1. The Lord said to Moses:
2. ‘Make two trumpets of hammered silver, and use them for calling the community together and for the camps to set out.
3. When both are sounded, the whole community is to assemble before you at the entrance to the tent of meeting.
4. If only one is sounded, the leaders – the heads of the clans of Israel – are to assemble before you.
5. When a trumpet blast is sounded, the tribes camping on the east are to set out.
6. At the sounding of a second blast, the camps on the south are to set out. The blast will be the signal for setting out.
7. To gather the assembly, blow the trumpets, but not with the signal for setting out.
8. ‘The sons of Aaron, the priests, are to blow the trumpets. This is to be a lasting ordinance for you and the generations to come.
9. When you go into battle in your own land against an enemy who is oppressing you, sound a blast on the trumpets. Then you will be remembered by the Lord your God and rescued from your enemies.
10. Also at your times of rejoicing – your appointed festivals and New Moon feasts – you are to sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, and they will be a memorial for you before your God. I am the Lord your God.’
11. On the twentieth day of the second month of the second year, the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle of the covenant law.
12. Then the Israelites set out from the Desert of Sinai and travelled from place to place until the cloud came to rest in the Desert of Paran.
13. They set out, this first time, at the Lord’s command through Moses.