Kommentar zu Bamidbar 10:11

בחדש השני [IN THE SECOND YEAR] IN THE SECOND MONTH [THE CLOUD DEPARTED] — Consequently you must say that they spent at Choreb twelve months less ten days, since on the New Moon of Sivan (the third month) they encamped there (Exodus 19:1) and did not journey until the twentieth of Eyar of the following year.

בחודש השני בעשרים בחודש, after the ritually impure had purified themselves and had brought their Passover offering on the 14th of the second month, the trumpets were constructed so that Moses could use them to call the people to mobilize for their journey away from Mount Sinai. The Torah informs us of the order in which the 4 army units and their flags were marching and how all this was organized with the help of the trumpets. It also describes the manner in which the trumpets were used on different occasions at the Temple and during times of war. When the cloud lifted off the Tabernacle it began its journey in the direction of Kadesh Barnea, which was the first town in the land of Israel which the Israelites encountered on that journey, described as the journey across “the great and awesome desert” in Deuteronomy 1,19, when Moses is quoted as recalling: “we arrived at Kadesh Barnea.”

בשנה השנית בחדש השני, in the second year in the second month, etc. In this instance the reason the Torah mentions the year before mentioning the month of the year was in order to establish a linkage between the paragraph describing the cloud lifting to the exact date on which this event occurred, i.e. on the twentieth of the month. [According to our author this is the preferred manner in which such matters are to be described. Ed.]

Twelve months minus ten days. As is written in Parshas Yisro (Shemos 19:1). (Divrei Dovid) asks: I do not know what Rashi is teaching us with this! It is apparently to resolve the difficulty with what is written above “or a year (lit. days) that the cloud prolonged its stay…” (9:22) which refers to a year. But where do we find that they camped for twelve months, given that the longest encampment was here at Chorev until [the journey to] the desert of Paran? This was not a complete year because Rosh Chodesh Sivan of the first year was the beginning of the encampment and on the twentieth of Iyar of the second year they traveled from there. He answers that only ten days were missing and since they were camped for most of Iyar it was as if they were there for the whole month, meaning that it was considered a complete year.

V. 11. מעל משכן העדות .ויהי בשנה וגו׳ (siehe zu Kap. 9, 15). Die Wolke ruhte auf dem משכן, weil es die Wohnung des Zeugnisses war. Sie ruhte eigentlich auf dem Zeugnis; denn eben es, das Zeugnis des göttlichen Gesetzes, war das Band, das die Gegenwart Gottes im Volke vermittelte. — בחדש השני בעשרים וגו׳. Es war am vierzehnten dieses Monats noch erst von den im Nissan verhindert Gewesenen das פסח קטן begangen und mit ihm wiederholt die Bestimmung Israels als Volk der Gottesführung zum Bewusstsein gebracht, bevor sie nun, nach fast zwölfmonatlichem Lagern am Sinai, ihre Weiterzüge zum Eintritt in das verheißene Land des Gesetzes antreten sollten.