Original Meaning

“EYE” OF THE “HURRICANE.” After the breathtaking narrative of the previous chapter, the ritual legislation of Numbers 15 provides an eerie calm. We are really in the tranquil “eye” of a narrative “hurricane” that will strike again with full fury in chapter 16. Temporary suspension of the story points beyond the present crisis. The very fact that the Lord is willing to continue as Israel’s Lawgiver and accept sacrificial gifts from the people is a good sign. So is explicit application of these laws to future life in the Promised Land (15:2, 18), where they can offer him its products, such as grain and wine (15:2–21). Whenever God actually commanded this legislation, its placement in chapter 15 affirms his promise to bring the younger generation into Canaan (14:31).1

So why does chapter 15 intervene between chapters 14 and 16, thereby interrupting the narrative flow? After divine condemnation of the adult generation pronounced in chapter 14, chapter 15 implicitly emphasizes God’s grace in giving the younger Israelites hope for the future. It also highlights the need for loyalty to him by making a drastic contrast between inadvertent sin, for which he offers a sacrificial remedy leading to forgiveness, and defiant sin, for which there is only terminal condemnation (15:22–31; see Bridging Contexts section). This chapter, with its thematic balance between God’s justice and mercy and its strong warning against disloyalty, simultaneously makes Korah’s revolt (ch. 16) appear more shocking and unreasonable to the listener/reader and places the Lord in a better light than if the narrative moved directly from one rebellion and divine judgment (ch. 14) to the next (ch. 16). Framed by reports of conflict in the surrounding chapters, chapter 15 forms the central focal point of an introverted structure that embraces Numbers 1–21 (see the introduction).

Sacrificial accompaniments and first dough. Numbers 15:1–16 formulates a general rule: Grain and wine offerings must accompany every sacrificial gift (ʾiššeh) that is a burnt offering or “sacrifice.” The word “sacrifice” (zebaḥ) here does not refer to sacrifices in general but to the class of sacrifices that includes well-being offerings, from which offerers are permitted to eat (see comments on Lev. 3; 7). The fact that grain and wine accompaniments are included in a sacrificial food gift (ʾiššeh) that is “an aroma pleasing to the Lord” (Num. 15:10; cf. v. 7) implies that they are burned on the outer altar.2

A purification offering does not require accompaniments because it is a mandatory token debt payment, not a gift (ʾiššeh; see comments on Lev. 4). Neither does a reparation offering need grain and wine, in spite of the fact that it is called a gift (ʾiššeh; Lev. 7:5), presumably because it is mandatory.

Numbers 15:4–12 specifies in ascending order the amounts of the grain offerings, including semolina flour and oil, and drink offerings of wine that must accompany each flock animal (sheep or goat), ram, or bull in accordance with its size/value:3

Animal	Semolina (flour)	Oil	Wine
sheep/goat	one tenth ephah	quarter hin	quarter hin
ram	two-tenths ephah	third hin	third hin
bull	three-tenths ephah	half hin	half hin

The same rules for sacrificial accompaniments apply to resident aliens (15:13–16). Verses 15–16 emphasize remarkable equality: Resident aliens share the same legal status before the Lord as other Israelites.

Verses 17–21 present another law that applies when the Israelites enter the Promised Land (cf. v. 2). When they eat the bread of the land, they must set aside a dedication/gift (terumah) and present it to the Lord via his priest: a loaf from the first bread-making vessel? or dough? (ʿarisah)4 of each new harvest. Because it is processed dough from ground grain rather than standing grain, this firstfruits offering (cf. Lev. 2:14–16; Num. 18:12–13) applies to both nonfarmers and farmers.5 Ezekiel 44:30 supplies a motive for acknowledging God’s provision in this way: “so that a blessing may rest on your household.”

Forgivable versus unforgivable sin. Numbers 15:22–29 reiterates part of the Leviticus 4 legislation regarding purification offerings for inadvertent sins of the community or of a common individual. The text goes on to contrast such expiable inadvertence with defiant (“high-handed”) sin, for which there is no sacrificial remedy, but only the divinely administered terminal punishment of being “cut off” (15:30–31).

Numbers 15:22–31 presents two notable differences to Leviticus 4. (1) Instead of a purification offering bull (Lev. 4:14), the community must now sacrifice a burnt offering bull, with its grain and wine accompaniments, in addition to a male goat for a purification offering (Num. 15:24). Some rabbis have argued that the Numbers 15 purification offering for the community functioned alongside the Leviticus 4 procedure to remedy other kinds of sins, such as violation of performative (“Thou shalt . . .”) rather than prohibitive commandments (“Thou shalt not . . .”), or idolatry, which in effect breaks all of the commandments.6 However, there is no clear evidence for such a synchronic distinction between the scope of the Leviticus 4 and Numbers 15 rituals,7 and it is hard to see how the community could inadvertently commit idolatry.8 So we must consider the diachronic possibility that Numbers 15 modifies the prescription for expiation of an inadvertent fault by the community.

