that they cross and fight with the rest. Numbers 33 lists every stage of the forty years, and Numbers 34 draws the borders of the land still to be entered.

1. Numbers 32:1Two tribes with great herds look at the hill pastures, as Lot once looked at the valley
2. Numbers 32:33The first land given out in the whole story, and it lies east of the Jordan

The last words, beyond the Jordan

Deuteronomy 1–33

Deuteronomy happens in one place: Moses speaking to all Israel beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, retelling the road from Horeb — eleven days' walk to Kadesh-barnea that took them forty years — and giving the law again to the people who will have to keep it without him. It ends with a blessing for each tribe.

1. Deuteronomy 1:1Where the last speeches were given, fixed by six landmarks nobody can agree on
2. Deuteronomy 1:2An eleven days' walk, stated at the start of a book about a forty-year one

Mount Nebo, and the grave no one knows

Deuteronomy 34

He climbs from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah and is shown the whole land, north to Dan, west to the sea, south to the Negeb and Zoar. He dies there, a hundred and twenty years old with his eye undimmed, and is buried in a valley opposite Beth-peor — and no one knows the place of his burial to this day.

1. Deuteronomy 34:1The last climb, and the land shown to him from Gilead to Dan
2. Deuteronomy 34:2The view turns west, across the river he will not cross, to the sea
3. Deuteronomy 34:3The view comes round to the south, and ends at the foot of the mountain he stands on
4. Deuteronomy 34:6Buried in a valley in Moab, opposite Beth-peor, and nobody has found the place since