Numbers 9:1-14

Modern English Version

The Passover at Sinai

9 And the Lord spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they came out of the land of Egypt, saying: ² Let the children of Israel also keep the Passover at its appointed time. ³ On the fourteenth day of this month, at evening, you will keep it at its appointed time. According to all its rites and according to all its ceremonies, you will keep it.

⁴ Moses spoke to the children of Israel, that they should keep the Passover. ⁵ They kept the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month at evening in the Wilderness of Sinai. According to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did.

⁶ There were men who were unclean by the dead body of a man, so they could not keep the Passover on that day, and they came before Moses and before Aaron on that day. ⁷ And those men said to him, “We are defiled by the dead body of a man. Why are we kept back, that we may not offer an offering of the Lord at its appointed time among the children of Israel?”

⁸ And Moses said to them, “Stand still, and I will hear what the Lord will command concerning you.”

⁹ The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ¹⁰ Speak to the children of Israel, saying: If any man of you or of your posterity is unclean because of a dead body, or is far off on a journey, he will still keep the Passover to the Lord. ¹¹ The fourteenth day of the second month at evening they will keep it, and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. ¹² They will leave none of it until the morning, nor break any of its bones. According to all the ordinances of the Passover they will keep it. ¹³ But the man who is ceremonially clean, and is not on a journey, and fails to keep the Passover, even the same person will be cut off from his people. Because he did not bring the offering of the Lord at its appointed time, that man will bear his sin.

¹⁴ If a stranger will sojourn among you and will keep the Passover to the Lord, according to the ordinance of the Passover, and according to the manner of it, so he will do. You will have one ordinance both for the resident alien and for the natural born citizen of the land.