Numbers 9:1

בחודש הראשון, after he had taken a census of the males fit for service in the army according to their ages. Moses was to make all the preparations necessary to arrange for the orderly entrance of the Israelites into the land of Canaan.
This involved first and foremost that the inhabitants of the camps of the Israelites be ritually pure in conformity with the Torah’s imperative that the army of the Jewish people when assembled must be holy (Deuteronomy 23,15). Needless to say that it must not contain people who had not cleansed themselves of their ritual impurity. They also had to be certain that no members of the Israelite camp was the product of an illegal union between people whose incestuous relationship carried the karet penalty. The purpose of all this was that G’d’s Shechinah would rest on the troops, and that therefore victory would be assured and casualties minimized.
The Talmud in Sotah 11 and 31 relates that the Jewish people had 4 virtues to their credit on account of which they merited entering and conquering the land of Canaan already at that time if the sin of the spies had not intervened. We know that Moses was convinced that the conquest of the land of Canaan was at hand when he asked his father-in-law Yitro to remain with him and to partake in that event. (Numbers 10,29)
These merits were: 1) the altar had been successfully consecrated, the offerings of the Jewish people were being accepted by G’d. 2) the Levites had been consecrated. 3) The Jewish people had demonstrated eagerness when observing the anniversary of the Exodus by performing the required ceremonies in difficult circumstances. 4) They had followed their G’d to an inhospitable desert even though they had no idea if and when the cloud would lift and indicate that they were suddenly to break camp. Their entire situation was such that sometimes they would remain in the same spot for months or years, whereas other times they would break camp and re-establish camp after only 24 hours, all of which involved a tremendous upheaval when we consider that we speak about two and a half to three million souls.
In order to describe the various merits the Jewish people had in their favour at the time the Torah told us at this point about these events instead of relating them in chronological order, as we might have expected. Consecration of the altar occurred in the first month of the second year, so did the consecration of the Levites, and so did the celebration of the second Passover. Seeing that the beginning of the Book of Numbers speaks of events in the second month of that year, we could have questioned the Torah’s sequence. However, the Torah had a purpose in delaying the report about the last mentioned events in order to demonstrate that had it not been for the disastrous mission of the spies everything would have been in place for an immediate ascent to the Holy Land. The entire paragraph is another illustration of the principle known as אין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה, that the Torah is not a record of events in chronological order. The Torah most certainly is very orderly, has been written after careful consideration, but G’d, the author, had decided that “order” does not necessarily mean “chronological sequence.”

בשנה השנית....ויעשו בני ישראל את הפסח במועדו, “in the second year after the Exodus....let the Children of Israel offer the Passover sacrifice at its appointed time;” in the Talmud, tractate Pessachim chapter one folio 6, the question is asked why the Torah first wrote the chapter about the census of the people in the first chapter of this Book, although it took place a month later than the observance of the first anniversary of the Exodus. The answer given there is that the Torah is not obligated to record events in their chronological order. Granted that this is true, it is nonetheless in order to enquire why the Torah departs from the chronological order when it does so. The reason may be that seeing the Book of Leviticus, containing all the commandments to be performed by the priests in the Tabernacle, and the tasks performed by the Levites were performed either at or near the Tabernacle, it was considered appropriate to continue with a subject closely related to that discussed in the Book of Leviticus. The flags, the order in which the Israelites encamped around the Tabernacle, were a natural continuation of what had been dealt with in the Book of Leviticus. Rashi explains that the reason why this Book does not commence with the observance of the Passover is that it draws attention to the fact that this was the only time in forty years that the Israelites did observe the anniversary of the Exodus in the manner prescribed. It is therefore an implied criticism of the Jewish people. If you were to ask that actually mandatory observance of the Passover was linked to residence in the land of Israel as spelled out in Exodus 13,5: והיה כי יביאך ה' אל ארץ הכנעני.....ועבדת את העבודה הזאת בחדש הזה. שבעת ימים תאכל מצות וגו', "it will be when Hashem will bring you to the land of the Canaanite........then shall you perform this ritual. For seven consecutive days you are to eat unleavened bread, etc.” So where is the implied criticism? Not only this; even this instance of offering the Passover was observed only after the Israelites had received specific instructions in verse one of our chapter. We would have to understand Rashi as implying that if the Israelites, due to their shortcomings, had not been forced to delay conquest of the land of the Canaanites for forty years, they could have fulfilled this commandment consecutively during all these years already.