Numbers 15:31

31 Since they have treated the LORD ’s word with contempt and deliberately disobeyed his command, they must be completely cut off and suffer the punishment for their guilt.”

Numbers 15:31 Meaning and Commentary

Numbers 15:31

Because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath
broken his commandment
That is, has broken it through contempt of it, despising it as a command of God, paying no regard to it as a law of his; otherwise such who sin ignorantly break the commandment of God:

that soul shall be utterly cut off;
or "in cutting off shall be cut off" ^F21; most certainly cut off and entirely ruined and destroyed in this world and in that to come, as the Targum of Jonathan; and Maimonides ^F23 understands it of such a cutting off, that the soul itself perishes and is no more; but such annihilation the Scripture nowhere gives us any reason to believe:

his iniquity [shall be] upon him;
the punishment of it, no atonement being made for it by sacrifice; it shall be upon him and him only, or be "in him" ^F24, not repented of and not forgiven.

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FOOTNOTES:

F21 (trkt trkh) "excidendo excidetur", Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius.
F23 In Misn. Sanhedrin, c. 11. sect. 1.
F24 (hb) "in ea", Montanus, Junins & Tremellius, Drusius; "in ipso", Piscator.

Numbers 15:31 In-Context

29 These same instructions apply both to native-born Israelites and to the foreigners living among you.

30 “But those who brazenly violate the LORD ’s will, whether native-born Israelites or foreigners, have blasphemed the LORD, and they must be cut off from the community.

31 Since they have treated the LORD ’s word with contempt and deliberately disobeyed his command, they must be completely cut off and suffer the punishment for their guilt.”

32 One day while the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they discovered a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day.

33 The people who found him doing this took him before Moses, Aaron, and the rest of the community.