Numbers 9:22

22 Whether it was two days, or a month, or a year that the cloud stayed on the tabernacle, remaining on it, the children of Israel remained encamped, and didn't travel; but when it was taken up, they traveled.

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 Sometimes the cloud was a few days on the tabernacle; then according to the commandment of Yahweh they remained encamped, and according to the commandment of Yahweh they journeyed.

21 Sometimes the cloud was from evening until morning; and when the cloud was taken up in the morning, they journeyed: or by day and by night, when the cloud was taken up, they journeyed.

22 Whether it was two days, or a month, or a year that the cloud stayed on the tabernacle, remaining on it, the children of Israel remained encamped, and didn't travel; but when it was taken up, they traveled.

23 At the commandment of Yahweh they encamped, and at the commandment of Yahweh they journeyed. They kept the charge of Yahweh, at the commandment of Yahweh by Moses.