Numbers15
New Living Translation
1Then the Lord told Moses,
2“Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. “When you finally settle in the land I am giving you,
3you will offer special gifts as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. These gifts may take the form of a burnt offering, a sacrifice to fulfill a vow, a voluntary offering, or an offering at any of your annual festivals, and they may be taken from your herds of cattle or your flocks of sheep and goats.
4When you present these offerings, you must also give the Lord a grain offering of two quarts of choice flour mixed with one quart of olive oil.
5For each lamb offered as a burnt offering or a special sacrifice, you must also present one quart of wine as a liquid offering.
6“If the sacrifice is a ram, give a grain offering of four quarts of choice flour mixed with a third of a gallon of olive oil,
7and give a third of a gallon of wine as a liquid offering. This will be a pleasing aroma to the Lord.
8“When you present a young bull as a burnt offering or as a sacrifice to fulfill a vow or as a peace offering to the Lord,
9you must also give a grain offering of six quarts of choice flour mixed with two quarts of olive oil,
10and give two quarts of wine as a liquid offering. This will be a special gift, a pleasing aroma to the Lord.
11“Each sacrifice of a bull, ram, lamb, or young goat should be prepared in this way.
12Follow these instructions with each offering you present.
13All of you native-born Israelites must follow these instructions when you offer a special gift as a pleasing aroma to the Lord.
14And if any foreigners visit you or live among you and want to present a special gift as a pleasing aroma to the Lord, they must follow these same procedures.
15Native-born Israelites and foreigners are equal before the Lord and are subject to the same decrees. This is a permanent law for you, to be observed from generation to generation.
16The same instructions and regulations will apply both to you and to the foreigners living among you.”
17Then the Lord said to Moses,
18“Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. “When you arrive in the land where I am taking you,
19and you eat the crops that grow there, you must set some aside as a sacred offering to the Lord.
20Present a cake from the first of the flour you grind, and set it aside as a sacred offering, as you do with the first grain from the threshing floor.
21Throughout the generations to come, you are to present a sacred offering to the Lord each year from the first of your ground flour.
22“But suppose you unintentionally fail to carry out all these commands that the Lord has given you through Moses.
23And suppose your descendants in the future fail to do everything the Lord has commanded through Moses.
24If 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.
25With 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.
26The 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.
28The priest will sacrifice it to purify the guilty person before the Lord, and that person will be forgiven.
29These 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.
31Since 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.”
32One day while the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they discovered a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day.
33The people who found him doing this took him before Moses, Aaron, and the rest of the community.
34They held him in custody because they did not know what to do with him.
35Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must be put to death! The whole community must stone him outside the camp.”
36So the whole community took the man outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.
37Then the Lord said to Moses,
38“Give the following instructions to the people of Israel: Throughout the generations to come you must make tassels for the hems of your clothing and attach them with a blue cord.
39When you see the tassels, you will remember and obey all the commands of the Lord instead of following your own desires and defiling yourselves, as you are prone to do.
40The tassels will help you remember that you must obey all my commands and be holy to your God.
41I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt that I might be your God. I am the Lord your God!”
Study Guide
Public-domain commentary and original-language notes for Numbers 15.
Chapter Summary
In this chapter: The law of the meat-offering and the drink-offering, The stranger under the same law. (1–21). The sacrifice for the sin of ignorance. (22–29). The punishment of presumption, The sabbath-breaker stoned. (30–36). The law for fringes on garment. (37–41).
vv1-21
Full instructions are given about the meat-offerings and drink-offerings. The beginning of this law is very encouraging, When ye come into the land of your habitation which I give unto you. This was a plain intimation that God would secure the promised land to their seed. It was requisite, since the sacrifices of acknowledgment were intended as the food of God's table, that there should be a constant supply of bread, oil, and wine, whatever the flesh-meat was. And the intent of this law is to direct the proportions of the meat-offering and drink-offering. Natives and strangers are placed on a level in this as in other like matters. It was a happy forewarning of the calling of the Gentiles, and of their admission into the church. If the law made so little difference between Jew and Gentile, much less would the gospel, which broke down the partition-wall, and reconciled both to God.
vv22-29
Though ignorance will in a degree excuse, it will not justify those who might have known their Lord's will, yet did it not. David prayed to be cleansed from his secret faults, those sins which he himself was not aware of. Sins committed ignorantly, shall be forgiven through Christ the great Sacrifice, who, when he offered up himself once for all upon the cross, seemed to explain one part of the intention of his offering, in that prayer, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. It looked favourably upon the Gentiles, that this law of atoning for sins of ignorance, is expressly made to extend to those who were strangers to Israel.