What difference does the modification make? The most obvious one is that Numbers 15 distances the purification offering of the community from that of the high priest, both of which call for bulls in Leviticus 4. Why change the ritual in this way? The text does not say. Perhaps the answer lies in the relationship between Numbers 15 and its narrative context, where sins of the community that include conflict with the high priesthood feature so prominently (chs. 14; 16–17).9

(2) The other notable difference to Leviticus 4 is the fact that Numbers 15:30–31 explicitly condemns defiant sinners to the terminal punishment of extirpation (“cutting off”), without any opportunity for the sacrificial expiation that applies in the previous verses to inadvertent sin (15:22–29). This contrast warns those tempted to rebellion against God that there is a point of no return.10 By their own choice, human beings can permanently and irrevocably destroy their relationship with him.

Defiant sin is the spiritual equivalent of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. If biblical warnings sound harsh, they are to prevent that from happening. A story goes that a man climbed onto the railing along the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge, about to end his life. A police officer dispatched to the scene attempted to dissuade him from taking the plunge. After hours of unsuccessfully attempting to convince the man that he had all kinds of positive reasons to keep on living, the policeman became frustrated. Pulling out his pistol, he pointed it at the man’s head and threatened to blow his brains out if he didn’t get down from the railing. The man got down.

Apparently to illustrate inexpiable sin, 15:32–36 places the brief narrative of a man scrounging for firewood on Sabbath within the legal setting of Numbers 15. This happened sometime during the period when the Israelites were in the desert (15:32), where the climate was warm and the people had manna to eat (Ex. 16:35). So a fire for warmth or cooking would not have been urgent even if it were not Sabbath. It looks as though this man was going out of his way to violate the Sabbath command of the Decalogue (Ex. 20:8–11), of which the people were reminded every weekend when they received a double portion of manna on Friday and none on the Sabbath (16:22–30).

The Ten Commandments do not specify punishments. Thus, as in the case of the blasphemer, the penalty for breaking the Sabbath was not clear, so the offender was kept under guard pending a divine oracle (Num. 15:34; cf. Lev. 24:12). Again, the divine verdict communicated to Moses was death outside the camp through stoning by the community (Num. 15:35–36; cf. Lev. 24:14, 23).

Tassels. In Exodus 20 the Sabbath commandment begins: “Remember the Sabbath day” (20:8). The fate of the wood-gatherer would help the people in remembering that law. In addition, Numbers 15:37–41 prescribes an ongoing strategy to jog their memory regarding all of his commandments: tassels on their garments to help them obey and be consecrated to the Lord rather than exploring (Qal of twr) and committing (spiritual) promiscuity (Qal of znh) by going wherever their hearts or eyes should lead them (15:39).

Here there are striking verbal connections to chapters 13–14, where the scouts’ report of what they saw when they explored (Qal of twr; 13:2, 16, 17, etc.; 14:34) led the Israelites to the “promiscuity” (zenut; 14:33) of unfaithfulness to God. The people needed to learn to trust and obey the Lord, walking by faith rather than by their sensory perceptions (eyes) as processed through their cognitive and emotional faculties (hearts).

A violet (tekelet) cord (petil) attached to the tassels (15:38)11 is to symbolize consecration of the Israelites to the Lord (15:40) as a “kingdom of priests” (Ex. 19:6). Violet was a color of royalty because only royalty could afford this kind of dye, which “was extracted from the gland of the Murex trunculus snail found in shallow waters off the coast of northern Israel and Lebanon . . . 12,000 snails yield only 1.4 grams of dye.”12 Violet was also connected with the priesthood because it was used in the priestly garments (28:5, 6, 8, 15, 31, 33).13 In fact, aside from the violet cord on the tassels (ṣiṣit) in Numbers 15:38, violet cords only appear in the context of the high priest’s ornate vestments, connecting the breastpiece to the ephod (Ex. 28:28; 39:21) and the gold plate (ṣiṣ) inscribed “HOLINESS TO THE LORD” (NKJV) to the turban (28:36–37; 39:30–31).

