10:11–25:18 starts a new section and covers the Israelites wilderness journey with God: At last, on the twentieth day of the second month of the second year after the Israelites left Egypt, the divine cloud lifts from “the tabernacle of the Testimony” (10:11 NIV 1984). This is only twenty days after the Lord has commanded Moses to carry out the military census (1:1), and a week after the alternative Passover, on the fourteenth day of the second month (9:11).

When the Israelites set out from the wilderness of Sinai in accordance with the procedures that the Lord has specified (10:12–28; cf. 2:1–34; 4:1–49), the Levites move the sanctuary and its sacred objects (10:17, 21), and the ark of the Lord’s covenan…