Deeper Commentary
Num 9:1 Yahweh spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the
first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of
Egypt, saying-
This was therefore before the census which was taken, and is evidence
that the book of Numbers [as much of the historical record] is not
strictly chronological. Possibly it is arranged around
geographical themes rather than chronological.
Num 9:2 Moreover let the children of Israel keep the Passover in its
appointed season-
This may have been to clarify the earlier statements that they were
to keep Passover in the land of promise (Ex. 12:25; 13:5). In which case
we note that God's law was ever open to interpretation and clarification.
But it could be that it was God's intention that Israel left Egypt and
immediately journeyed to Canaan and kept the next Passover there, within
12 months of Passover night in Egypt. But again, His purpose is open ended
and flexible; He perceived that they weren't ready for this, and
especially after the apostacy with the golden calf, they needed more time
to prepare them. This same principle accounts for the flexible date of the
Lord's second coming, and all attempts to construct sequences of latter
day events are all doomed because of this failure to accept that God's
program is flexible and responsive to human response to it.
Num 9:3 On the fourteenth day of this month, at evening, you shall keep it
in its appointed time. According to all its statutes, and according to all
its ordinances, you shall keep it-
This raises the question as to where Israel got so many lambs from in
the desert. Clearly in their situation they kept the spirit of it, and
this was counted as keeping it according to all the legal requirements of
it. Perhaps the commandments to "keep it" were given because of the
logistical concerns as to whether they were able to keep it precisely as
they had done on leaving Egypt.
Num 9:4 Moses spoke to the children of Israel, that they should keep the
Passover-
See on :2,3 for reasons why they had to be encouraged to keep it.
Num 9:5 They kept the Passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day
of the month, at evening, in the wilderness of Sinai. According to all
that Yahweh commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did-
Num 9:6 There were certain men, who were unclean because of the dead body
of a man, so that they could not keep the Passover on that day, and they
came before Moses and before Aaron on that day-
Perhaps these men were Mishael and Elizaphan, who had recently (Lev.
9:1; 10:4) been defiled by burying their cousins Nadab and Abihu. These men are similar to us.
We wish to keep the Passover, which for
us is the breaking of bread service (1 Cor. 5:8), but we feel the burden
of our uncleanness. But this is no barrier to God; He found a way for them
to keep it, so eager was He for fellowship with His people. In our times,
God has likewise found a way- and that way is through the sacrifice of the
Lord Jesus which cleanses us and enables us to legitimately have
fellowship with God. This desire of God to ‘find a way’ for His weak
people to approach Him is found throughout the Law of Moses, e.g. in the
possibility for a very poor person to offer a flour sacrifice rather than
a blood one requiring an animal. This is a comfort to us, and should also
be a pattern for us in how we deal with the weakness of others.
There is a telling allusion to the provision of Numbers 9 in 2 Chron. 30:3, which states that the majority of people came to keep Passover in the second month “because they could not perform it at that time”. This is repeating the essence of Num. 9:6, “and they could not perform the Passover on that day” because they were unclean from touching a dead body. But Hezekiah extrapolates further, and prays that those who were actually unclean could still acceptably partake of the Passover. This is not to say that we can extrapolate the essence of things to allow anything. But clearly we are meant to see that even being unclean doesn't stop fellowship with God, and His desire to fellowship the unclean. His beloved Son likewise broke His bread with the unclean.
This is not the only concession to weakness within the Mosaic law. The intention was that there would be a single sanctuary where sacrifices were to be brought and offered. But there is also provision for local sacrifice of animals (Dt. 12:20–28; compare Ex. 20:22–26; Lev. 17:1–7); and tithes could be sold for money and that money used to buy sacrifices nearer to the sanctuary (Dt. 14:22–26). The overall impression is of a God eager if not desperate for His people to engage with Him, even if His ideal principles and intentions are compromised. We think of the Lord's teaching that the one talent man should've lent his money out on interest, even though that was contrary to the teaching of the Mosaic law. And that God hasn't changed to this day.
