NOTES for Num 9:1-23
In the statute for celebrating Passover, there is both an uncompromising demand for purity and the possibility of celebrating it later if that demand was not properly fulfilled. This provision expresses the paradox of God's call as a whole: it is addressed to everyone without exception, to one's own people and to sojourners, but at the same time it demands from those who are called a readiness to accept it.
Later Christ will point to this principle in the parable of those invited to the wedding feast (Matt. 22:1-13 and parallel passages). How can one combine the universality of the call to holiness, to life with God for all people, with the fact that only a few actually respond to it? Begin with ourselves?