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Numbers 15: What the Passage Says

117 claims across 41 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Numbers 15 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD gives Moses rules for the grain and wine offerings that go with animal sacrifices once Israel is living in the land, with the same law for Israelites and for foreigners living among them. He adds a rule about giving the LORD a cake from the first of the dough, and rules for offerings when the whole community or one person breaks a command by accident; a person who breaks a command on purpose is cut off from the people. A man found gathering sticks on the sabbath is put in custody, and at the LORD's word the community stones him outside the camp. The chapter ends with the command to wear tassels with a blue cord on the corners of their clothes as a reminder to keep the LORD's commands.

Claim by Claim

  1. 15:1
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say something.
  2. 15:2
    • The LORD told Moses to speak to the children of Israel.
    • The LORD told Moses to say to them: when you come into the land of your dwellings, which I am giving to you.
  3. 15:3
    • The instruction concerns making an offering by fire to the LORD.
    • The offering may be a burnt offering or a sacrifice.
    • The offering may be made to fulfill a special vow.
    • The offering may be a freewill offering.
    • The offering may be made at your appointed feasts.
    • The purpose is to make a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
    • The animal is taken from the herd or from the flock.
  4. 15:4
    • The one who brings his offering to the LORD shall also bring a grain offering.
    • The grain offering is a tenth measure of fine flour.
    • The flour is mixed with a quarter of a hin of oil.
  5. 15:5
    • A quarter of a hin of wine is to be prepared as a drink offering.
    • The drink offering accompanies the burnt offering or the sacrifice.
    • This amount applies for each one lamb.
  6. 15:6
    • For a ram, a grain offering is to be prepared.
    • The grain offering for a ram is two tenth measures of fine flour.
    • The flour is mixed with a third of a hin of oil.
  7. 15:7
    • For a drink offering with a ram, a third of a hin of wine is to be presented.
    • This is a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
  8. 15:8
    • The instruction applies when you prepare a young bull.
    • The bull may be for a burnt offering or a sacrifice.
    • The bull may be offered to fulfill a special vow.
    • The bull may be offered as peace offerings to the LORD.
  9. 15:9
    • With the young bull a grain offering is to be brought.
    • The grain offering with the bull is three tenth measures of fine flour.
    • The flour is mixed with half a hin of oil.
  10. 15:10
    • Half a hin of wine is to be brought as a drink offering.
    • This is an offering made by fire.
    • It is a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
  11. 15:11
    • This is how it shall be done for each one bull.
    • This is how it shall be done for each one ram.
    • This is how it shall be done for a lamb from the sheep or for a young goat.
  12. 15:12
    • According to the number of animals you prepare, you shall do so for each one.
    • The amounts correspond to the number of animals.
  13. 15:13
    • Every native-born person shall do these things in this manner.
    • This is done in presenting an offering made by fire, a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
  14. 15:14
    • The instruction applies if a foreigner sojourns with you.
    • The instruction applies to whoever is among you throughout your generations.
    • The instruction applies when such a person makes an offering by fire, a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
    • As you do, so he shall do.
  15. 15:15
    • One statute shall be for you of the congregation and for the foreigner who sojourns with you.
    • It is a statute forever throughout your generations.
    • As you are, so shall the foreigner be before the LORD.
  16. 15:16
    • One law and one ordinance shall be for you and for the foreigner who sojourns with you.
  17. 15:17
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say something.
  18. 15:18
    • The LORD told Moses to speak to the children of Israel.
