ANSWER: Thanks
for your question. As you read the Old
Testament keep one thing in mind: you
believe in its inspiration and authority ONLY because Jesus did. Jesus is the lens through which we Christians
read and understand the Jewish Scriptures.
Our whole faith is built on what God did after this, in fulfilment of
all this. It’s a set up, and an opening
act; it’s not giving us the whole story of who God is, but rather it’s
anticipating the full work of Jesus.
And so the laws especially must be read through the lens of
a post-Law covenant which we have in Christ.
This is the record of God’s agreement with one people, the Gospel is a
record of God’s agreement with ALL people.
The early apostles were clear that what you’re reading here are
“shadows” of the good things we have in Christ.
Read Hebrews 10:1-18 and 1 Cor 10:1-6, to set your mind in a correct
posture for your reading of the Old Covenant.
These are not our laws nor our covenant, these are now examples for us,
illustrations of the Christian life, inspiration for our journey. Inspired by the Holy Spirit and useful for
correction and training? Of course! But only when “used properly” – as Paul says
in 1 Tim 1:8.
This won’t take away all the difficulties you read about,
but it will help you hold them with a looser hand, as you rest in the knowledge
that whatever else God may be, and whatever he was up to with the Israelites,
He cannot be different than what I see in Jesus who said, “The Father and I are
One”. Whatever God was up to must have
always been pointing at Jesus. Whatever
confusion comes from how God acts in the early stages of biblical revelation,
clarity is found in Christ.
A good article to help you with the Old Testament is:
So about Cloud of the Tabernacle in Numbers, no one knows
what that was. I think you are right
that the point of the Cloud moving is simply that the Israelites are learning
obedience. God says go, we go, and it
doesn’t matter if we only set camp for a day.
Likewise, God says stay, we stay, even if that’s years at a time in one
location.
The other reason for this direct physical manifestation of
direction was likely so that they built their trust in Moses as God’s
servant. Moses received so many direct
communiques from God that maybe a resentment would build in the people (as it
would toward a cult leader, for example).
We know this happened in the Community from time to time (Number 12:1-2). How can we trust you, Moses, if you’re the
ONLY one getting the “messages”??
Now, God disciplined Aaron and Miriam for rebelling against
Moses, but that’s only because that they failed to accept the very public confirmations
of Moses that God gave, which is exactly what I’m talking about. To be skeptical of a prophet dictating from God
without such confirmation is actually
a GOOD reaction, not a bad one! Historically,
with Mohammed in a cave or Joseph Smith with the angel Moroni and golden
tablets, few in those movements really challenged the veracity of the
messages. It was just, “trust me, God
speaks to me, and you listen.”
Well, unlike those false religions, true religion always has
multiple vehicles to attest to the revelation.
True religion is done out in the open.
Biblical faith is built on events, not merely ideas. With Jesus, we have 4 gospels and the record
of hundreds of witnesses to his resurrection.
And when God was calling the people out of slavery he used Moses in a
special way – yes – but he did not shy away from proving himself publicly and
openly to the WHOLE community. The point
would be to give them confidence that in fact it was God leading them and not
just the hair brained scheme of one man, Moses, getting revelations in secret.
So at Sinai we see God proving himself in thunder and
provoking awe in Ex 20:18-19, to ALL the people. So much so, the people want LESS proof, not
more! When was the last time you heard a
person say, “I want God to stop talking to me so much in public acts that prove
his godhood and power”?? Well, the cloud
is another device just like this (a more gentle one perhaps!) that again proves to the community that God is leading them, not Moses.
Some would therefore say hovering “over the tabernacle”
should be read as a euphemism for the connection between the mountain of God
and God’s direction to the congregation.
I don’t know if that’s the right way to see it, but it may mean the movement of the pillars were tied in some way to something going on geologically in that
region and as you speculate, might therefore have been about their safety. Other references to the pillars of cloud and fire seem to indicate it could not be connected to the Mountain of God, but was truly mobile, a supernatural phenomena of some kind (Ex 13:21).
The main lesson of the cloud remains a very simple one: when God says “go” we go.
Finally, I think you might be confused by the KJV reading of
verse 22. When it says they “remained in
their tents”, that means more accurately, “They
stayed at that campsite and did not move on” as long as the cloud remained
over the tabernacle. They did not literally stay “in doors” for months or a year
at a time!!
The NLT helpfully renders the verse
like this:
Num 9:22-23: Whether the cloud stayed above the Tabernacle for two days, a month, or a year, the people of Israel stayed in camp and did not move on. But as soon as it lifted, they broke camp and moved on.
