Numbers 9:17

Summary

Numbers 9:17 describes the recurring pattern governing Israel's movements in the wilderness: whenever the cloud lifted from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out; wherever the cloud settled, they would encamp. The verse establishes cause-and-effect between the cloud's position and Israel's travel and camping actions.

Key words

• le-fi (H9005 + H6310K) — preposition + construct noun "mouth of," combined with the following infinitive to form an idiom meaning roughly "according to" or "at the time of."
• he'alot ("the taking up of", H5927H) — niphal infinitive construct; the niphal stem gives the cloud's rising a passive or spontaneous quality, "being lifted up," rather than an active self-motion.
• yis'u ("they set out", H5265) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural; the imperfect aspect marks repeated or habitual action rather than a single event.
• yishkon ("it settled down", H7931) — qal imperfect, third person masculine singular; describes the cloud's recurring act of coming to rest.
• yachanu ("they encamped", H2583) — qal imperfect, third person masculine plural; parallel in form to yis'u, reinforcing the habitual pattern.

What the text says

The verse opens with the construction u-le-fi he'alot ("and according to the mouth of the taking up"), an idiom built from a preposition, a construct noun for "mouth," and a niphal infinitive. This phrase does not describe a single event but functions as a temporal/conditional marker equivalent to "whenever." The niphal form of he'alot (from the root H5927, "to go up") presents the cloud's ascent as something undergone rather than self-initiated, though niphal here may simply mark the spontaneous nature of the cloud's rising.

The sentence structure is doubled: a first clause (cloud rises → Israel sets out, yis'u) is mirrored by a second clause (cloud settles, yishkon ... sham, "there" → Israel encamps, yachanu, sham, "there"). The repetition of sham ("there", H8033G) at the pivot of the second half creates a tight correspondence between the location named by the relative clause ba-maqom asher yishkon-sham he'anan ("in the place where the cloud settled there") and the resulting camp site. Both yis'u and yachanu are qal imperfects, marking these as customary, repeated actions across the wilderness narrative rather than one-time occurrences.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the Hebrew idiom le-fi he'alot with the temporal conjunction ἡνίκα ("whenever") plus a finite aorist verb ἀνέβη ("it went up"), replacing the infinitive-based idiom with a standard Greek temporal clause. The Vulgate uses cumque ablata fuisset (a pluperfect subjunctive, "and when it had been taken away"), which frames the cloud's departure as a completed prior action. The Vulgate also adds an explanatory clause, quae tabernaculum protegebat ("which was protecting the tabernacle"), a phrase not present in the Hebrew text or explicit in the Greek, expanding on the relationship between cloud and tent.