Numbers 15 Study Notes

15:24-29 If someone or a group of people sinned unintentionally without the community’s awareness, the priest was obligated to make a sin offering and a burnt offering on behalf of the entire congregation. The requirement for an individual was a year-old female goat for such offenses. Leviticus 4:1-5:19 provides several examples of these unintentional sins.

15:30-31 In the textual backdrop of Israel’s rejection of God and the promised land, the matter of willful defiance of God’s word is raised. When a person acted defiantly in breaking the covenant relationship, that person blasphemed the Lord and defamed his righteous reputation. The penalty was either capital punishment or permanent banishment from the community of faith.

15:32-36 The defiant breaking of the law of God is exemplified by an Israelite who performed work on the Sabbath. . . . Gathering wood would have been included, but Ex 35:3 specifically mentions lighting a fire. The Sabbath was a sign of the Mosaic covenant, so the breaking of it would mean the rejection of the covenant relationship with God. Permitting such behavior would be dangerous to the whole people, especially at this critical juncture in Israelite history.

15:37-39 The instructions in this verse were about the outward symbol for reminding the people of their covenant faith—the blue corded tassels attached to the corners of their garments (Dt 22:12). This practice was followed in the time of Jesus and remains a tradition among orthodox Jews today.

15:40 The words this way you will remember and obey all my commands provide a parallel to the phraseology of chaps. 1-10: that the people or Moses did according to all that the Lord commanded.

15:41 The declaration I am the Lord your God resonates with covenant overtones, calling to mind the initial words of Moses’s encounter with God in Ex 6:2-8 and the introduction to the Ten Commandments in Ex 20:2.