Bridging Contexts

THE LORD’S “MEAL.” Sacrificial accompaniments of grain and drink (15:1–16) made an offering to the Lord a complete meal, just as human beings generally do not eat meat by itself. Compare Genesis 18:5–8, where Abraham provided bread cakes, curds, and milk for his guests along with meat from a calf. He did not immediately recognize that his three guests were of heavenly origin and one of them was the Lord himself (18:1, 13, 17, 20, etc.). What he thought was mundane hospitality turned out to be a sacrifice!

Other ancient Near Eastern meals for deities could also include meat, grain items such as bread, and drink. For example, during the Hittite ninth year festival of the god Telipinu the following ritual takes place: “On the fifth day, at dawn, they slaughter 10 bovines and 200 sheep. They set [the choice meat portions] likewise. [They] s[et] thick breads, livers and hearts likewise. He libates [beer, (another kind of) beer,] and wine likewise.”14

The law of sacrificial accompaniments in 15:1–16 helps us to better understand the Passover meal in the time of Christ and the way he transformed it into the service we now know as “the Lord’s Supper” or “communion” (Matt. 26:26–28). The bread Jesus used to represent his body was unleavened Passover bread (cf. Ex. 12:8). Exodus 12 does not specify wine in the directions for the original Passover, but by Jesus’ day the service included wine as an additional accompaniment to the Passover lamb. This makes good sense. Since the Passover sacrifice was a zebaḥ (“sacrifice”) eaten by the offerer (Ex. 12:27), the law of Numbers 15:1–16 required grain and wine accompaniments when the Israelites settled in the Promised Land.

Today we remember Christ’s sacrifice by partaking of what were accompaniments in the Passover service: bread and wine. By not eating a lamb, we acknowledge that our Lamb has come (1 Cor. 5:7; cf. John 19:36, referring to Ex. 12:46). From the sides, bread and wine point to the center, the sacrificial body and blood of Christ (Matt. 26:26, 28).15

The spectrum of moral faults. By investigating the scope and limits of sacrificial expiation leading to divine forgiveness, we can better understand the nature of various categories of sins and God’s attitude toward them.16 In 15:22–31 there is a sharp contrast between sacrificial expiation + forgiveness for inadvertence (vv. 22–29) and extirpation for defiance (vv. 30–31).17 Although the death of a defiant sinner may accomplish a kind of expiation (also kipper) for the community by purging him or her from it (25:13), defiance and expiation + forgiveness to benefit the offender are mutually exclusive.18 A “highhanded” sinner could not receive reconciliation with God through the system of ancient Israelite animal sacrifices (but see below). Sacrificial expiation prerequisite to forgiveness is a privilege, not an inalienable right.

Some interpreters assume that the two categories of sin in Numbers 15:22–31—expiable inadvertent and inexpiable defiant—are intended to embrace the entire spectrum of moral faults. This would imply that the “highhanded” category (vv. 30–31) must include all wrongs that are not inadvertent, that is, all deliberate/intentional/advertent sins.19

inadvertent: expiable

“high-handed” = deliberate: inexpiable

Aside from the problem that barring all intentional sinners from opportunity for reconciliation with God appears unreasonably harsh, this idea contradicts other texts where at least some deliberate sins are expiable, whether through a purification offering (Lev. 5:1, 5–6) or a reparation offering (6:1–7; Num. 5:5–8).20

A. Schenker resolves the apparent tension between Numbers 15:22–31 and other passages by distinguishing between two kinds of deliberate sins. His criterion is the manner in which they are committed, which reflects the attitude of the wrongdoer. By contrast with simple deliberate lapses, “highhanded” wrongs are defiant, “in your face” offenses against God’s rule that are committed openly, boldly, and shamelessly, as the Israelites “high-handedly” departed from Egypt and Pharaoh’s rule (Ex. 14:8; Num. 33:3).21

inadvertent: expiable

nondefiant deliberate: expiable

“high-handed” = defiant: inexpiable

This approach implies that Numbers 15:22–31 contrasts the least severe inadvertent category (vv. 22–29) with the most severe defiant category (vv. 30–31), but it does not contradict expiation for the intermediate class of nondefiant deliberate sins because it simply does not cover the mid-range of the sin spectrum. Therefore, there is no real contradiction between Numbers 15 and the other passages.

My conclusion basically coincides with that of Schenker,22 but I would make two qualifications. (1) We must depend on Leviticus 5:1, 5–6; 6:1–7 and Numbers 5:5–8 for specification of “nondefiant deliberate” sins expiable by mandatory purification or reparation offerings preceded by voluntary confession and any required reparation. (2) In Numbers 15:30–31 the “high-handed” defiance of a sinner is in relation to God. What is open, bold, and shameless to him is not necessarily apparent to other human beings. For example, Achan’s offense was secret in relation to the community, but with the Lord’s intervention he suffered the fate of an irrevocably condemned defiant sinner (Josh. 7). The success of concealment from other people does not mitigate a moral fault!