Num 9:7 Those men said to him, We are unclean because of the dead body of
a man. Why are we kept back, that we may not offer the offering of Yahweh
in its appointed time among the children of Israel?-
"Kept back" in Hebrew has the idea of "diminished". The subtext of
these men may be that they considered it unreasonable that God had
diminished them by the death of their relatives (see on :6), and now as it
were added insult to injury by forbidding them participation in the
Passover because they had buried their relatives and were therefore
unclean. They of course need not have touched the dead bodies of their
relatives; they could have put Passover importance in first place. They
chose not to. And yet God graciously allows them a way to still keep the
Passover, despite recognizing their uncleanness. See on :9.
Their attitude was perhaps not the best- they knew the unclean couldn't
eat Passover, but they challenge this, having made themselves unclean. But
still God finds a way.
Num 9:8 Moses answered them, Wait, that I may hear what Yahweh will
command concerning you-
The command had in a sense already been given- they were unclean, and
so were not to partake. But Moses senses that God is beyond legalism and
literalism, and is open to fellowship with all- including the difficult
and the unclean. And He is aware that God's law is open to
reinterpretation and reapplication, and is not at all 'set in stone'.
Num 9:9 Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying-
Joseph of Arimathea personally took the
Lord's body down from the
cross and buried it. His
contact with the body meant that he couldn't keep the Passover (Num.
9:9,10). The people would have watched incredulous as one of the leaders
of Israel openly showed his preference for the crucified Nazarene as
opposed to keeping the Mosaic Law. The phobia for cleanliness at Passover
time would have meant that everyone was extremely sensitive to what Joseph
did. A
Num 9:10 Say to the children of Israel, ‘If any man of you or of your
generations is unclean by reason of a dead body, or is on a journey far
away, he shall still keep the Passover to Yahweh-
It seems from Num. 9:10,13 and the examples of Hezekiah and Josiah's
Passovers, that it was more important to keep the Passover even if not
everything was being done exactly in order, even if there was a sense of
unworthiness, than to not do it at all. This should be borne in mind when
some feel 'unworthy' to take the emblems, or where there are genuine
problems in obtaining wine.
Unintentional defilement and also consciously choosing not to keep the feast, by going on a journey at that time, are covered here. After all, the travellers could've just planned not to be on a journey at Passover time. God wanted to make a way for both conscious and unconscious failure. He by all means wants to find a way to as it were break bread with us. That stands in sharp contrast to the way so many churches use access to the bread and wine as a form of judgment and reserve it only for their most tried and trusted members.
Rituals were typically associated with specific dates- and if the date was missed, the ritual was not valid. There was no point, to a religious mindset, of keeping the ritual on another date or in an ammended way. We see here how even within the structure of the Mosaic law, spirituality and the essence of things trumped religion and externalities. After all, Passover was to be the beginning of Israel's year. “This month is hereby for you the first of the months; it is the first, for you, of all the months of the year" (Ex. 12:1). Content triumphed over form, whereas in 'religion', form so often eclipses content. Otherwise, it would have been taught that anyone who missed Passover was to be cut off from his people. We think of how Hezekiah held a delayed Passover in 2 Chron. 30, and asked the Lord to pardon those who kept it "other than it is written", including those who kept it unclean. By contrast, Hittite law specifically forbad keeping any ritual on any other date, for example, if a man was "on a journey": "You who (are) the temple officials: If you do not perform the festivals at the time of the festivals; (if) you do the spring festival in fall, (or) the fall festival in spring, (or) if the right time for doing the festival (has) arrived, and he who is to do it comes to you... and he seizes your knees, (saying) “The harvests (are) before me,” or a marriage or a journey or some other matter. “Let me off. Let that matter finish for me, and when that matter is finished for me, I will do the festival thus”: Do not do according to the wishes of (that) man. He must not persuade you. Do not conduct business concerning the will of the gods" [“Instructions to Priests and Temple Officials, 9,” in The Context of Scripture, Volume One: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World (ed. William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, Jr.; trans. G. McMahon; Leiden: Brill, 2003) pp. 217–21].
