🔢WEB · Numbers 15:29
What does Numbers 15:29 mean?
"You shall have one law for him who does anything unwittingly, for him who is native-born among the children of Israel, and for the stranger who lives as a foreigner among them."
— Numbers 15:29 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
All the congregation of the children of Israel shall be forgiven, as well as the stranger who lives as a foreigner among them; for with regard to all the people, it was done unwittingly.
“‘If one person sins unwittingly, then he shall offer a female goat a year old for a sin offering.
The priest shall make atonement for the soul who errs, when he sins unwittingly before Yahweh, to make atonement for him; and he shall be forgiven.
You shall have one law for him who does anything unwittingly, for him who is native-born among the children of Israel, and for the stranger who lives as a foreigner among them.
“‘But the soul who does anything with a high hand, whether he is native-born or a foreigner, the same blasphemes Yahweh. That soul shall be cut off from among his people.
Because he has despised Yahweh’s word, and has broken his commandment, that soul shall utterly be cut off. His iniquity shall be on him.’”
While the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath day.
Explanation
Numbers 15:29 states a principle of legal uniformity within Israel's sacrificial system: when someone sins unintentionally—by mistake, in ignorance, without deliberate intent to rebel against God—the same law and the same remedy apply whether that person is a native-born Israelite or a foreigner living among them. There is no double standard, one rule for insiders and another for outsiders. The context makes this explicit: anyone who sins unwittingly is to bring the same sin offering, follow the same procedure, and receive the same atonement and forgiveness.
The verse sits within a larger section of Numbers 15 (verses 22-31) that addresses two categories of sin: unintentional sins, which can be atoned for through prescribed offerings, and defiant, "high-handed" sins, which cannot be covered by sacrifice because they represent deliberate rebellion against God. This material comes from the instructions Moses delivered to the Israelites during their wilderness wanderings, likely compiled and preserved by Moses or under his authority as part of the broader legal and cultic code governing Israel's life as a covenant people. The community at this time included not only ethnic Israelites but also "strangers" or resident foreigners (ger in Hebrew)—non-Israelites who had attached themselves to the community, whether through marriage, alliance, or simply by dwelling among them (recall the "mixed multitude" that left Egypt with Israel in Exodus 12:38). The law needed to address how these non-native residents related to Israel's religious and legal system.
Theologically
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