Pesach Sheni: The Second Passover and the God of Second Chances

“Why Should We Be Kept Back?”

The story is told in Numbers 9. In the first month of the second year after the Exodus, Hashem commanded Israel to keep the Passover in the wilderness of Sinai “in his appointed season” (Numbers 9:2), on the fourteenth day of the first month at evening. This was the first Passover since the night in Egypt.

But some men could not take part:

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 Moshe and before Aharon on that day: and those men said unto him, We are defiled by the dead body of a man: wherefore are we kept back, that we may not offer an offering of Hashem in his appointed season among the children of Israel?

Contact with a dead body made a person impure for seven days (Numbers 19:11), and an impure person could not eat the holy Passover offering. These men were not guilty of anything. The Talmud records opinions that they were carrying the bones of Yosef (Exodus 13:19), or were Mishael and Eltzafan, who carried out the bodies of Nadav and Avihu (Leviticus 10:4), or had buried a met mitzvah, an unattended body.¹ Whoever they were, they were impure because they had done something right.

Their question, lamah nigara (למה נגרע), means “why should we be diminished?” They did not ask to be excused; they asked to be included. Moshe answered, “Stand still, and I will hear what Hashem will command concerning you” (9:8).

Hashem’s answer

If any man of you or of your posterity shall be unclean by reason of a dead body, or be in a journey afar off, yet he shall keep the passover unto Hashem. The fourteenth day of the second month at even they shall keep it, and eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

Three things stand out.

First, the answer is wider than the question. The men asked about impurity, and Hashem added a second case: one who was “in a journey afar off” (b’derech rechokah, בדרך רחוקה). Hashem’s provision goes beyond what the men had thought to ask for.

Second, the second Pesach is not a lesser one. It is kept “according to all the ordinances of the passover” (9:12): a lamb, matzah, bitter herbs, nothing left until morning, and no bone broken.

Third, the Torah protects the first Pesach from being taken lightly. A man who was clean, not travelling, and simply chose not to keep the Passover “shall be cut off from among his people” (9:13). The second chance is for those who were prevented, not for those who did not care. The same chapter adds that the stranger who lives among Israel may keep the Passover too: “ye shall have one ordinance, both for the stranger, and for him that was born in the land” (9:14).

Pesach Sheni in the Mishnah and Talmud

Tractate Pesachim in the Mishnah gives a whole chapter to the second Pesach. It explains who is obligated and how the second Pesach differs from the first.

How far is “a journey afar off”? Rabbi Akiva said it means from the town of Modi’in outward, roughly the distance a person could not walk to Jerusalem in time for the slaughter. Rabbi Eliezer said that even someone standing just outside the threshold of the Temple courtyard at the time of slaughter counts as “far”.² The word רחוקה, “far”, has a dot over its final letter in the Torah scroll, and the Mishnah, in the name of Rabbi Yose, draws a lesson from it: the person is not truly far, he is just not where he needs to be at the right moment.³

What is the difference between the first and the second Pesach? The Mishnah answers:

What is the difference between the first Pesach and the second? At the first, chametz is forbidden under “it shall not be seen” and “it shall not be found”; at the second, chametz and matzah may be with him in the house. The first requires Hallel when it is eaten; the second does not require Hallel when it is eaten. Both require Hallel when they are prepared, both are eaten roasted with matzah and bitter herbs, and both override the Shabbat.

So Pesach Sheni is a single evening’s meal, with no clearing out of leaven, but the lamb is offered with the same holiness, even on Shabbat.

A festival in its own right, or a make-up day? Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi held that the second Pesach is “a festival in its own right” (regel bifnei atzmo); Rabbi Natan and Rabbi Chananya ben Akavya held that it makes up (tashlumin) for the first.⁴ The Rambam rules like Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi.⁵ Either way, the one shut out of the first Pesach has a real Passover of his own.

Hezekiah’s Passover in the Second Month

The Tanakh records one great national Passover kept in the second month. When King Hezekiah of Judah began to cleanse the Temple after his father Ahaz had shut its doors, the work could not be finished in time for Nisan:

For they could not keep it at that time, because the priests had not sanctified themselves sufficiently, neither had the people gathered themselves together to Jerusalem.

So the king and the assembly decided to keep the Passover in the second month (30:2). Hezekiah then did something remarkable. He sent letters from Beersheba to Dan, to the remnant of the northern tribes after the Assyrian exile, inviting them back to Jerusalem: “Ye children of Israel, turn again unto Hashem God of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Israel, and he will return to the remnant of you” (30:6). Many laughed at the messengers. Yet “divers of Asher and Manasseh and of Zebulun humbled themselves, and came to Jerusalem” (30:11).

Some came who were still not purified, and ate the Passover anyway. Hezekiah prayed for them:

The good Hashem pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God, Hashem God of his fathers, though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary. And Hashem hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people.

The joy was so great that they kept seven more days, “for since the time of Shlomo the son of David king of Israel there was not the like in Jerusalem” (30:23–26). The sages did not approve of all Hezekiah’s calendar decisions,⁶ but the Chronicler presents the second-month Passover as a time of return, healing and joy for a divided people.

