Commento su Numeri 9:22

או ימים means, [OR] A FULL YEAR, just as, (Leviticus 25:29) “A full year (ימים) shall he have the right of redemption”.

או יומים או חדש או ימים, this is now already the fifth time that the Torah belabours the subject of these journeys, something totally unprecedented. It alerts us to how sometimes the people did not even have time to send their beasts to graze, whereas on other occasions they had to dismantle everything at very short notice, any plans they had made having to be abandoned.

בהאריך הענן, when the cloud tarried, etc. The Torah mentions that even when the cloud tarried for a whole year, meaning that during that year the Israelites did not come any nearer to their ultimate goal, they did not demur but were content to remain encamped in that location. ובהעלתו, and when it rose, even when the cloud remained in place only overnight, יסעו they would (willingly) move on. The Torah describes the Israelites' will to make camp as equal to their desire to move on. Moreover, even when their journey commenced after a sojourn in the same location for a whole year and would be followed by a renewed encampment after a journey as brief as a day, they still did not demur but displayed the same willingness to encamp again as they had displayed when bidden to move after not having moved for a whole year. The Torah concludes its report by providing us with the reason why the Israelites displayed such equanimity, namely על פי ה׳, they had trained themselves to recognise that G'd acted in their own best interests when He gave the signal to rest or to move on respectively. The words את משמרת ה׳ שמרו, "they observed G'd's charges," mean that the Israelites' patience matched whatever timetable G'd had worked out for them.

As in “a year…” Because the verse is going in ascending order (Nachalas Yaakov). See the comment above in Parshas Chayei Soroh on the verse “the girl shall stay with us for a year (lit. days)” (Bereishis 24:55).

או יומים או חדש ימים, “or two days, or even a month of days.” If the Torah had not written this verse I would have said that the cloud never moved until it had remained in place either for a whole year or only for one night. This is why it had to add the words: “or two days.”

You may well ask that if these last verses were full of compliments for the conduct of the Israelites, as we have demonstrated, why did the Torah have to pay them similar compliments in verse 17 and 18 already? Surely their display of patience and obdedience is more impressive when it is based on recurring experiences, i.e. at the end of the passage than at the very beginning of a trek the length of which no one knew at that time? The reason is that unless we had explained the earlier verses in the manner we did we could not have explained the last verse in this vein. We would then have explained those verses as telling us that the Israelites were anxiously awaiting instructions to move whenever the cloud appeared to make an extended stop and they started moving as soon as they received the signal, whereas they would have anxiously awaited a signal to make camp if only the cloud would stop travelling. As soon as that occurred they would have hurried to make camp. This would not have allowed us to form the impression that they had completely assimilated themselves to what appeared to them to be G'd's wishes in the matter. It is only after we knew from the earlier verses that the Israelites did not pre-empt G'd's instructions when it came to making or breaking camp that we were able to see in the later verses proof that the Israelites were totally on the same wavelength as G'd in all matters pertaining to their journeys. When verse 23 concludes with the statement על פי השם ביד משה, Midrash Hagadol on our verse states that the cloud would not start moving or arresting its motion until Moses had bidden it to either arise or come to rest.