22 "But suppose you unintentionally fail to carry out all these commands that the Lord has given you through Moses. 23 And suppose your descendants in the future fail to do everything the Lord has commanded through Moses. 24 If the mistake was made unintentionally, and the community was unaware of it, the whole community must present a young bull for a burnt offering as a pleasing aroma to the Lord . It must be offered along with its prescribed grain offering and liquid offering and with one male goat for a sin offering. 25 With it the priest will purify the whole community of Israel, making them right with the Lord, and they will be forgiven. For it was an unintentional sin, and they have corrected it with their offerings to the Lord -the special gift and the sin offering. 26 The whole community of Israel will be forgiven, including the foreigners living among you, for all the people were involved in the sin. 27 "If one individual commits an unintentional sin, the guilty person must bring a one-year-old female goat for a sin offering. 28 The priest will sacrifice it to purify the guilty person before the Lord, and that person will be forgiven. 29 These same instructions apply both to native-born Israelites and to the foreigners living among you.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Numbers 15:22-29
Commentary on Numbers 15:22-29
(Read Numbers 15:22-29)
Though ignorance will in a degree excuse, it will not justify those who might have known their Lord's will, yet did it not. David prayed to be cleansed from his secret faults, those sins which he himself was not aware of. Sins committed ignorantly, shall be forgiven through Christ the great Sacrifice, who, when he offered up himself once for all upon the cross, seemed to explain one part of the intention of his offering, in that prayer, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. It looked favourably upon the Gentiles, that this law of atoning for sins of ignorance, is expressly made to extend to those who were strangers to Israel.