Numbers 15:23, commentary and pictures

Everything commanded by the Lord through the hand of Moses remains binding from the day it was commanded onward among succeeding generations, placing those commands within the full and continuing scope of God's requirements. By a contrary reckoning held by some, the verse belongs to a third class of subsidiary sanitary or police regulations adapted to that people, time, and surroundings, all temporary and easily distinguishable from the Decalogue, which by its very nature is eternal. The requirement covers the whole congregation and any single soul, with Israelite and stranger living among them standing before the Lord on the same terms under one law.

The verse belongs to the law of sins committed in ignorance, error, and without knowledge: such violation is still transgression and sin that brings guilt and iniquity even when the person is unaware and feels no sense of guilt. Ignorance does not make a wrong course right and sincerity does not take the place of obedience, so lack of awareness does not prove freedom from sin, though such sins are less serious than sins of presumption. The surrounding law provides that ignorant sin must be acknowledged and atoned for by repentance and offering in order to be forgiven, in contrast to presumptuous sin, which carries the death penalty.

The same chapter illustrates presumptuous sin by the man who openly and defiantly violated the fourth commandment by gathering sticks on the Sabbath; his deliberate defiance was open, presumptuous sin against God, not mere transgression, and was treated as a special and flagrant case. When the unintentional sin comes to knowledge, steps must be taken to obtain forgiveness, and truth must be followed as fast as it is made known. This is applied to those who learned through the presentation of the law that they had broken the Sabbath, whose repentance and walking in the light restored and increased joy and peace. So understood, the Sabbath requirement was a definite rule that could be obeyed and was not limited to the wilderness years, and the teaching on the desert of sin and the necessity of atonement points forward to the present time when atonement is made.