Numbers 9:10
Ver. 10. Speak unto the children of Israel, saying,.... Not to the men only that came to Moses for advice, but to the body of the people; for the answer of the Lord concerned them all, and carried in it a rule to be observed in the like case, and others mentioned, in all succeeding ages, as long as the passover was an ordinance of God:
if any man of you; or "a man, a man", or any private man; for, according to the Jewish writers, this law only respects private persons, as those were who were the occasion of its being made:
or of your posterity; or "in your generations" {b}, or "ages"; which shows that this law respected future times, and not the present case only:
shall be unclean by reason of a dead body; see Nu 9:6; Maimonides {c} says, this only respects uncleanness by a dead body, and not uncleanness by any creeping thing; for such as were unclean by them might sacrifice, though a private person, and eat the passover at evening with purity, when he had been cleansed: yet he says elsewhere {d}, that such that had issues, and menstruous women, and those that lay with them, and women in childbed, were unclean, and were put off to the second passover; and so the Targum of Jonathan here adds,
"or that has an issue, or a leprous person:''
or [be] in a journey afar off; which, according to Ben Gersom, was fifteen miles; so in the Misnah {e}, and the commentators on it:
yet he shall keep the passover of the Lord; not the first, but second, according to the directions given in Nu 9:11.
{b} Mkytrdl "generationibus vestris", Pagninus, Montanus; "in aetatibus vestris", Drusius. {c} In Misn. ut supra, (c. 7. sect. 6.) T. Bab. Pesachim, fol. 93. 2. {d} Hilchot Corban Pesach, c. 6. sect. 1. {e} Pesachim, c. 9. sect. 2. Maimon. & Bartenora in ib.