Numbers 15:30-31

Deliberate Sin

15:30 “‘But the person ¹  who acts defiantly, ²  whether native-born or a resident foreigner, insults ³  the Lord. ⁴  That person ⁵  must be cut off ⁶  from among his people. 15:31 Because he has despised ⁷  the word of the Lord and has broken ⁸  his commandment, that person ⁹  must be completely cut off. ¹⁰  His iniquity will be on him.’” ¹¹ 

Deuteronomy 1:43

1:43 I spoke to you, but you did not listen. Instead you rebelled against the Lord ¹²  and recklessly went up to the hill country.

Deuteronomy 17:12-13

17:12 The person who pays no attention ¹³  to the priest currently serving the Lord your God there, or to the verdict – that person must die, so that you may purge evil from Israel. 17:13 Then all the people will hear and be afraid, and not be so presumptuous again.

Deuteronomy 18:22

18:22 whenever a prophet speaks in my ¹⁴  name and the prediction ¹⁵  is not fulfilled, ¹⁶  then I have ¹⁷  not spoken it; ¹⁸  the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.”

Deuteronomy 19:11-13

19:11 However, suppose a person hates someone else ¹⁹  and stalks him, attacks him, kills him, ²⁰  and then flees to one of these cities. 19:12 The elders of his own city must send for him and remove him from there to deliver him over to the blood avenger ²¹  to die. 19:13 You must not pity him, but purge out the blood of the innocent ²²  from Israel, so that it may go well with you.

Deuteronomy 19:1

Laws Concerning Manslaughter

19:1 When the Lord your God destroys the nations whose land he ²³  is about to give you and you dispossess them and settle in their cities and houses,

Deuteronomy 2:29-34

2:29 just as the descendants of Esau who live at Seir and the Moabites who live in Ar did for me, until I cross the Jordan to the land the Lord our God is giving us.” 2:30 But King Sihon of Heshbon was unwilling to allow us to pass near him because the Lord our ²⁴  God had made him obstinate ²⁵  and stubborn ²⁶  so that he might deliver him over to you ²⁷  this very day. 2:31 The Lord said to me, “Look! I have already begun to give over Sihon and his land to you. Start right now to take his land as your possession.” 2:32 When Sihon and all his troops ²⁸  emerged to encounter us in battle at Jahaz, ²⁹  2:33 the Lord our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, along with his sons ³⁰  and everyone else. ³¹  2:34 At that time we seized all his cities and put every one of them ³²  under divine judgment, ³³  including even the women and children; we left no survivors.

Psalms 19:13

19:13 Moreover, keep me from committing flagrant ³⁴  sins;

do not allow such sins to control me. ³⁵ 

Then I will be blameless,

and innocent of blatant ³⁶  rebellion.

Hebrews 10:26

10:26 For if we deliberately keep on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins is left for us, ³⁷ 

Hebrews 10:2

10:2 For otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers would have been purified once for all and so have ³⁸  no further consciousness of sin?

Hebrews 2:10

2:10 For it was fitting for him, for whom and through whom all things exist, ³⁹  in bringing many sons to glory, to make the pioneer ⁴⁰  of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

[15:30]  ¹ tn Heb “soul.”

[15:30]  ² tn The sin is described literally as acting “with a high hand” – בְּיָד רָמָה (bÿyad ramah). The expression means that someone would do something with deliberate defiance, with an arrogance in spite of what the Lord said. It is as if the sinner was about to attack God, or at least lifting his hand against God. The implication of the expression is that it was done in full knowledge of the Law (especially since this contrasts throughout with the sins of ignorance). Blatant defiance of the word of the Lord is dealt with differently. For similar expressions, see Exod 14:8 and Num 33:3.

[15:30]  ³ tn The verb occurs only in the Piel; it means “to blaspheme,” “to revile.”

[15:30]  ⁴ tn The word order in the Hebrew text places “Yahweh” first for emphasis – it is the Lord such a person insults.

[15:30]  ⁵ tn Heb “soul.”

[15:30]  ⁶ tn The clause begins with “and” because the verb is the perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive. As discussed with Num 9:13, to be cut off could mean excommunication from the community, death by the community, or death by divine intervention.

[15:31]  ⁷ tn The verb בָּזָה (bazah, “to despise”) means to treat something as worthless, to treat it with contempt, to look down the nose at something as it were.

