(1) יהוה spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, on the first new moon of the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, saying: (2) Let the Israelite people offer the passover sacrifice at its set time: (3) you shall offer it on the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight, at its set time; you shall offer it in accordance with all its rules and rites. (4) Moses instructed the Israelites to offer the passover sacrifice; (5) and they offered the passover sacrifice in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, in the wilderness of Sinai. Just as יהוה had commanded Moses, so the Israelites did.

(6) But there were some householders who were impure by reason of a corpse and could not offer the passover sacrifice on that day. Appearing that same day before Moses and Aaron, (7) those householders said to them, “Impure though we are by reason of a corpse, why must we be debarred from presenting יהוה’s offering at its set time with the rest of the Israelites?” (8) Moses said to them, “Stand by, and let me hear what instructions יהוה gives about you.”

BUT THERE WERE CERTAIN MEN. It is impossible for a camp to be big as that of the Israelites without people dying every day.

(1) אנחנו טמאים לנפש אדם למה נגרע, seeing that the ritual impurity we have incurred was incurred in the process of our fulfilling a positive commandment, why should the result of this be the misdemeanour of not fulfilling such an important commandment as observing the Passover at the appointed time? (2) במועדו, seeing that this is a commandment which can only be fulfilled at its appointed date?

STAY YE. At the opening of the tent of meeting.

Those who touch the corpse of any human being shall be impure for seven days.

הנוגע במת, “if someone has been in physical contact with a corpse, etc.;” why does this have to be spelled out, when we have already been told that even being in an enclosed room sharing the same air space with the corpse, he has become contaminated? The answer to this question is the same as above when we stated that penalties in the Torah cannot be imposed as the result of our using our mental faculties, unless the Torah has spelled this out (Sifri).

(9) And יהוה spoke to Moses, saying: (10) Speak to the Israelite people, saying: When any party—whether you or your posterity—who is defiled by a corpse or is on a long journey would offer a passover sacrifice to יהוה, (11) they shall offer it in the second month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs,

He holds in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Yitzḥak, who said: The ritually impure people in the desert asked Moses what they should do concerning their obligation to bring a Paschal lamb. It is about them that the verses pertaining to the second Pesaḥ were originally stated. They were ritually impure from a corpse that had no one to bury it [met mitzva], and their seventh day occurred on Passover eve, as it is stated: “They could not perform the Paschal lamb on that day” (Numbers 9:6). By inference, it was only on that day that they were unable to perform it, but the next day they would have been able to perform it by completing their purification process; and nonetheless the Torah said that they should be deferred.

The Sages taught in a different baraita: The offering of the Paschal lamb on the first Pesaḥ overrides Shabbat, and similarly, the offering of the Paschal lamb on the second Pesaḥ overrides Shabbat. The first Pesaḥ overrides ritual impurity, and similarly, the second Pesaḥ overrides ritual impurity. The first Pesaḥ requires remaining until morning, meaning that it is prohibited for people who have participated in the Paschal lamb to return that night to their homes outside Jerusalem, and similarly, the second Pesaḥ requires remaining until morning.