Numbers9chapter 9

These men come asking to be let in, which sets them apart from nearly every other approach made to Moses in this book. Leviticus 7:20 is the law that shuts them out, since the unclean man who eats of the sacrifice is cut off from his people, and the passover is the meal they are barred from. Barnes suggests they were Mishael and Elzaphan, who had carried the bodies of Nadab and Abihu out of the camp in Leviticus 10:4-5, and the text names nobody.

Moses gives no ruling of his own, and the sentence he speaks is the shape of every case in Numbers the law had not covered. The sabbath-breaker at 15:32-36, the daughters of Zelophehad at 27:1-11 and the reopening of their case at 36:1-12 all run this way, and Leviticus 24:12 had already held a man in ward until the mind of the Lord was shewed. What the petitioners are told to do while the answer is waited for is stand still.

The answer covers the men who asked and then adds a class nobody had raised, the man too far off to come. It is written for those who come after them as well, of you or of your posterity, so a question brought by a few men on one day becomes standing law. Older commentators read the two examples as a class rather than a closed list, taking in hindrances of the same kind, and Clarke notes the result is a passover that may be held at either of two dates.

the fourteenth day of the second month: The month moves and the day of the month holds, because the ordinance marks the day Israel came out. Nothing else is relaxed, unleavened bread and bitter herbs included, and the rule that no bone of it be broken stands, which Exodus 12:46 gave first and which John 19:36 applies to the body of Christ at the cross. Hezekiah kept a national passover in the second month on the ground of this provision, recorded at 2 Chronicles 30:2-3. Barnes notes that the later Jewish writers called this keeping the little passover.

The concession has its boundary written into the same paragraph, since the man with no impediment who lets the passover go is cut off from among his people and bears his sin. The law then turns outward, and the stranger sojourning in Israel may keep it under one ordinance for the stranger and for him that was born in the land. Exodus 12:48 sets the condition on that, which is circumcision for every male of his house, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown hold it as the indispensable term of admission. Henry reads the one ordinance forward to Acts 10 and the household of Cornelius.

The account goes back to the day the tabernacle was reared up, which is where Exodus closed at 40:34-38, so the same fact stands at the end of one book and again at the head of the march that begins at 10:11. The cloud is older than the tent it covers, having gone before Israel from the first stage out of Egypt at Exodus 13:21-22. It is named here as the tent of the testimony, after the ark of the testimony inside it, and it shows as cloud by day and fire by night, one presence in two appearances.

The cloud governs the going and the staying alike, and verse 19 gives the harder half of it, the long halts that ran to many days together. What the text calls that waiting is keeping the charge of the Lord, so a camp sitting still under orders is doing the thing it was commanded. Henry makes the point that no time is lost while God's time is being waited for.

The terms run short here, a few days at a time, and verse 21 gives the shortest of them, a single night with the cloud lifting in the morning. The rest of that verse takes away any pattern at all, since the signal could come by day or by night. Clarke observes that marching after dark was seldom resorted to in that desert, which is part of what makes the camp order of Numbers 2 and the assigned Levite loads of Numbers 4 the working answer to a signal that came at any hour.

The terms named reach from two days to a year, and the wilderness would hold this people for thirty-eight more after Kadesh. The commandment of the Lord is named seven times in verses 18 to 23, five times as at the commandment and twice as according to the commandment, which is the chapter making its case by repetition. Verse 23 closes it by the hand of Moses, so the cloud overhead and the word given through a man stand together. Psalm 105:39 and Nehemiah 9:19 both look back on the cloud and the fire as one mercy.