The fact that defiance is the factor that tips a sin over the edge into the inexpiable category is highly significant. Defiance is personal disloyalty and an affront against the Lord (15:30); it is rebellion against his authority and covenant.23 From passages in which yad (“hand”) is combined with the verb rwm (“rise/raise”; Ex. 17:11; Deut. 32:27; 1 Kings 11:26–27; Mic. 5:9), C. Labuschagne finds that the expression “high-handed(ly)” is associated with human “strife, rebellion and fighting. . . . The origin of the expression is without any doubt the physical gesture of the raised hand, with or without a weapon in it, which indicates that one is triumphantly determined to fight and to win.”24

The negative connotation of raising the hand is also prominent in the Akkadian letter YOS 3.25: “Why in the world did you lift your hand against the king . . . ?”25 While even nondefiant faults bring loyalty into question and damage the divine-human relationship,26 such sins are not rebellious in the same sense. The Lord can work with those who are faulty, but not with those who refuse to be loyal. For him, loyalty is the bottom line.

The point of 15:22–31 is not to divide the range of moral faults down the middle, but rather to highlight the severity due to those who rebel against God by contrasting it with the leniency available to sinners at the other end of the spectrum. This implied warning is pointedly placed between accounts of communal revolt in chapters 14 and 16 and immediately before the narrative of an individual’s inexpiable offense (15:32–36).27 The law-narrative connection implies that a sin is not simply an abstract theological entity. Rather, every act of sin is a sad story with a relational context.

Contemporary Significance

WHEN IS BAD TOO BAD? Am I too bad for God to save? Have I committed a sin too great for him to forgive? We have found that defiant (“highhanded”) sins were too serious to be handled by the ancient Israelite system of animal sacrifices (Num. 15:30–31). Does this mean that God cannot forgive us if we have sinned defiantly? The story of King Manasseh will help us to answer this important question.

If anyone sinned with a “high hand,” it was Manasseh. Of all kings of Judah and Israel, he was the “baddest of the bad.” In some ways he makes Saddam Hussein look like a nice guy. He shed lots of innocent blood, engaged in occult, and promoted all kinds of abominable apostasy (2 Kings 21; 2 Chron. 33). He sponsored idolatry so enthusiastically that he even spat in God’s face by placing a symbol of the goddess Asherah in the temple (2 Kings 21:7; cf. 2 Chron. 33:7), probably in the Most Holy Place in place of the ark of the covenant (cf. 2 Chron. 35:3)!28 Just for sacrificing his son(s) (2 Kings 21:6; 2 Chron. 33:6) Manasseh would have been terminally condemned by God to being “cut off” (cf. Lev. 20:3).

After the Lord’s appeals to Manasseh and his people were of no avail (2 Chron. 33:10), it is not surprising that “the LORD brought against them the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon” (33:11). He had it coming, and that’s obviously the end of his story, right? Wrong! The next two verses are among the most remarkable in the entire Bible:

In his distress he sought the favor of the LORD his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. And when he prayed to him, the LORD was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the LORD is God. (2 Chron. 33:12–13)

After all this miserable monarch had done, “the LORD was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea”! Can there be any more stunning assurance of God’s relentless compassion? Whereas all the prophetic reproofs God had sent Manasseh fell on deaf ears, miraculous mercy pierced the darkness of his soul, and he finally realized that the Lord alone—not Asherah, Baal, Molech, or the host of heavenly bodies—is God. Lest we suspect that Manasseh’s repentance was not genuine, he tried to undo the evil that he had perpetrated (2 Chron. 33:15–16).

Rather than having his descendants cut off as he deserved, Manasseh’s line continued. In fact, it was a distinguished line: “Manasseh the father of Amon . . . Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (Matt. 1:10–16).

So how did the Lord forgive Manasseh? There was no animal sacrifice that he could offer to receive expiation for what he had done. So God went beyond the bounds of the ritual system to forgive Manasseh directly when he repented, without the prerequisite ritual expiation.29 This agrees with Ezekiel 18:21, where the Lord promises amnesty to the wicked who repent; with some texts expiation (verb kipper) is solely a divine act, not the result of human ritual performance (Ex. 32:30; Ps. 65:3; 78:38; 79:9; Dan. 9:24).30

Only one sacrifice could save a person like Manasseh: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16; emphasis supplied). “Whoever” means absolutely “whoever,” without qualification. The sacrifice of God’s Son is more powerful than animal sacrifices. Paul preached “that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him everyone who believes is justified from everything you could not be justified from by the law of Moses” (Acts 13:38–39). The sacrifice of Christ, whose human father was Joseph, a descendant of Manasseh, reached back through history and snatched the contrite king from hell.

