And for a drink offering thou shalt offer the third part of an hin of wine, for a sweet savour unto the LORD.
The prescribed accompaniment to the sacrifice was a third of a hin of wine poured out as the drink offering, presented as a sweet savour unto the Lord, and this detail belongs to what makes an offering acceptable to God. It stands among the instructions given through Moses governing meal offerings and drink offerings. Those same laws provided offerings for sins done unknowingly or in ignorance.
When a sin committed in ignorance became known, the guilty one was required to bring the appointed offering in order to receive forgiveness. Ignorance did not render the sin harmless, as Leviticus 4 also shows. Nor did it remove the need for atonement and for answering for the act.
The chapter in which this law stands treats Sabbath-breaking as a sin abhorrent to God, set alongside slander and unbelief among the sins recorded in Numbers. It includes the stoning of the man who in defiance gathered sticks on the Sabbath. That stoning was a sanitary or police regulation dealing with a special and flagrant case of presumptuous sin, adapted to that people, that time, and their surroundings. It is easily distinguishable from the Decalogue as the eternal constitution of God's government.
The prescribed accompaniment to the sacrifice was a third of a hin of wine poured out as the drink offering, presented as a sweet savour unto the Lord, and this detail belongs to what makes an offering acceptable to God. It stands among the instructions given through Moses governing meal offerings and drink offerings. Those same laws provided offerings for sins done unknowingly or in ignorance.
When a sin committed in ignorance became known, the guilty one was required to bring the appointed offering in order to receive forgiveness. Ignorance did not render the sin harmless, as Leviticus 4 also shows. Nor did it remove the need for atonement and for answering for the act.
The chapter in which this law stands treats Sabbath-breaking as a sin abhorrent to God, set alongside slander and unbelief among the sins recorded in Numbers. It includes the stoning of the man who in defiance gathered sticks on the Sabbath. That stoning was a sanitary or police regulation dealing with a special and flagrant case of presumptuous sin, adapted to that people, that time, and their surroundings. It is easily distinguishable from the Decalogue as the eternal constitution of God's government.