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Numbers 9 · a question people ask

Doesn't Exodus say no foreigner may eat the Passover?

In the text

It does: "No foreigner shall eat of it" (Exodus 12:43), and "A foreigner and a hired servant shall not eat of it" (Exodus 12:45). Five verses on it adds, "When a stranger lives as a foreigner with you, and would like to keep the Passover to the LORD, let all his males be circumcised, and then let him come near and keep it" (Exodus 12:48). In Hebrew these are different words. The "foreigner" of Exodus 12:43 and of 12:45 are not ger, the word in Numbers 9:14; ger is the "stranger" of Exodus 12:48. And the "statute of the Passover" in Numbers 9:14 is, in Hebrew, the same phrase as the "ordinance of the Passover" in Exodus 12:43. That ordinance is the one that says, "no uncircumcised person shall eat of it" (Exodus 12:48).

The verses

““‘If a foreigner lives among you and desires to keep the Passover to the LORD, then he shall do so according to the statute of the Passover, and according to its ordinance. You shall have one statute, both for the foreigner and for him who is born in the land.’””
Numbers 9:14 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Numbers 9

Numbers 9: At the commandment of the LORD

When unclean men asked, "Why are we kept back?", Moses waited to hear from the LORD, and the answer was a second Passover a month later, for them and for anyone far away on a journey (9:7-11). And "the commandment of the LORD" that moved and stopped the camp, seven times over, is in Hebrew the mouth of the LORD (9:18-23).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions