Numbers 15:13, commentary and pictures

All that are born of the country were to follow this manner in presenting an offering made by fire as a sweet savour to the Lord, and the instruction belongs to the directions on meal offerings, drink offerings, and offerings for sins of ignorance that set out how Israel was to worship through offerings made to the Lord and what counts as acceptable offering. It belongs to the ceremonies and service of the children of Israel in their wanderings and murmurings. It shows the very strict order placed among the people, given not because God needed it but because they needed to learn it, so that by carrying out system they would form systematic character. It belongs to temporary sanitary or police regulations adapted to Israel, to that time and to wilderness surroundings, easily distinguishable from the Decalogue, which is the eternal constitution of God's government epitomized in the Ten Commandments and summarized in love to God and love to neighbor.

The chapter is evidence that sin committed in ignorance is still sin and still requires atonement, for ignorance does not make sin harmless or remove the need to deal with it. A person may sin and be ignorant of it, but when the sin becomes known he is deemed guilty and must make the required offering in order to be forgiven, or the sin remains.

The verse stands in a chapter containing various laws that records Sabbath-breaking as presumptuous sin. The Sabbath-breaker's act was deliberate defiance of God by violating the fourth commandment, an open, daring sin rather than a mere transgression. The chapter shows Sabbath-breaking to be a sin abhorrent to God. The chapter includes provision for special flagrant cases of presumptuous sin, such as the stoning of the man who in defiance gathered sticks on the Sabbath.