"He shall still keep the Passover" implies the person was to keep it individually. Yet some aspects of the Passover legislation required a collective, communal setting in order to be obeyed. Not least the command to take a lamb large enough for the entire household, to search the family home for yeast etc. We can only conclude that such an individual keeping of Passover was not therefore going to involve strict obedience to all the legislation. The breaking of bread is the new covenant equivalent to Passover. We see here an insight into how God wants man to perceive the essence of things, and to personally engage with this personal remembrance of salvation. It's why it's quite legitimate to break bread alone, even to baptize oneself. Only the religious and unspiritual mindset will protest against such ideas. None of this takes away from the ideal requirement stressed in Num. 9:2, to keep the feast at the “appointed time... the appointed meeting... in the appointed place". God's ideal intentions must never be forgotten.
We may note that impurity by a dead body could have been dealt with another way. "Those who touch the dead body of any human being shall be unclean seven days. They shall purify themselves with the water on the third day and on the seventh day, and so be clean" (Num. 19:11,12). But here in Numbers 9, this possibility is apparently not mentioned. The idea perhaps is that a recognition of impurity was required- and then the Passover could be kept a month later. Following another ritual in order to get clean... isn't actually required, at least it isn't mentioned.
So we see God so eager to not let human weakness stop His engagement with man. And yet He does ask that the Passover be kept according to its ordinances. We must never allow any kind of reductionism, reducing to the essence, to lead us to think that His demands need not be taken seriously. The men were likely unclean because of a relative's death and burial. The Lord Jesus told the man who wanted to first attend his father's funeral: "Let the dead bury their dead". And demanded the man pick up the cross and follow Him. On one hand, God is very demanding. On the other, He asks for the essence and not the letter.
Num 9:11 In the second month, on the fourteenth day at evening they shall
keep it: they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs-
The Passover, as the prototype breaking of bread, featured bitter
herbs to remind Israel of their bitter experience in Egypt (Ex. 1:14). The
breaking of bread should likewise focus our attention on the fact that
return to the world is a return to bondage and bitterness, not freedom.
Israel didn't learn this lesson, they forgot the bitterness of Egypt, and
longed to return to it.
Num 9:12 They shall leave none of it until the morning-
Ex. 12:10 adds: "You shall let nothing of it remain until the
morning; but that which remains of it until the morning you shall burn
with fire".
There is the possibility of living before God on different levels.
Hence nothing was to remain, but God foresaw that some would allow part of
the sacrifice to remain. This was a concession to human weakness, and
reflects God's awareness of human liability to failure.
Nor break a bone of it. According to all the law of the Passover
they shall keep it-
Jn. 19:36 stresses that not a bone of the Lord Jesus was broken when
He was crucified. We are the Lord's body, of His flesh and bones (Eph.
5:30). Crucifixion was designed to torture the bones; and yet none was
broken. We suffer in Him, but shall not be finally broken. As the Passover
lambs were being killed, the Lord died; and it was critical that not a
bone of the Passover lambs be broken (Ex. 12:46; Num. 9:12). John seems so
keen to point out that the Lord died as the Passover lamb, and Paul
perceives this when stating that He is "our Passover" (1 Cor. 5:7). For no
bone of the Lord to be broken, the nails driven through His hands [the
Greek can refer to the arms or wrists too] would not have been large, and
would probably have been driven through the 'Destot gap', the set of
nerves in between the large wrist bones. The pain would have been intense
at that point. The rough hammering of the nails through that point would
have paid no attention to detail; but those hammer blows were Divinely
guided so that no bone broke. And this would have been even more amazingly
guided for the nails driven through the feet not to break a bone. It was
only by the Lord refusing to relieve the pain by pushing down on the
sedile that He avoided breaking any bones.
The stress upon the Lord's unbroken bones and His garment not
being rent contrasts with the language of crushing, breaking, bruising
etc. found in Is. 53, and the breaking of the bread as the symbol of His
body broken for us (1 Cor. 10:16), prefigured in the breaking of the bread
to feed the multitudes. That breaking, therefore, refers to the breaking
of the Lord's heart and mind. He thereby becomes the focus for all the
broken hearted.
