Numbers 15 stands after the murmuring for flesh, the speaking against Moses, and the searching of the land and the reports of the spies, and before Korah's rebellion in Numbers 16. The Lord speaking to Moses here begins further instructions, introducing teaching on acceptable offering. Those surrounding instructions include laws about meal offerings, drink offerings, and offerings for sins committed in ignorance.
Under that law sin committed unintentionally still required atonement, and when the sin became known the person was guilty and had to bring the required offering in order to be forgiven. The same chapter includes the account of Sabbath-breaking, which is presumptuous sin rather than ordinary sin and is abhorrent to God.
The verse introduces the Lord's ordinance that there is one ordinance forever for the congregation and for the stranger who sojourns, so that as Israel is so the stranger is before the Lord. This means foreign servants bought with money, when circumcised in obedience to the Abrahamic covenant, become part of the household during their service and naturalized citizens of the state, members of the congregation, and partakers of all the rites and privileges common to the people. Strangers were invariably recognized as citizens and, alike with Hebrew servants, were amenable to and protected by the same laws, so that the stranger dwelling among Israel is as one born among them and is to be loved as oneself.
The verse begins the command to set apart a portion of dough from the household bread. That was a household duty performed by the Jewish mother in the home in full sight of the little child clinging to her skirts. Together with the Sabbath meal and the kindling of the Sabbath lamp it molded children in accordance with the national discipline and shows that Jewish education began with the mother as teacher.
Numbers 15 stands after the murmuring for flesh, the speaking against Moses, and the searching of the land and the reports of the spies, and before Korah's rebellion in Numbers 16. The Lord speaking to Moses here begins further instructions, introducing teaching on acceptable offering. Those surrounding instructions include laws about meal offerings, drink offerings, and offerings for sins committed in ignorance.
Under that law sin committed unintentionally still required atonement, and when the sin became known the person was guilty and had to bring the required offering in order to be forgiven. The same chapter includes the account of Sabbath-breaking, which is presumptuous sin rather than ordinary sin and is abhorrent to God.
The verse introduces the Lord's ordinance that there is one ordinance forever for the congregation and for the stranger who sojourns, so that as Israel is so the stranger is before the Lord. This means foreign servants bought with money, when circumcised in obedience to the Abrahamic covenant, become part of the household during their service and naturalized citizens of the state, members of the congregation, and partakers of all the rites and privileges common to the people. Strangers were invariably recognized as citizens and, alike with Hebrew servants, were amenable to and protected by the same laws, so that the stranger dwelling among Israel is as one born among them and is to be loved as oneself.
The verse begins the command to set apart a portion of dough from the household bread. That was a household duty performed by the Jewish mother in the home in full sight of the little child clinging to her skirts. Together with the Sabbath meal and the kindling of the Sabbath lamp it molded children in accordance with the national discipline and shows that Jewish education began with the mother as teacher.