Numbers 15:31

31 He has despised God's word, he has violated God's command; that person must be kicked out of the community, ostracized, left alone in his wrongdoing."

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 "The same standard holds for everyone who sins by mistake; the native-born Israelites and the foreigners go by the same rules.

30 "But the person, native or foreigner, who sins defiantly, deliberately blaspheming God, must be cut off from his people:

31 He has despised God's word, he has violated God's command; that person must be kicked out of the community, ostracized, left alone in his wrongdoing."

32 Once, during those wilderness years of the People of Israel, a man was caught gathering wood on the Sabbath.

33 The ones who caught him hauled him before Moses and Aaron and the entire congregation.