Num 9:13 But the man who is clean, and is not on a journey, and fails to
keep the Passover, that soul shall be cut off from his people. Because he
didn’t offer the offering of Yahweh in its appointed time, that man shall
bear his sin-
There are no examples of God slaying those who didn't keep
the Passover. So this cutting off was in His mind. But we note how
seriously He viewed not keeping Passover. Those who exclude others from
the breaking of bread [the equivalent of Passover under the new covenant]
must ponder the position in which they place those whom they cut off. They
are hurting them, perhaps eternally. "Shall bear his sin" means to suffer
the consequences of his sin (Num. 18:22,32; Lev.
19:17; 20:20; 22:9; 24:15; Ez. 23:49). But the consequence of that sin was
in the mind of God, even if it was not shown at the time. Does this mean
that those who don't break bread, as the new covenant equivalent of
Passover, are rejected by Him? Not necessarily. But the essence of
Passover is indeed critical to salvation, and that is, to consciously
remember the price paid for our redemption. Otherwise we are trying to
bear our sin ourselves, rather than accepting that the blood of the Lamb
bears that sin. For clearly it is the Lord on the cross, to whom the
Paschal lamb pointed forward, who is the sin bearer. Being "cut off from Israel" may not mean that the person must be slain.
For then the phrase "cut off from the earth" would have been used (as in
Prov. 2:22 and often). The idea is that the person who ate leaven (Ex.
12:15) or was not circumcised (Gen. 17:14) was excluded from the community
of God's people because they had broken or despised the covenant which
made them His people. But there is no record of Israel keeping a list of
'cut off from Israel' Israelites and excluding them from keeping the
feasts. So we conclude this means that God would consider such persons as
cut off from His people. He would do the cutting off, and not men. In His
book, they were "cut off". But there was no legal nor practical mechanism
provided to Israel to manage the 'cutting off from Israel' of those who
despised the covenant. The cutting off was done in God's eyes, in Heaven's
record, and the Israelites were intended to continue to fellowship with
such persons at the feasts. This is a strong argument for an open table,
and for not seeking to make church excommunication the equivalent of this
cutting off of the disobedient from the people of Israel.
This explains
why being "cut off from Israel" is the punishment stated for doing things
which man could not see and judge- secretly breaking the Sabbath (Ex.
31:14), eating peace offerings whilst being unclean (Lev. 7:20- for how
were others to know whether someone had touched the unclean, or was
experiencing an unclean bodily emission), eating meat with blood still in
it (Lev. 17:10,14), not adequately humbling the soul (Lev. 23:29), not
keeping Passover (Num. 9:13), being presumptuous (Num. 15:30,31- only God
can judge that), not washing after touching a dead body (Num. 19:13,20).
This is why Lev. 20:6 makes it explicit that "I [Yahweh personally] will
set My face against that person, and will cut him off from among his
people". It is Yahweh who does the cutting off and not men (also 1 Sam.
2:33). Here, being cut off from the people meant 'bearing his sin'- at the
last day, before God.
Num 9:14 If a foreigner lives among you, and desires to keep the Passover
to Yahweh according to the statute of the Passover, and according to its
ordinance, so shall he do. You shall have one statute, both for the
foreigner, and for him who is born in the land’-
The Passover was open to Gentiles who wished to identify themselves
with Israel, and to see in the Red Sea deliverance something of their own
deliverance from this world. We should not be exclusive but rather
inclusive when it comes to the breaking of bread service which was
typified by the Passover. It has been argued that the breaking of bread is the equivalent of the
Jewish Passover, and Ex. 12:48 says that only the circumcised could eat of
it. Here are a few comments:
- Whatever interpretation we wish to place upon Ex. 12:48, we have to
reconcile it with the above evidence for the openness of the Lord Jesus
with regard to His table fellowship, using it to bring people to Him,
rather than as a test of fellowship or intellectual / moral purity of
understanding or living.
- Peter ate with the uncircumcised- and got into trouble with the Judaist
brethren exactly because the Law had forbidden the uncircumcised from
eating the first Passover (Acts 11:3). The Jews had put a [very large!]
hedge around this law by forbidding Jews from eating with Gentiles period.