[15:31]  ⁸ tn The verb פָּרַר (parar, “to break”) can mean to nullify, break, or violate a covenant.

[15:31]  ⁹ tn Heb “soul.”

[15:31]  ¹⁰ tn The construction uses the Niphal imperfect with the modifying Niphal infinitive absolute. The infinitive makes the sentence more emphatic. If the imperfect tense is taken as an instruction imperfect, then the infinitive makes the instruction more binding. If it is a simple future, then the future is certain. In either case, there is no exclusion from being cut off.

[15:31]  ¹¹ sn The point is that the person’s iniquity remains with him – he must pay for his sin. The judgment of God in such a case is both appropriate and unavoidable.

[1:43]  ¹² tn Heb “the mouth of the Lord.” See note at 1:26.

[17:12]  ¹³ tn Heb “who acts presumptuously not to listen” (cf. NASB).

[18:22]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the Lord’s.” See note on the word “his” in v. 5.

[18:22]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “the word,” but a predictive word is in view here. Cf. NAB “his oracle.”

[18:22]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “does not happen or come to pass.”

[18:22]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “the Lord has.” See note on the word “his” in v. 5.

[18:22]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “that is the word which the Lord has not spoken.”

[19:11]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “his neighbor.”

[19:11]  ²⁰ tn Heb “rises against him and strikes him fatally.”

[19:12]  ²¹ tn The גֹאֵל הַדָּם (go’el haddam, “avenger of blood”) would ordinarily be a member of the victim’s family who, after due process of law, was invited to initiate the process of execution (cf. Num 35:16-28). See R. Hubbard, NIDOTTE 1:789-94.

[19:13]  ²² sn Purge out the blood of the innocent. Because of the corporate nature of Israel’s community life, the whole community shared in the guilt of unavenged murder unless and until vengeance occurred. Only this would restore spiritual and moral equilibrium (Num 35:33).

[19:1]  ²³ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” The pronoun has been used in the translation for stylistic reasons to avoid redundancy.

[2:30]  ²⁴ tc The translation follows the LXX in reading the first person pronoun. The MT, followed by many English versions, has a second person masculine singular pronoun, “your.”

[2:30]  ²⁵ tn Heb “hardened his spirit” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV); NIV “made his spirit stubborn.”

[2:30]  ²⁶ tn Heb “made his heart obstinate” (so KJV, NASB); NRSV “made his heart defiant.”

[2:30]  ²⁷ tn Heb “into your hand.”

[2:32]  ²⁸ tn Heb “people.”

[2:32]  ²⁹ sn Jahaz. This is probably Khirbet el-Medeiyineh. See J. Dearman, “The Levitical Cities of Reuben and Moabite Toponymy,” BASOR 276 (1984): 55-57.

[2:33]  ³⁰ tc The translation follows the Qere or marginal reading; the Kethib (consonantal text) has the singular, “his son.”

[2:33]  ³¹ tn Heb “all his people.”

[2:34]  ³² tn Heb “every city of men.” This apparently identifies the cities as inhabited.

[2:34]  ³³ tn Heb “under the ban” (נַחֲרֵם, nakharem). The verb employed is חָרַם (kharam, usually in the Hiphil) and the associated noun is חֵרֶם (kherem). See J. Naudé, NIDOTTE, 2:276-77, and, for a more thorough discussion, Susan Niditch, War in the Hebrew Bible, 28-77.

[19:13]  ³⁴ tn Or “presumptuous.”

[19:13]  ³⁵ tn Heb “let them not rule over me.”

[19:13]  ³⁶ tn Heb “great.”

[10:26]  ³⁷ tn Grk “is left,” with “for us” implied by the first half of the verse.

[10:2]  ³⁸ tn Grk “the worshipers, having been purified once for all, would have.”

[2:10]  ³⁹ tn Grk “for whom are all things and through whom are all things.”

[2:10]  ⁴⁰ sn The Greek word translated pioneer is used of a “prince” or leader, the representative head of a family. It also carries nuances of “trailblazer,” one who breaks through to new ground for those who follow him. It is used some thirty-five times in the Greek OT and four times in the NT, always of Christ (Acts 3:15; 5:31; Heb 2:10; 12:2).