Numbers 15:22-32

22 “But suppose you unintentionally fail to carry out all these commands that the LORD has given you through Moses.

23 And suppose your descendants in the future fail to do everything the LORD has commanded through Moses.

24 If the mistake was made unintentionally, and the community was unaware of it, the whole community must present a young bull for a burnt offering as a pleasing aroma to the LORD . It must be offered along with its prescribed grain offering and liquid offering and with one male goat for a sin offering.

25 With it the priest will purify the whole community of Israel, making them right with the LORD, and they will be forgiven. For it was an unintentional sin, and they have corrected it with their offerings to the LORD —the special gift and the sin offering.

26 The whole community of Israel will be forgiven, including the foreigners living among you, for all the people were involved in the sin.

27 “If one individual commits an unintentional sin, the guilty person must bring a one-year-old female goat for a sin offering.

28 The priest will sacrifice it to purify the guilty person before the LORD, and that person will be forgiven.

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.

Numbers 15:22-32 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO NUMBERS 15

In this chapter the children of Israel are instructed about the meat offerings and drink offerings, and the quantities of them, which were always to go along with their burnt offerings and peace offerings they should offer when they came into the land of Canaan, Nu 15:1-12; and they are told that the same laws and ordinances would be binding equally on them that were of the country, and on the strangers in it, Nu 15:13-16; and an order is given them to offer a cake of the first dough for an heave offering, Nu 15:17-21; and they are directed what sacrifices to offer for sins of ignorance, both of the congregation and particular persons, Nu 14:22-29; but as for presumptuous sinners, they were to be cut off, Nu 14:30,31; and an instance is recorded of stoning a sabbath breaker, Nu 14:32-36; and the chapter is concluded with a law for wearing fringes on the borders of their garments, the use of which is expressed, Nu 14:35-41.

Footnotes

• [a]. Or will make atonement for the whole community of Israel.
• [b]. Or to make atonement for.