Yet Peter was taught that this was wrong- and he ate with Gentiles, it
seems even before they were baptized. But the point is, he had been taught
by the vision that all the old Mosaic category distinctions of clean /
unclean, circumcised / uncircumcised, had now been ended. It seems this
was as large a challenge to the church in the 1st century as it is in the
21st.
- Although the Passover and memorial meeting are related, the relation is
at times by way of contrast rather than only similarity; e.g. in the first
Passover, the families were to provide a lamb; whereas in the antitype,
the Lord Jesus is the lamb of Divine and not human provision. The Paschal
lamb of God takes away the whole world's sin, rather than just providing
blood for the temporal redemption of Israel's firstborn, etc.
- Circumcision under the new covenant doesn't refer to anything outward,
visibly verifiable. For now "he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and
circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, and not in the letter"
(Rom. 2:29)- seeing we can't judge the secret things of others' hearts,
how can we tell who is circumcised in heart or not? The 'sealing' of God's
people today, the proof that they are the Lord's (2 Tim. 2:19), is not
anything external, but the internal matter of being sealed with the Holy
Spirit (Eph. 1:13; 4:30), or being sealed with a mark in the mind /
forehead, as Revelation puts it (Rev. 7:3; 9:4).
- The Gentiles in Israel, circumcised or not, could keep the feast of
unleavened bread (Ex. 12:17-20) which was related to the Passover.
- If Ex. 12:48 is read on a literalistic level, i.e. that only the
circumcised could eat the Passover, this would surely mean that no female
could eat it? Yet this was not the case.
- It's Num 9:14 which speaks in more general terms of whether or not a
Gentile could partake of the Passover- and here it's made clear that yes
he/she could, and no mention is made of being circumcised: "And if a
stranger shall sojourn among you, and will keep the Passover unto the
Lord; according to the statute of the Passover, and according to the
ordinance thereof, so shall he do: ye shall have one statute, both for the
stranger, and for him that is born in the land".
- Commands that were intended for subsequent generations often include the
kind of rubric we meet in Ex. 12:14,17: "And this day shall be unto you
for a memorial, and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord: throughout your
generations ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever... therefore
shall ye observe this day throughout your generations by an ordinance for
ever". But we don't meet that 'throughout your generations' with regard to
the uncircumcised men not being allowed to eat it.
- Israel were told specifically that the Passover lamb must be roasted and
not boiled (Ex. 12:9 uses two distinct words for 'boiled' and 'roasted'.).
But the word used in Ex. 12:9 for "boiled" is that used in Dt. 16:7 of how
the Passover could be boiled, although many Bible versions misleadingly
translate the word there as "roast". The translators need not have feared
such contradiction. For it is the contradiction of grace. Here we have
another example of where the Passover regulations given in Exodus were
specific only to that time at the exodus. Thus a foreigner was not allowed
to eat of that sacrifice, but foreigners were welcome to eat of the
Passover later.
- So my suggestion is that the command of Ex. 12:48 that no uncircumcised
could eat of the Passover, and that the Gentiles amongst the people should
be circumcised if they wanted to eat it, was specific to that first
Passover. As Israel and the mixed multitude that went with them sat in
Egypt under threat of losing their firstborn sons, they could find
salvation by keeping the Passover and entering into covenant with God
through circumcision. Both Jewish tradition and the implication of Moses
not circumcising his sons is that the Jews in Egypt weren't circumcised;
yet "all the people that came out were circumcised: but all the people
that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of
Egypt, them they had not circumcised" (Josh. 5:5). Implication would be
that many were circumcised in order to keep the first Passover according
to the command given them in Ex. 12. We could therefore take Ex. 12:48 as
a specific command for those who kept the first Passover to be
circumcised, rather than an ongoing principle. The Jewish sage Maimonides
(A Guide For The Perplexed Vol. 3 ch. 46) explains: "The reason of the
prohibition that the uncircumcised should not eat of it (Exod. xii. 48) is
explained by our Sages as follows: The Israelites neglected circumcision
during their long stay in Egypt".
