Passover and Divine Guidance: This chapter illustrates the difference between narrative time and real time. The opening chronological note reminds readers that the narrative flashbacks continue. The time is the dedication of the tabernacle in the first month of the second year (earlier than the events in the beginning of Numbers in the second month of the second year). Then on the fourteenth day of the first month the Israelites observe the Passover. A few days later they leave Sinai, and the last part of chapter 9 describes how the community follows the cloud of divine guidance. Past, present, and future all participate in this chapter. The narrative flashback, which began in chapter 7, dwells on the centrality of the divine presence for this community as it prepares to embark from Sinai.…