Numbers 15:5
And the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering shalt thou prepare with the burnt offering or sacrifice, for one lamb. And the fourth part of an hin of wine for a drink offering shalt thou prepare with the burnt offering or sacrifice, for one lamb.
The fourth part of an hin of wine for one lamb was commanded among the various laws in Numbers 15 given after unbelief over the spies turned a journey of a few days into thirty-eight years. It belongs to the Mosaic law found in Leviticus 4 and Numbers 15 for sin committed in ignorance. It belongs to subsidiary statutes given through Moses, not to the constitution of God's government epitomized in the Ten Commandments, falling in the temporary class of sanitary or police regulations adapted to that people, that time, and their wilderness environment, and easily distinguishable in moral principle from the eternal law summarized as love to God and love to neighbor.
Sins committed in ignorance are still sins that require atonement, yet they can be atoned for. Although a person can sin and be ignorant of it, when the sin becomes known to him he is deemed guilty, hence the necessity of his making the required offering in order to be forgiven, for atonement must be made or the sin remaineth.
The verse stands in the same chapter with the account of the man who sinned against the fourth commandment by open, daring, Heaven-defying presumptuous sin, not mere transgression. That chapter includes provision for special and flagrant cases of presumptuous sin, as illustrated by the stoning of the man who in defiance gathered sticks on the Sabbath.