    • The LORD told Moses to say to them: when you come into the land to which I am bringing you.
  19. 15:19
    • When you eat of the bread of the land, you shall lift up a contribution to the LORD.
  20. 15:20
    • You shall lift up a cake from the first of your dough as a contribution.
    • You shall lift it up in the same way as the contribution from the threshing floor.
  21. 15:21
    • From the first of your dough you shall give a contribution to the LORD.
    • This is to be done throughout your generations.
  22. 15:22
    • The instruction applies if you err.
    • The instruction applies if you do not perform all these commandments.
    • These commandments are the ones the LORD spoke to Moses.
  23. 15:23
    • The commandments are all that the LORD commanded you by the hand of Moses.
    • They apply from the day the LORD commanded and onward.
    • They apply throughout your generations.
  24. 15:24
    • The case is when the act was done unintentionally without the knowledge of the congregation.
    • The whole congregation shall offer one young bull as a burnt offering.
    • The bull is a pleasing aroma to the LORD.
    • The bull is offered with its grain offering and its drink offering according to the ordinance.
    • One male goat is to be offered as a sin offering.
  25. 15:25
    • The priest shall make atonement for the whole congregation of the children of Israel.
    • They shall be forgiven.
    • The reason is that it was an unintentional error.
    • They brought their offering, an offering made by fire to the LORD.
    • They brought their sin offering before the LORD for their unintentional sin.
  26. 15:26
    • The whole congregation of the children of Israel shall be forgiven.
    • The foreigner who sojourns among them shall be forgiven.
    • The reason is that it happened to all the people unintentionally.
  27. 15:27
    • The instruction applies if one person sins unintentionally.
    • That person shall bring a female goat a year old as a sin offering.
  28. 15:28
    • The priest shall make atonement before the LORD for the person who erred by sinning unintentionally.
    • The atonement is made on his behalf.
    • He shall be forgiven.
  29. 15:29
    • The same applies to the native-born among the children of Israel and to the foreigner sojourning among them.
    • You shall have one law for the one who acts unintentionally.
  30. 15:30
    • The person who acts with a high hand, whether native-born or foreigner, blasphemes the LORD.
    • That person shall be cut off from among his people.
  31. 15:31
    • He has despised the word of the LORD.
    • He has broken the LORD's commandment.
    • That person shall surely be cut off.
    • His iniquity remains upon him.
  32. 15:32
    • The children of Israel were in the wilderness.
    • They found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day.
  33. 15:33
    • Those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation.
  34. 15:34
    • They put him in custody.
    • The reason was that it had not been declared what should be done to him.
  35. 15:35
    • The LORD said to Moses that the man must surely be put to death.
    • The LORD said all the congregation is to stone him with stones.
    • The LORD said the stoning is to happen outside the camp.
  36. 15:36
    • All the congregation brought him outside the camp.
    • They stoned him with stones.
    • He died.
    • This was done as the LORD commanded Moses.
  37. 15:37
    • The LORD spoke to Moses.
    • The LORD told Moses to say something.
  38. 15:38
    • The LORD told Moses to speak to the children of Israel.
    • They are to make tassels on the corners of their garments.
    • They are to do this throughout their generations.
    • They are to put a blue cord on the tassel of each corner.
  39. 15:39
    • The tassels shall serve you as a fringe to look at.
    • By looking at it you shall remember all the commandments of the LORD.
    • You shall do the commandments.
    • You shall not go about after your own heart and your own eyes.
    • You go whoring after your own heart and eyes.
  40. 15:40
    • The purpose is that you may remember and do all my commandments.
    • The purpose is that you may be holy to your God.
  41. 15:41
    • I am the LORD your God.
    • I brought you out of the land of Egypt.
    • I brought you out to be your God.
    • I am the LORD your God.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

