Question XXIV. When did the Israelites come to these mountains for the sake of this ceremony?

In the Jerusalem Talmud, R. Israel holds [that] after the fourteenth year of [their] entry into this land the Israelite people came to these mountains and performed this rite; Josephus (in the place cited above), after the 5th year; in the Babylonian Talmud (tract. Sotah, ch. 7), other Rabbis [say] on the very same day on which the Jordan was crossed. But these last were refuted above (ch. 5, after the crossing, q. 6). But both these and all the others are refuted by the narration of this chapter, because the performance of this ceremony is at once subjoined to the storming of Ai; and even much more, because in the same narration there is a particle which does not permit us to wander off to another time — namely (v. 30), “then” [tunc]. And therefore the disturbance of order in the text, and recapitulation, which Rashi here contrives — as Abulensis says (q. 17) — is to be rejected; and it is to be said [that], after Ai was stormed, the Israelites set out hither, yet not without absolutely any interval of time. For, as Abulensis teaches (q. 20), a return was made by the Israelites into the camp, and — the old men, women, and all the children being taken up thence, with the other impedimenta — the march to these mountains [was made]. For those [warriors] did not set out without these, as is clear from the last verse of this chapter; nor could, nor ought, [either] these or those to have set out amid so many enemies and perils [without one another].