vv30-36
Those are to be reckoned presumptuous sinners, who sin designedly against God's will and glory. Sins thus committed are exceedingly sinful. He that thus breaks the commandment reproaches the Lord. He also despises the word of the Lord. Presumptuous sinners despise it, thinking themselves too great, too good, and too wise, to be ruled by it. A particular instance of presumption in the sin of sabbath-breaking is related. The offence was gathering sticks on the sabbath day, to make a fire, whereas the people were to bake and seethe what they had occasion for, the day before, Ex 16:23. This was done as an affront both to the law and to the Lawgiver. God is jealous for the honour of his sabbaths, and will not hold him guiltless who profanes them, whatever men may do. God intended this punishment for a warning to all, to make conscience of keeping holy the sabbath. And we may be assured that no command was ever given for the punishment of sin, which, at the judgment day, shall not prove to have come from perfect love and justice. The right of God to a day of devotion to himself, will be disputed and denied only by such as listen to the pride and unbelief of their hearts, rather than to the teaching of the Spirit of truth and life. Wherein consists the difference between him who was detected gathering sticks in the wilderness on the day of God, and the man who turns his back upon the blessings of sabbath appointments, and the promises of sabbath mercies, to use his time, his cares, and his soul, in heaping up riches; and waste his hours, his property, and his strength in sinful pleasure? Wealth may come by the unhallowed effort, but it will not come alone; it will have its awful reward. Sinful pursuits lead to ruin.
Key Words
דָבַר: perhaps properly, to arrange; but used figuratively (of words), to speak; rarely (in a destructive sense) to subdue
מֹשֶׁה: Mosheh, the Israelite lawgiver
אָמַר: to say (used with great latitude)
בֵּן: a son (as a builder of the family name), in the widest sense (of literal and figurative relationship, including grandson, subject, nation, quality or condition, etc., (like father or brother), etc.)
יִשְׂרָאֵל: Jisrael, a symbolical name of Jacob; also (typically) of his posterity
בּוֹא: to go or come (in a wide variety of applications)
אֶרֶץ: the earth (at large, or partitively a land)
מוֹשָׁב: a seat; figuratively, a site; abstractly, a session; by extension an abode (the place or the time); by implication, population
אֲשֶׁר: who, which, what, that; also (as an adverb and a conjunction) when, where, how, because, in order that, etc.
נָתַן: to give, used with greatest latitude of application (put, make, etc.)
Cross References
Numbers 15Calvin highlights this as a parallel command for outward aids to keep God's word in memory.
Supported by John Calvin
Establishes the explicit penalty of death for Sabbath-breaking, which caused the rulers' initial embarrassment.
Supported by Matthew Poole, JFB
The foundational law stating one law shall apply to both the homeborn and the stranger.
Supported by Matthew Henry, Matthew Poole, JFB
Clarifies that the heave offering of dough is given to the priests of the Lord.
Supported by Matthew Poole, JFB
JFB contrasts this collective omission with Leviticus 4:13's positive transgression of commands.
Supported by JFB
Henry notes gathering sticks violated the directive to prepare Sabbath food the day before.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Parallel command to make fringes upon the four quarters of vestments to remember commands.
Supported by Matthew Henry, John Calvin, JFB
Demonstrates that 'sacrifice' is used in the sense of a peace offering.
Supported by Matthew Poole, JFB
Defines a tenth deal as an omer, the tenth part of an ephah.
Supported by Matthew Poole, JFB
Parallel instance of putting an offender in ward because the judgment was not yet declared.
Supported by Matthew Poole, JFB
Christ references the scribes and Pharisees enlarging the borders (fringes) of their garments.
Supported by Matthew Henry
Poole notes oil-mingled meat offerings were typically accompaniments, except in the leper's cleansing.
Supported by Matthew Poole
Henry connects the atonement for ignorance to Christ's prayer: 'forgive them; they know not what they do.'
Supported by Matthew Henry
David prays specifically to be kept back from 'presumptuous sins' like those warned of here.
Supported by Matthew Henry, JFB
New Testament warning against sinning wilfully after receiving knowledge of the truth.
Supported by Matthew Henry