- This approach would explain why Num. 9:14 doesn't demand that Gentiles
be circumcised to keep future Passovers; why there's no comment that the
exclusion of the uncircumcised should be kept "throughout your
generations"; and why Ex. 12:50 speaks as if Israel fully obeyed the
command about circumcision and Passover eating in a once-off sense when
they kept that first Passover. And of course this is the reason for many
branches of Judaism welcoming uncircumcised Gentiles to the Passover
celebration- for they don't understand Ex. 12:48 to preclude it, but
rather Num. 9:14 encourages it.
- This approach also helps answer a difficult question: Why was the lamb
or kid kept for four days (Ex. 12:2,6)? If the effects of circumcision
take three days to wear off (Gen. 34:25), it could be that the
uncircumcised males were intended to circumcise themselves, chose the
lamb, and then keep the Passover four days later. Some Jewish commentators
claim that God fell in love with Israel whilst she was still in her blood
(Ez. 16:6) in that some Jews circumcised themselves at the time of the
first Passover- hence one Rabbi speaks of the blood of circumcision and
the blood of the first Passover running together.
Num 9:15 On the day that the tabernacle was raised up, the cloud covered
the tabernacle, even the Tent of the Testimony, and at evening it was over
the tabernacle as if it were the appearance of fire, until morning-
This was "the cloud" which
had covered Sinai (s.w. Ex. 24:15,16). Both holy place and most holy were
filled. The glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle when it
was erected (Ex. 40:34), as it would later fill the temple (2 Chron. 7:1).
But it was God's intention that His glory should fill all the earth; the
same words are used in Num. 14:21. The apparently intense manifestation of
Himself in a specific place was only a foretaste of what He wished to
bring about in "all the earth". And yet Judaism misread this as meaning
that His glory was there alone in a specific holy place. They failed to
perceive that it was merely a localized foretaste of His intention to make
this a universal experience, and the tearing down of the veil at the
Lord's death was evidence enough of the progression of this plan. When
exiled from the sanctuary, David in his Psalms often perceives that God's
glory fills and shall fill all the earth (Ps. 72:19; Hab. 2:14).
Num 9:16 Thus it was continually. The cloud covered it, and the appearance
of fire by night-
See on :21. The “pillar of fire” was only “as it were the appearance of fire” (Num.
9:15) but the record elsewhere speaks of it as “fire”, because that’s what
it looked like to the Israelites. The Scriptures speak of how a pillar of
fire was with Israel in the wilderness (Ps. 105:39). But actually when it
first appeared, it was described as “the appearance of fire”
(Num. 9:15). It wasn’t fire, it appeared as fire. And yet it’s spoken of
later simply as “fire”. There’s no inspired footnote reminding us that,
well, actually, it wasn’t really fire. Likewise “the mount [of Sinai]
burnt with fire” (Dt. 9:15). The mountain didn’t catch fire. But that’s
how it looked to the Israelites from a distance; and so that’s how it’s
described.
Num 9:17 Whenever the cloud was taken up from over the Tent, then after
that the children of Israel took their journey; and in the place where the
cloud remained, there the children of Israel encamped-
"Took their journey" is Heb.
'to pull up', alluding to the pulling up of tent pegs. The process of
moving onward would have been a major, regular upheaval. They would've
preferred to stay where they were. And this is a feature of our wilderness
journey after our Red Sea baptism; we are always being moved on further,
in various ways. And this goes right against the conservativism which is
such a major part of the human condition.
Num 9:18 At the commandment of Yahweh the children of Israel travelled,
and at the commandment of Yahweh they encamped. As long as the cloud
remained on the tabernacle they remained encamped-
The pillar of cloud was vertical as it stood above the tent of
meeting when they encamped, but was spread out as a plume over them as
they travelled, shielding them from the desert heat. We could deduce from
Num. 10:34,35 that the cloud rose up when Moses commanded it to. They
journeyed according to Yahweh's commandments to Moses, and it was he who
in turn uttered that commandment to Israel and to the cloud: "The cloud of Yahweh was over them by day, when they set forward
from the camp. It happened, when the ark went forward, that Moses said, Rise
up, Yahweh" (Num 10:34,35). It wasn't therefore the case that Moses had no
idea as to when they were to travel, and that he only knew when the cloud
lifted up and went forward. It was rather he who commanded the cloud to do
that. Representing the Lord Jesus, he was in this sense in a position of
control over the Angel within the cloud. The idea was that their
journey was in response to God's spoken word of command. And we must ask
how much our Bible reading influences actual decision making and choices
and directions on our journey.
