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Septuagint: Numbers: Numbers Chapter 9

Book of AmosGreek Old TestamentSeptuagint

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This is a passage from the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures), comprising Numbers 9:1–23. It belongs to the legal-narrative tradition of the Pentateuch, blending divine commandment with historical account. The text opens with God instructing Moses in the Sinai wilderness, during the second year after the Exodus, to have Israel observe Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month according to its prescribed laws — and the people comply. A notable legal case then arises: men ritually impure through contact with a corpse petition Moses, asking whether their uncleanness should bar them from presenting the Passover offering. God's response establishes the "Second Passover" — a provision allowing those who were impure or on a distant journey to observe the feast one month later, in the second month, under identical rules. Crucially, the text holds that anyone clean and present who still fails to observe Passover will be cut off from the people, and it explicitly extends the same single law to resident aliens and native Israelites alike. The passage closes with a sustained description of the cloud that covered the Tabernacle: by day a cloud, by night an appearance of fire, it governed all of Israel's movements — the people camped wherever it rested and broke camp whenever it lifted, whether after a night, a day, a month, or longer. The repeated emphasis is that every movement followed the command of the Lord, mediated through Moses, presenting divine sovereignty over Israel's itinerary as total and continuous.

Septuagint: Numbers: Numbers Chapter 9

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