“And there were certain men, who were defiled by the dead body of a man, that they could not keep the passover on that day: and they came before Moses and before Aaron on that day:”
But there were some people who were unclean through touching a corpse, so that they could not keep the Passover on that day — the problem emerges: certain Israelites, defiled by contact with human death, cannot participate in Passover. The defilement (tum'ah) from corpse-contact (niddah) represents the antithesis of the ritual purity required for eating the Passover meal. The seven-day impurity period following such contact would extend beyond the Passover celebration, creating a pastoral emergency.
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