A Second Chance to Keep Passover

In the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after Israel came out of Egypt, Yahweh told Moses that Israel must keep the Passover at its appointed time. Moses told the people, and they kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of that month at evening, as Yahweh had commanded.

That same day, some men came to Moses and Aaron with a problem. They had become unclean because of a dead body, so they could not keep the Passover then. They asked why they should be kept back from presenting Yahweh's offering at its appointed time among the people of Israel.

Moses did not guess at an answer. He told them to wait until he heard what Yahweh would command concerning them. Then Yahweh spoke to Moses and gave an answer that would guide not only those men, but Israel in generations to come.

Yahweh said that if someone was unclean because of a dead body, or was on a journey far away, he could still keep the Passover to Yahweh. He was to keep it in the second month, on the fourteenth day at evening, and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The rest of the Passover rules still applied.

But if a person was clean and not away on a journey, and still failed to keep the Passover, that person would bear his sin and be cut off from his people. A foreigner living among Israel could keep the Passover too, if he desired to do so, and the same statute applied to the foreigner and to the native-born.