Numbers 9:21

21 When the cloud {remained} from evening until morning, and the cloud lifted up in the morning, they would set out, or [if it remained] in the daytime and [at] night, [when] the cloud lifted up they set out.

Numbers 9:21 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 9:21

And [so] it was when the cloud abode from even unto the
morning
The whole night, during which time they rested in their beds:

and [that] the cloud was taken up in the morning, then they journeyed;
whether [it was] by day or night that the cloud was taken up, they
journeyed;
whether at morning or midnight; for sometimes, as Aben Ezra observes, they travelled in the night; whensoever their sentinels gave notice that the cloud was taken up, even though at midnight, they arose and prepared for their journey; and by this it is evident, that the appearance by day and night was the same body called the cloud, though beheld in a different view, in the daytime as a cloud, in the nighttime as fire.

Numbers 9:21 In-Context

19 And when the cloud prolonged on the tabernacle many days the {Israelites} kept the kept requirement of Yahweh and did not set out.

20 When the cloud {remained} a number of days on the tabernacle, on the {command of Yahweh} they encamped; and on the {command of Yahweh} they set out.

21 When the cloud {remained} from evening until morning, and the cloud lifted up in the morning, they would set out, or [if it remained] in the daytime and [at] night, [when] the cloud lifted up they set out.

22 When [it was] two days, a month, {or a year} that the cloud prolonged to dwell on the tabernacle, the {Israelites} encamped, and they did not set out; when it lifted up they set out.

23 On the {command of Yahweh} they encamped, and on the {command of Yahweh} they set out. They kept the requirement of Yahweh, on the {command of Yahweh} in the hand of Moses.

Footnotes

• [a]. Literally "it was there"