How Pesach Sheni Is Remembered

Since the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Passover lamb cannot be offered, so Pesach Sheni has no sacrificial observance. It survives as a date on the calendar with a few customs:

• No Tachanun. Many communities do not say Tachanun, the prayers of supplication, on 14 Iyar. The Shulchan Aruch does not list the day, but later authorities record the custom, and it is widespread.⁷
• Eating matzah. Many people, especially in Chassidic communities, eat a piece of matzah on the afternoon or evening of 14 Iyar, the time when the second Passover lamb would have been eaten. It is a custom, not a requirement. It is not a seder and no blessing over the mitzvah of matzah is said.
• No special readings. There is no special Torah reading or haftarah. Some people study Numbers 9 or the Mishnah’s chapter on Pesach Sheni.

14 Iyar is the twenty-ninth day of the omer, and Pesach Sheni is one day both in Israel and outside it.

“It is never too late”

In the Chabad movement, Pesach Sheni has become a well-known teaching day. A saying attributed to the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, is often quoted for it: “Nothing is ever lost: it’s never too late!”⁸ The teaching draws out what the Torah already shows. Hashem gave a second chance to those who were impure and those who were far away, so a person who has fallen short, or wandered far from the Torah, can still return and repair what was missed. The saying belongs to Chabad. The idea it expresses runs right through the Torah and the prophets.

The Welcome of the Latecomer

Yeshua never mentions Pesach Sheni in the Gospels, and it would force the text to say he was teaching about it. Yet the heart of Pesach Sheni, Hashem’s welcome for those who come late or from far away, is the heart of several of his best-known teachings.

The son who was far off

In the parable of the two sons (Luke 15:11–32), the younger son wastes his inheritance in “a far country” (15:13). He sinks lower still, feeding pigs for a Gentile. When he decides to return, his father does not wait for him to arrive:

But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.

“A great way off” echoes the Torah’s “a journey afar off”. The parable is not about Pesach Sheni, but it breathes the same spirit. When the older brother resents the feast, the father answers, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” (15:31). The welcome of the latecomer takes nothing from those who kept the first Pesach.

The workers of the eleventh hour

In the parable of the vineyard (Matthew 20:1–16), a landowner hires workers through the day, the last at “the eleventh hour”, and pays them all the same wage. When the first complain, he answers: “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?” (20:15). Rabbinic literature has a strikingly similar parable. The Jerusalem Talmud compares a rabbi who died young, having accomplished in a short time what others took many years to do, to a worker whom a king walked with and then paid a full day’s wage after only two hours.⁹ Both parables teach that Hashem’s reward is grace, not a timesheet.

Hashem is patient

The Brit Hadashah (the New Testament) explains why the door stays open:

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

This is the God of Exodus 34:6, “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth”. Pesach Sheni is a picture of that patience in the calendar. But Peter also warns that “the day of the Lord will come” (3:10), and Numbers 9:13 warns the one who simply refuses. A second chance is not permission to delay; it is an invitation to take it.

The Far-off Brought Near

Pesach Sheni speaks of two groups: those who were impure and those who were “far off”. The prophets promise a day when Hashem will bring near those who are far.

I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith Hashem; and I will heal him.

In its setting, Isaiah is speaking to exiled and broken Israel, and to the contrite who are far from Hashem. Paul applies the verse to Gentiles who have been joined to the God of Israel through the Messiah: “But now in Messiah Yeshua ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Messiah” (Ephesians 2:13). He then says that the Messiah “came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh” (2:17). Those who were far off are brought near to the commonwealth of Israel and its covenants (2:12, 19), not to a separate people. The Torah already made room at the Passover for the stranger who would join himself to Israel (Numbers 9:14; Exodus 12:48).

For Israel itself, Moshe gives a promise that reaches even the most distant exile:

If any of thine be driven out unto the outmost parts of heaven, from thence will Hashem thy God gather thee, and from thence will he fetch thee.

The “journey afar off” of Numbers 9 is a small picture of the long exile of the Jewish people. Hezekiah’s Passover in the second month, when the remnant of the northern tribes came back to Jerusalem, is a preview of the ingathering the prophets foresee. Ezekiel sees the stick of Yehudah and the stick of Yosef joined into one in Hashem’s hand (Ezekiel 37:15–22). Isaiah sees the great shofar sounding, and those who were “ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt” coming to worship Hashem “in the holy mount at Jerusalem” (Isaiah 27:13). Messianic Jews believe this ingathering will be completed when Yeshua returns as Mashiach ben David to gather his people (Matthew 24:31). No one who longs to come home will be told, “You are too late.”

Remembering Pesach Sheni

Pesach Sheni falls on 14 Iyar each year. It is not a yom tov: work is permitted and there is no special service. See our calendar for the date in a given year. Some ways to mark it:

• Eat a piece of matzah on 14 Iyar if that is your custom, remembering the second Passover lamb.
• Read Numbers 9:1–14 and 2 Chronicles 30, and talk about the men who asked “why should we be kept back?”
• Finish what you missed. Ask what you meant to do at Pesach and did not, and do it.
• Reach out to someone far away. Hezekiah sent letters; a call or message to someone who has drifted can be the same invitation.
• Pray for the ingathering of Israel and for all who are far off to be brought near (Isaiah 57:19).

The God of Israel does not shut the door on those who come late. He made a law so that they could come in.