Deuteronomy 2:1
March from Kadesh to the Frontier of the Amorites. - Deu 2:1. After a long stay in Kadesh, they commenced their return into the desert. The words, “We departed...by the way to the Red Sea,” point back to Num 14:25. This departure is expressly designated as an act of obedience to the divine command recorded there, by the expression “as Jehovah spake to me.” Consequently Moses is not speaking here of the second departure of the congregation from Kadesh to go to Mount Hor (Num 20:22), but of the first departure after the condemnation of the generation that came out of Egypt. “And we went round Mount Seir many days.” This going round Mount Seir includes the thirty-eight years’ wanderings, though we are not therefore to picture it as “going backwards and forwards, and then entering the Arabah again” (Schultz). Just as Moses passed over the reassembling of the congregation at Kadesh (Num 20:1), so he also overlooked the going to and fro in the desert, and fixed his eye more closely upon the last journey from Kadesh to Mount Hor, that he might recall to the memory of the congregation how the Lord had led them to the end of all their wandering.
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