Returning to the original question—Am I too bad for God to save?—the answer is: If he could save Manasseh, he can save anyone who repents. In fact, repentance is a gift from God (Acts 5:31), so he can save anyone who only chooses to accept this gift.

The fact that God is incredibly merciful should bring hope to any sinner who desires salvation. However, it should not lead any to suppose that it is safe to presume upon his grace by stubbornly sliding down the slippery slope of apostasy with assurance that the gravity of depravity can be reversed at any time with a simple hop onto the “chair lift” to heaven. Going down does not make it easier to get back up. “It does not soften the heart, increase the likelihood of faith, or amplify the voice of God speaking through conscience.”31 The problem is not for God to be willing to forgive, but for a sinner to want to be forgiven.

A Jewish story vividly illustrates the principle that God does everything he can to save people (cf. Isa. 5:1–6):

Three rabbis in a rowboat were floating in a quiet lake. Suddenly a fierce storm hit, the lake’s waters becoming a roaring current heading towards a dangerous waterfall. A man along the shore spotted the rabbis and offered them a rope. They refused, answering in unison, “God will save us.”

Then a helicopter came, and lowered down a ladder so the rabbis could climb to safety. Again they refused, shouting, “God will save us.”

Finally, Coast Guard motorboats pulled up to help them, and once again . . . “No, God will save us.”

The rowboat crashed over the waterfall as the rabbis cried: “God, why didn’t you save us!” The answer came from the heavens, “I sent a man with a rope, then a helicopter, finally Coast Guard boats . . . what else did you expect me to do?!”32

Loyalty as God’s “bottom line.” The concept that loyalty is God’s bottom line makes a big difference in the way we relate to him. He does not reserve salvation for perfect people who have never sinned. It is too late for that because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). He knows that his people are faulty: mortal, weak, prone to fall, and unable to make themselves perfect. So he does not judge them on the basis of whether they have faults or not. Rather, what he requires is loyalty to himself, the only One who can heal their faultiness.

We have found the principle of loyalty at the Israelite sanctuary. The Lord provided ritual remedies for the imperfections of his people as long as they were loyal to him. However, if they defied him, spurned his remedies, or failed to demonstrate loyalty on the Day of Atonement, they were condemned (Lev. 23:29–30; Num. 15:30–31; 19:13, 20).

Loyalty as the criterion for maintaining a healthy relationship to the divine King is strikingly paralleled and illuminated by the need for personal loyalty to a human king.33 David rewarded Barzillai and his family, who aided the king when he fled from Absalom (1 Kings 2:7; cf. 2 Sam. 17:27–29; 19:31–32). David also forgave Mephibosheth, who was loyal to him but whose loyalty was put in question through no intention of his own (19:24–30; cf. 16:1–4). By contrast, King Solomon punished Adonijah, Abiathar, Joab, and Shimei for disloyalty after granting them provisional amnesty (1 Kings 2:13–46; cf. 1:5–53; 2:5–6, 8–9).34

Loyalty is a matter of relationship, not simply of performance. Obviously what we do to other people or to God reveals our attitudes in ways that help to shape our relationships with them, but the focus is on the health of the relationship rather than on some kind of objective scorecard. So there is no point comparing with someone else’s score, as a certain Pharisee did with smug reference to a tax collector (Luke 18:9–14). God’s ideal for each of us, as exemplified by Christ and empowered by his Spirit (e.g., 2 Cor. 3; Phil. 2:5; 1 Peter 2:21), is far above what we could deduce by looking around at each other.

A story goes that one evening two buddies were relaxing by a campfire in the mountains. One glanced up and yelled that a bear was coming. The other started putting on his running shoes. Surprised, the first queried, “Why are you doing that? Do you think you can outrun a bear?” His erstwhile “friend” calmly replied, “I don’t need to. I’ve only gotta outrun you!” God doesn’t function like a bear. To put it another way, he doesn’t grade “on the curve.”

Rather than fixating on others or on our own faults—the discouraging wind and waves that make us sink, as Peter did when he was walking on the water (Matt. 14:30)—the key to victorious living is simply to loyally keep on following God all the way, as Caleb did (see comments on Num. 13–14). If God wants to lead us to perfection of character, he can do it, but it is up to him. In Ephesians 5 it is Christ who “loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (5:25–27; cf. Rev. 19:8). Our role is not to cleanse ourselves by our own efforts, but to accept and keep on accepting the gift of cleansing.