Commento su Esodo 13:22

לא ימיש means He — the Holy One, blessed be He — did not let depart (did not remove) את עמוד הענן יומם ועמוד האש לילה THE PILLAR OF CLOUD BY DAY NOR THE PILLAR OF FIRE BY NIGHT. — This tells us (we may gather from this) that the pillar of cloud handed over the camp to the pillar of fire and the pillar of fire handed it over to the pillar of cloud — that before the one set the other rose (Shabbat 23b).

לא ימיש, the subject is G’d. The word is in the transitive modern hiphil, meaning that G’d would not allow the pillar of cloud and the column of fire to depart from being at the head of the people either by day or by night.

לא ימיש עמוד ענן יומם, “the pillar of cloud would not depart by day, etc.” The reason the Torah repeats this is to teach that the two pillars were complementary to each other as explained by the sages in Shabbat 23.

Hashem [did not remove] the pillar of cloud by day. . . [Rashi knows this] because ימיש is a causative verb. Otherwise, [if it meant “the cloud did not depart”], it should be vocalized יִמּוֹשׁ .

עמוד הענן יומם, “the pillar of cloud by day;” The only other time when the word: יומם occurs in the Torah is when it describes a period when the sun shines on earth. On the other hand, the expression יום, occurs also both in the Torah and in the rest of the Bible when describing a particular day regardless of whether is daylight at the time. In the Torah we find: ביום הכותי כל בכור (Numbers 3,13) although we know that it was at midnight. In the Book of prophets we find the word יום applied to something that happened at night in Kings II 7,9: היום הזה יום בשורה, “this day, the day of good tidings.” It is clear from the context that these words were spoken at night. The speakers added: “let us wait with bringing this news until morning.” In Psalms 88,2 we read: יום צעקתי בלילה נגדך, “a day when I cry out at night before You.”

Before one would depart the other would arrive. [Rashi knows this] because otherwise, why is [this verse of] לא ימיש necessary? [The previous verse] already said, “Hashem went. . . in a pillar of cloud. . . and at night in a pillar of fire.”

לא ימיש, “it did not depart;” the word used is in the future tense, however; we would have expected the Torah to have written: לא מש instead.