Numbers 9:7
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 the LORD in his appointed season among the children of Israel? 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 the LORD in his appointed season among the children of Israel?
The verse belongs to Israel's first Passover after leaving Egypt, kept at Horeb during the nearly year-long stay there, before the departure late in the second month of the second year. It is the Passover observed in the wilderness, the only observance there after Israel left Egypt, and it was not observed again until the people entered Canaan. As part of the instructions concerning the Passover, it records the question of men defiled by contact with a dead body, asking why this defilement kept or barred them from presenting the Lord's offering at its appointed time among Israel.
The answer given in the surrounding passage is the one exception to the rule that the feasts occurred annually and were to be observed only when due, and the only warrant for changing the time of eating the Passover. Those unable to keep it in the first month on account of ceremonial uncleanness, such as defilement by the dead body of a man, could keep it on the same day of the month in the second month. That meant ceremonial defilement allowed the Passover to be eaten just one month later and never one day before. Because delay only by a month and never by anticipation was allowed, Jesus in conformity to Jewish custom and the requirements of the ceremonial law ate the Passover at the specified time and not the evening before.
The phrase translated dead body of a man renders the Hebrew nephesh, commonly translated soul; it literally means dead soul, denotes a human corpse that causes defilement, and shows that soul can mean a lifeless body or a dead person or dead body. Soul means person or creature and is strictly correct when applied to a dead person as a dead person or dead creature, because a man does not lose his personality in dying and otherwise could not be identified after death. The wording for defilement by the dead is elliptical with the idea of death understood, meaning a soul of death or dead soul, the same idea expressed fully as souls of the dead. As Adam became a soul of life or living soul by receiving the breath of life, so when the breath departs the man is a soul of death, and the word expresses the person whether living or dead, so that dead body means dead person. Because nephesh for soul is there translated dead body, the verse shows the soul is mortal and subject to physical death.
The Passover season required people to avoid defilement by the dead. These ceremonial restrictions could be observed sincerely, but retaining them after the people had turned to iniquity made the observance an empty religious form.