Komentaryo sa Mga Bilang 33:2: Kli Yakar, Sforno, Or HaChaim & Rabbeinu Bahya

And Moses wrote their departures for their journeys according to the command of the Lord. And afterward he reversed the order, [saying] these are their journeys for their departures, and it does not say “according to the command of the Lord.” I will explain this in three ways. The first is that in some journeys they went forward and in some they turned backward. For at first, they turned back and encamped before Pi-hahiroth (Exodus 14:2). Rashi explained that they went backwards towards Egypt. And likewise, in Deuteronomy (2:1) it is written And we turned and traveled to the wilderness, Rashi explained that because they misbehaved, they turned toward the wilderness. And similarly in Parashat Eikev (Deuteronomy 10:6), from Beeroth Bene-jaakan to Moserah, they went back eight journeys. It turns out that most of the journeys in which they went forward and not backward, which were according to the command of the Lord, are called their departures for their journeys, because they turned their faces away from the place they had left, which is called their departures, and their faces were toward their journeys which were ahead of them. But when they turned backward because they had misbehaved through sin, it was not according to the command of the Lord, and this is called their journeys for their departures because they returned and traveled to the place they had left, which is called their departures, as they turned their faces toward Egypt.

ויכתוב משה, he wrote down the name of the places towards which they were setting out, as well as the name of the places from which they had started that particular journey. [this unusual sequence would justify the Torah mentioning first מסעיהם before מוצאיהם at the end of our verse. Ed.]

ויכתב משה את מוצאיהם, Moses recorded their departures, etc. What precisely did the Torah want to teach us with this verse? We did not need to be told that it was Moses who recorded this as Moses recorded the entire Torah and the journeys are part of the Torah. Besides, the Torah ought to have written that Moses recorded את מסעיהם, "their journeys." What was the point in recording their "departures?" Furthermore, what is the meaning of the words ואלה מסעיהם למוצאיהם "and these are their journeys according to their departures?" Why did the Torah change the order in which it mentioned departures from מוצאיהם למסעיהם, to מסעיהם למוצאיהם?