Two Passovers?!

Did you know ...

There were two annual Passover days? One was on the 14th of the first month of the new year, and the second was on the 14th of the second month, reserved for those who had special needs preventing them from celebrating the official day in the first month.

WEB Num 9:2 “Let the children of Israel keep the Passover in its appointed season. On the fourteenth day of this month, at evening, you shall keep it in its appointed season. You shall keep it according to all its statutes and according to all its ordinances.” ... They kept the Passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, in the wilderness of Sinai. According to all that Yahweh commanded Moses, so the children of Israel did. ... Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, “Say to the children of Israel, ‘If any man of you or of your generations is unclean by reason of a dead body, or is on a journey far away, he shall still keep the Passover to Yahweh. In the second month on the fourteenth day at evening they shall keep it; they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They shall leave none of it until the morning, nor break a bone of it. According to all the statute of the Passover they shall keep it. But the man who is clean, and is not on a journey, and fails to keep the Passover, that soul shall be cut off from his people. Because he didn’t offer the offering of Yahweh in its appointed season, that man shall bear his sin.

It might be noted that the restoration of the Passover by Hezekiah was kept on the second Passover, and God approved:

WEB 2 Chron 30:2 For the king had taken counsel with his princes and all the assembly in Jerusalem to keep the Passover in the second month. For they could not keep it at that [1st month] time, because the priests had not sanctified themselves in sufficient number, and the people had not gathered themselves together to Jerusalem. The thing was right in the eyes of the king and of all the assembly. ... For Hezekiah had prayed for them, saying, “May the good Yahweh pardon everyone who sets his heart to seek God, Yahweh, the God of his fathers, even if they aren’t clean according to the purification of the sanctuary.” Yahweh listened to Hezekiah, and healed the people.

(It might also be noted that doing "what was right in their own eyes" does not necessarily refer to doing wrong.) Hezekiah's great-grandson, however, did it right:

WEB 2 Chron 35:1 Josiah kept a Passover to Yahweh in Jerusalem. They killed the Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month.