8:15 “After this, the Levites will go in 1 to do the work 2 of the tent of meeting. So you must cleanse them 3 and offer them like a wave offering. 4
9:1 5 The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out 6 of the land of Egypt:
1 tn The imperfect tense could also be given the nuance of the imperfect of permission: “the Levites may go in.”
2 tn Heb “to serve.”
3 tn The two verbs in the rest of this verse are perfect tenses with vav (ו) consecutive constructions, making them equal to the imperfect. Some commentators try to get around the difficulty of repetition by making these future perfects, “and you will have cleansed,” as opposed to a summary statement, “for thus you will cleanse….”
4 tc The Greek text adds “before the
5 sn The chapter has just the two sections, the observance of the Passover (vv. 1-14) and the cloud that led the Israelites in the wilderness (vv. 15-23). It must be remembered that the material in vv. 7-9 is chronologically earlier than vv. 1-6, as the notices in the text will make clear. The two main discussions here are the last major issues to be reiterated before dealing with the commencement of the journey.
6 tn The temporal clause is formed with the infinitive construct of יָצָא (yatsa’, “to go out; to leave”). This verse indicates that a full year had passed since the exodus and the original Passover; now a second ruling on the Passover is included at the beginning of the second year. This would have occurred immediately after the consecration of the tabernacle, in the month before the census at Sinai.