Beha'alotcha

Aaron is told to mount the seven lamps so they light the space in front of the menorah — hammered gold, made after the pattern shown. The Levites are purified and presented, waved as an offering from the children of Israel, and enter their service in place of the firstborn, from twenty-five years old until retirement at fifty. In the first month the Passover is kept in the wilderness; men defiled by the dead ask why they should be excluded, and a second Passover is fixed — the fourteenth of the second month — for the unclean and the far-off traveler.

From the day the tabernacle was erected, the cloud covers it, fire by night: when it lifts, the people set out; where it settles, they camp — whether two days, a month, or a year. Two silver trumpets are made for summoning the assembly and for breaking camp, for war, and for festival days. On the twentieth day of the second month of the second year the cloud lifts, and the march from Sinai begins in its ordered divisions; Moses invites his father-in-law's son Hobab to come as their eyes in the wilderness. When the ark sets out, Moses says: "Arise, O LORD, and let Your enemies be scattered."

Then the complaints begin. Fire burns at the edge of the camp at Taberah. The gathered rabble crave meat — "we remember the fish we ate in Egypt free of charge" — and Moses, overwhelmed, tells God he cannot carry this people alone. Seventy elders receive of the spirit that is on Moses and prophesy; when Eldad and Medad prophesy in the camp and Joshua objects, Moses answers, "Would that all the LORD's people were prophets." Quail fall a day's journey deep around the camp, and a plague strikes at Kibroth-hattaavah, the graves of craving. Finally Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses about his Cushite wife — "has the LORD spoken only through Moses?" — and God answers: with Moses I speak mouth to mouth. Miriam is struck with tzaraat; Moses cries, "O God, please heal her," and the people wait seven days until she is brought back in.