Deuteronomy 10:6,7

Interruption of the address by a piece of narrative, recording certain stations of Israel with Aaron's death and Eleazar's succession, in which Israel are spoken of in the 3rd pers., and the phraseology is not deuteronomic. Obviously the fragment of an old itinerary. Although the names it contains are also found in an itinerary given by P, Numbers 33, they occur here in a different order; another name is given to the death-place of Aaron than P gives, nor do we find P's usual formula for Israel on the march they journeyed from … and pitched at.… The fragment is therefore from another source than P. That this was E (D's main source) is almost certain. The fragment uses E's formula, they journeyed from thence to…, and may originally have formed part of the same itinerary of E, from which there are fragments in Numbers 21; E, too, assumes the succession of Eleazar to Aaron, Joshua 24:33, and therefore probably had already mentioned this. (So already Vatke, Einl. i. d. A. T.377 f., 383; but more fully Bacon, Triple Tradition of Exodus, 207 f., 257 f., 343 f. So, too, Driver, Steuern., Bertholet, and Marti on this passage, and Cornill, Einleitung). Why the fragment should be inserted here is not clear, unless the historical retrospect originally concluded with Deuteronomy 10:5. It seems more in place after Deuteronomy 10:11, but may owe its position here to the design of some editor to ascribe the consecration of the tribe of Levi to a later date than Ḥoreb, in the attempt to harmonise the conflicting data of D and P concerning the tribe of Levi and the priesthood. For other explanations see Driver's Deut.120.