Num 9:19 When the cloud stayed on the tabernacle many days, then the
children of Israel kept Yahweh’s command, and didn’t travel-
To not do something, to sit still, perhaps in a place they would
rather leave, is presented as active obedience to a commandment. And in a
sense our faithfulness to the Lord Jesus and His return is in some way a
waiting game. And we are to wait faithfully.
Num 9:20 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 travelled-
The mention of such short stays at one place (here and in :21) was in
praise of their obedience. For the work of setting up tents and the
tabernacle was significant. To set them up and then immediately have to
take them down involved huge effort. There weren't many times during the
wilderness journey when this happened; "sometimes" is an example of the
generosity of the Divine record towards His people. It was in fact very
rare throughout the 38 years wandering.
Num 9:21 Sometimes the cloud was from evening until morning; and when the
cloud was taken up in the morning, they travelled: by day and by night,
when the cloud was taken up, they travelled-
Ex.
13:21 says that there was a pillar of cloud in the day time and a pillar
of fire by night. But at the time of the Exodus, there was a pillar of
cloud for the Egyptians and a pillar of fire to give light in the night
for the Israelites (Ex. 14:20,24). Could this mean that the meaning of
time was collapsed at this time? It was night for the Israelites but
daytime for the Egyptians? Is. 42:16, amidst many exodus / Red Sea
allusions, speaks of how God makes the darkness light before His exiting
people. The many Johanine references to the Lord Jesus being a light in
the darkness for His followers would then be yet more elaborations of the
idea that the Lord Jesus is the antitype of the Angel that led Israel out
of Egypt (Jn. 8:12; 12:35,46). Num. 9:21 says that the pillar of cloud was
with the Israelites at night, and sometimes it was taken up in the
night and they therefore had to move on. Does this mean that there were
times when the meaning of time was collapsed during their journey, and the
night was made as the day (perhaps Ps. 139:12 alludes to this experience)?
When Yahweh came down on Sinai, He was enveloped in a cloud of
fire- suggesting that there was no day and night for Him (Ex.
24:15-17; Dt. 5:22).
Num 9:22 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 travelled-
There was no prior warning how long they were to
remain in any one place; sometimes they stayed a year in one place, at
other times they had to travel even by night. This was all at the
commandment or word of the Lord. If the Red Sea deliverance represents our
baptism (1 Cor. 10:1,2), the wilderness journey is like our journey
through life towards the promised land of God’s Kingdom. We are led by an
Angel, and the path we take is determined by God. Sometimes we are
suddenly and unexpectedly asked to move forward; sometimes quickly,
travelling by night, as it were; other periods of our lives can appear
static and leading nowhere. But in all these situations we are still being
led- if we remain obedient to the word of God. They didn’t know their
itinerary ahead of time, each day and night they would’ve wondered whether
they’d be called to move on or not. Their lives in this sense had no
stability. If the Red Sea crossing represents our baptisms then this speaks of our
lives afterwards being under God’s leadership and guidance, we in that
sense cannot map out how we would wish our journey to be.
Num 9:23 At the commandment of Yahweh they encamped, and at the
commandment of Yahweh they took up their journey. They kept Yahweh’s
command, at the commandment of Yahweh by Moses-
A very large community of people would’ve been very hard to organize;
setting up and breaking camp demanded a huge amount of time and effort.
When they only remained a short time, even a day, in one place, the
tendency would’ve been to complain ‘Must we really break camp and move on
so quickly?’. We too are tempted to resent the unstable nature of our
lives; for those whose lives are led by the Spirit, as the Angel was in a
sense the Spirit of God (Ps. 104:4), life will never be static and boring;
even if we geographically remain in one place all our lives, we are being
actively led forward by God’s direction.
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