Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 77 · March 18
Two Days or a Year
“And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed: and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents.”
Dawn over a camp of tents in a stone desert, and several hundred thousand people looking up at the same thing before they look at anything else.
The cloud did two jobs and the second is easy to miss. Numbers describes it covering the tabernacle by day and having the appearance of fire by night, and a psalm says what that meant for the people underneath: He spread a cloud for a covering; and fire to give light in the night. In that country the day burns and the night freezes. Shade in the heat, light in the dark. The sign telling them where to go was also the thing keeping them alive while they read it.
And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed.
Then the chapter repeats itself for six verses, which is how it makes its point. Two days. A month. A year. Whether it was by day or by night. The camp never once knew the length of anything in advance, and the packing and the staying are both called keeping the charge of the LORD, in the same breath, at the same commandment.
Isaiah takes the picture and turns it into a promise for a city that had not seen it in centuries: a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night: for upon all the glory shall be a defence. Whatever is over you is there to cover you while you wait under it.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 77 is The Secret Place (Psalm 91:1).