Numbers15chapter 15

Numbers 15:17-21

The first of your dough is claimed as a contribution, so the demand moves from the threshing floor to the household oven. Barnes traces the principle to Exodus 23:19, where the firstfruits of the field were already the Lord's. Henry and others set Romans 11:16 beside it: If the first part of the dough is holy, so is the whole batch.

The second law opens with the same promise. Verse 2 spoke of the land God is giving, and this verse of the land to which He is bringing them, so God names Himself as the one who leads them in. A people just sentenced to forty years hears the entry promised twice in eighteen verses.

The offering falls due when they eat, so the gift is tied to the bread of every home. Manna had fed them in the wilderness, and Joshua 5:11-12 records that the manna stopped the day after they ate the produce of the land. From that day this law applied.

The cake is lifted up like grain from the threshing floor, so bread baked at home counts as a firstfruit of the harvest. Later Scripture names who received it. Nehemiah 10:37 brings the first of the dough to the priests, and Ezekiel 44:30 gives it to the priest so that a blessing rests on the house.

The gift is repeated at the close of the law and set for every generation. Jewish practice kept it as the separation of challah, a portion of dough set aside in the home before baking. The law ends where it began.

Numbers 15:22-26

The error in view is national, the whole congregation straying unintentionally from what the LORD commanded through Moses. Leviticus 4:14 had given a bull as the sin offering, and here one male goat is the sin offering while the young bull is the burnt offering. Barnes reads the law as an answer to fear, given to people who had just seen what one generation's disobedience cost.

The span runs from the day the commands were given at Sinai through every generation after. An error could arise in any age. Albert Barnes reads the passage as provision for a people who would soon be bound to keep the whole law in Canaan.

without the knowledge of the congregation: The fault is one the whole people committed without anyone seeing it at the time. The offering follows once it comes to light. The burnt offering carries its full grain and drink offering, so the rule of verses 1 to 12 is applied at once to the remedy for sin.

Two gifts are named, the offering made by fire and the sin offering. John Gill reads the pardon here as a picture of forgiveness through the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, propitiation meaning the offering that turns away God's anger. The priest acts and the people are forgiven.

Forgiveness is promised a second time, and John Gill reads the repetition as a mark of certainty. He takes the foreigner as the full convert and sets Romans 4:9 beside the verse, where the blessing reaches Gentiles as well as Jews. All had erred together.

Numbers 15:27-31

One person's error is met with a year-old female goat, and verse 29 gives the native and the foreigner the same law. The one who sins defiantly receives no offering, and the Hebrew is a high hand, the phrase used of Israel's leaving Egypt at Numbers 33:3. Henry and Clarke set Hebrews 10:26 beside it, where no further sacrifice for sins remains.

Matthew Henry observes that sins committed in ignorance still need atonement. Ignorance softens the guilt of those who might have known the Lord's will, and the guilt still has to be covered. David prays in Psalm 19:12 to be cleansed from hidden faults he could not see.

Leviticus 4 set out sin offerings for the priest, the congregation, a leader and a common Israelite, and it names no foreign resident. This verse writes him into that provision. He brings the same female goat and receives the same forgiveness.

Adam Clarke describes the defiant sin as a bold act against the fullest evidence and in despite of God's authority. He takes being cut off as exclusion from God's people and from all their privileges and blessings. The verse calls such sin blasphemy.

The ground of the sentence is contempt for the word itself. Matthew Henry separates those who fall short yet count the law honourable from those who despise it as beneath them, and he finds the curse in that defiance whatever the sin. No offering was provided to carry such guilt.

Numbers 15:32-36

Exodus 31:14-15 had already fixed death for breaking the Sabbath, and verse 34 names what was missing: it had not been declared what should be done to him. So the man is held while Moses waits for a ruling. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown observe that gathering sticks was lawful on any other day, so the day is the whole case.

The witnesses bring the man before the whole court of Israel, and the case becomes public. Adam Clarke reads him as the defiant sinner just described in verse 31, a man who despised the word of the LORD and broke his commandment. Clarke holds that he was punished on that ground.

Albert Barnes takes the open question to be how the man should die, as the penalty of death was already law. Leviticus 24:12 holds the blasphemer in custody the same way until the will of the LORD was made clear. The camp waited for God to rule.

The ruling names stoning as the means and outside the camp as the place, the same sentence given the blasphemer in Leviticus 24:14. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown call the act a known and wilful sin against a plain command. The whole people carried out the sentence.

The account closes on obedience, with the words that end each stage of the tabernacle's making in Exodus 39. Basil of Caesarea sets this man beside Achan of Joshua 7 and draws from both that God judges a single act of disobedience. The number of sins decided nothing in his reading.

Numbers 15:37-41

The tassels come with their reason, so that you may remember all the commandments of the LORD, and Deuteronomy 22:12 repeats the command without it. The verb behind following your own heart and your own eyes is the verb used of the spies at 13:2. The chapter closes on the opening words of Exodus 20:2, I am the LORD your God.

Blue is the colour of the tabernacle curtains and of the high priest's robe in Exodus 28:31, and now every Israelite wore a thread of it. Matthew Henry reads the command as a guard given right after the pardon for sins of ignorance. It kept them from sinning through forgetfulness.

John Wesley explains that the blue cord made the tassel stand out, as the fringe alone was the same cloth and colour as the garment. The eye that wanders is given something to see. The verb for prostituting yourselves is the word Scripture uses for idolatry, as at Exodus 34:15-16.

The chain runs from seeing to remembering to obeying. Korah will argue at 16:3 that everyone in the congregation is already holy. Matthew Henry calls the tassels reminders of duty, and this verse makes holiness the fruit of that duty kept.

The LORD names Himself as their God at the start of the verse and again at its end. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the close as a pledge that God would keep His care over them through the forty years until they reached the land. The sentence of chapter 14 stood, and so did the covenant.