Numbers 15:14, commentary and pictures

Numbers 14-15 belong together as a revelation of pardoning mercy after rebellion. A foreigner dwelling for a time among Israel was free to present a fire offering pleasing to the Lord, but only by following exactly the same procedure required of Israel itself. For congregation and resident alien alike there was to be one lasting ordinance, one law and one manner of observance, Israel and stranger standing alike before the Lord. What Numbers as a whole sets forth on this point is the standard for an offering that God will accept.

That standard, read with Leviticus 4, establishes that wrong done unknowingly is still sin and still calls for atonement. A person may sin without realizing it, yet once the fault comes to his knowledge he stands guilty; lack of knowledge does not render the act harmless, and forgiveness comes only through presenting the appointed offering, apart from which the guilt remains. The same chapter proves by Israel's forty years in the wilderness that a definite and strict Sabbath can in fact be kept, so that God's Sabbath requirement is not impossible. It marks violation of the Sabbath as a sin hateful to God.

The old order therefore gave the outsider the right and privilege to live among Israel and to share its religious privileges, Sabbathkeeping included. The Sabbath observed by the Gentile who attaches himself to the Lord is the Lord's own Sabbath and not some new and unfamiliar institution, since standing before God has always rested on character rather than on birth. Those who held it a temporary provision placed this rule among sanitary or police regulations fitted to Israel's condition and wilderness surroundings rather than in the enduring constitution of the Ten Commandments. In their reading the same chapter displays that temporary character in the stoning of the man who defiantly gathered sticks on the Sabbath, a special flagrant instance of presumptuous sin.