As the 40 year trek of B’nei Yisrael through the Wilderness moves towards its denouement, we have an accounting of all its stops. Since the idea that anything in the Torah could be boring or, worse, useless is anathema to us, we find meaning and ideas even in these tedious lists (and Bamidbar has quite a few of those). So, perhaps, the 42 stops represent the 42 letter Name of God through which the world was created, and formed the basis for the Friday night Kabbalistic poem ANA B’KOACH, not to mention Douglas Adams’ Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.

To many observers, the 42 stops in the Wilderness represent 42 stages in a process towards the redemption or development of the Jewish nation in its movement towards national identity in its Promised Home. That’s cool, but, perhaps, a bit problematic. You see, there’s an anomaly in the text: Moses recorded the starting points of their various marches as directed by God. Their marches, by starting points, were as follows (Bamidbar 33:2). 

If the Jews were on a 42 step program, how come the itinerary sometimes had a ‘starting point’ followed by a ‘march’, but other times there was a ‘march’ followed by a ‘starting point’. If this was a designed program for developing ‘something’, I would have assumed that if it were a planned curriculum, it would be an uninterrupted straight line.

There are actually a large number of suggestions for that textual anomaly. The Kli........

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