Numbers 15:3, commentary and pictures

Numbers 15:3 describes offerings made by fire to the Lord from the herd or from the flock, including burnt offerings and sacrifices offered in performing a vow, in a freewill offering, or in the solemn feasts, to make a sweet savour unto the Lord. Their purpose was to be a pleasing aroma to the Lord. The verse belongs among the laws given to Israel in Numbers 15, a chapter that also gives instructions about meal offerings, drink offerings, and offerings for sins committed in ignorance. It gives one of the various laws found in that chapter concerning offerings by fire unto the Lord.

The verse is one of the subsidiary laws given through Moses regulating sacrifices, offerings, and typical feasts and fasts, which shadowed forth the sacrifice and work of Christ. This sacrificial offering law is easily distinguishable from the great constitution of God's government, the Decalogue epitomized in the Ten Commandments and summarized as love to the Lord God with all the heart, soul, and mind and love to the neighbor as self, which in its very nature is eternal and in moral principle unrepealable. When type met antitype in Christ Jesus this offering law necessarily terminated, while the constitution did not and could not pass away.

A sin committed in ignorance is still sin and can be atoned for, but guilt remains until atonement is made. A person may sin without knowing it, but when the sin becomes known he is counted guilty and must bring the required offering in order to be forgiven. The same chapter contrasts such ignorance with the account of a man who defied God and sinned presumptuously in respect to the fourth commandment, an act that was not mere transgression but open, daring, Heaven-defying sin. The chapter shows that definite Sabbath observance was possible during Israel's forty years in the wilderness. The ceremonies and service described in the verse display the very strict order God had among His children so they would learn system and form a systematic character.