Numbers 9:22

22 Whether it was two days, a month, or a year, as long as the [column of] smoke stayed over the tent, the Israelites would stay in the same place and not break camp. But when the smoke moved, they would break camp.

Numbers 9:22 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 9:22

Or [whether it were] two days, or a month, or a year, that
the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle
Sometimes it tarried but half a day, sometimes a whole day, sometimes two days, at other times a whole month, and even a year; a full year, as the Targum of Jonathan and Aben Ezra; or a longer time, as the Vulgate Latin version, for in one place it tarried eighteen years, as Maimonides says ^F7; some say

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FOOTNOTES:

F8 nineteen years, as in Kadeshbarnea:

remaining thereon, the children of Israel abode in their tents, and
journeyed not;
so that, as the same writer observes, it was not because the children of Israel lost their way in the wilderness and wandered about, not knowing where they were, or which way they should go; hence the Arabians call the wilderness, the wilderness of wandering, nor that they were so long wandering in it as forty years, but because it was the will of God that should stay so long at one place, and so long at another, whereby their stay in it was protracted to such a length of time, according to his sovereign will:

but when it was taken up they journeyed;
though they had continued ever so long, and their situation ever so agreeable.

F7 Moreh Nevoch. par. 2. c. 50. p. 512.
F8 Seder Olam Rabba, c. 8. p. 24.

Numbers 9:22 In-Context

20 The same thing happened when the smoke stayed only a few days over the tent: At the LORD's command they would set up camp, and at his command they would break camp.

21 Sometimes the [column of] smoke stayed only from evening until morning. When the smoke moved in the morning, they broke camp. Day or night, when the smoke moved, they broke camp.

22 Whether it was two days, a month, or a year, as long as the [column of] smoke stayed over the tent, the Israelites would stay in the same place and not break camp. But when the smoke moved, they would break camp.

23 At the LORD's command they set up camp, and at his command they broke camp. They obeyed the command that the LORD had given through Moses.