15:1
LORD in small capital letters stands for God's personal name, which Israel treated as too holy to say out loud.
15:2
These instructions are framed for life after settlement in Canaan (farming, bread, wine, olive oil), rather than for the wandering in the desert where the people currently are. The recipes assume a settled agricultural economy.
15:3
"Offering by fire" means the portion burned on the altar so the smoke rises. A burnt offering was consumed entirely; other sacrifices were partly burned and partly eaten. A vow was a conditional promise ("if this happens, I will give this"); a freewill offering was voluntary, owed to no promise. "Set feasts" are the fixed annual festivals. "A smell that pleases the LORD" is a standard ancient phrase for a sacrifice that is accepted, not a statement that God is hungry.
15:4
The original units: "a tenth deal" is a tenth of an ephah, the standard dry measure, roughly two quarts of flour; a hin was a liquid measure of roughly a gallon, so a quarter hin is about a quart. Ancient measures are known only approximately, so modern equivalents vary between translations. The point of the system is proportion: bigger animal, more flour, oil and wine.
15:5
A drink offering was wine poured out at the altar rather than drunk. Grain, oil and wine were the three staple products of a farm in this land, so every animal sacrifice came accompanied by the ordinary food and drink of a meal.
15:6
A ram is a full grown male sheep, worth much more than a lamb. The quantities of flour, oil and wine rise with the size of the animal: lamb, then ram, then bull.
15:8
A peace offering (also called a fellowship or well-being offering) was the one sacrifice the worshiper's family ate. Some fat was burned, a portion went to the priests, and the rest became a shared meal.
15:11
In the King James, "a kid" means a young goat. The word had nothing to do with human children in 1611.
15:13
"All that are born of the country" means people born into Israel itself, as opposed to the foreigners described in the next verse.
15:14
"Foreigner living among you" translates a Hebrew word for a resident outsider, someone settled long-term in Israel without belonging to an Israelite family, as distinct from a passing traveler or a foreign merchant. The rules here give such a person the same access to worship and the same obligations.
15:19
"Lift up an offering" renders the KJV's "heave offering." The Hebrew word means a contribution raised or set aside out of a larger amount and given over; older English took it as a physical lifting gesture. It is a portion separated off, not a thing waved in the air.
15:20
The threshing floor was a flat, hard, open area where harvested grain was beaten and tossed in the wind to separate grain from chaff, the place where the year's crop first became usable food, and so where the first portion was set aside. Here the same principle is applied one step later, to the dough made from the flour.
15:24
A sin offering (Hebrew *chatta't*) dealt with the pollution that wrongdoing was thought to leave on the sanctuary and the community; "purification offering" is an equally defensible translation. It applies here to accidental breaches, not deliberate ones.
15:25
"Make things right" renders the KJV's "make an atonement." The Hebrew verb carries the sense of wiping clean, or of covering over; it describes a ritual act the priest performs on the people's behalf.
15:27
A "she goat" is a female goat. One person's offering was smaller than the whole nation's, but it followed the same pattern.
15:30
"On purpose, in defiance" translates a Hebrew idiom, literally "with a high hand", acting openly and with raised fist, the opposite of an accident. "Cut off from his people" is a set phrase whose exact force is disputed: it may mean execution by the community, expulsion from it, dying childless, or a penalty left to God. Ancient interpreters argued over which.
15:31
"His guilt stays on him" translates "his iniquity shall be upon him", the wrongdoing is not transferred to a sacrifice or removed by ritual, but remains attached to the person, who bears its consequences himself.
15:32
Gathering sticks means collecting firewood. Lighting and feeding a fire counted as work, and the sabbath command forbade work; part of what the episode turns on is that the law stated the prohibition without stating a penalty.
15:34
Ancient Israel had no prison system and no imprisonment as a punishment. Holding a man "under guard" meant detaining him until a ruling could be obtained, here, because the existing law gave no specified penalty.
15:35
The camp was arranged around the sanctuary and treated as ritually clean ground; death, burial, disease and executions were kept outside its boundary. Stoning by the whole assembly also spread responsibility across the community rather than placing it on one executioner.
15:38
The tassels are the *tzitzit*. Outer garments were large rectangles of cloth with four corners, and knotted threads were fastened at each corner. Blue dye came from a shellfish, was extremely expensive, and was associated with royal and priestly cloth, so a blue thread marked the garment as something more than ordinary dress.
15:39
"Being unfaithful" renders a Hebrew verb meaning to prostitute oneself. Israel's writers routinely used sexual-infidelity language for abandoning loyalty to their God for other gods; the image is of a partner breaking faith, and it is a stock metaphor rather than a description of sexual conduct.
15:40
"Holy" in this vocabulary means set apart, reserved for a particular use (as a vessel or a day could be holy), rather than "morally good" in the modern sense.
15:41
The sentence "I am the LORD your God" opens and closes this short speech. Repeating a phrase at both ends is a standard Hebrew way of framing a statement and marking where it begins and ends.

Read Numbers 15