Numbers 15:25

Summary

Numbers 15:25 describes the ritual outcome when the priest performs atonement on behalf of the whole congregation of Israel for an unintentional wrong: forgiveness follows, and the people bring their fire offering and sin offering before Yehovah in connection with that inadvertence.

Key words

• khiPer ("he will make atonement", H3722A) — piel sequential perfect; the piel stem intensifies the priestly action, and the sequential form links it to the preceding verse as the next step in the ritual sequence.
• nislach ("it will be forgiven", H5545) — niphal (passive) sequential perfect; the passive voice removes any stated agent — the text does not name who forgives, only that forgiveness occurs.
• shegagah ("inadvertence", H7684) — feminine singular noun, appears twice (also in construct as shigatam, "their inadvertence"), naming the category of unintentional wrongdoing that grounds the whole procedure.
• qorbanam ("their offering", H7133A + suffix) — construct noun with 3rd person plural suffix, marking the offering as belonging to "them," the congregation.
• chattatam ("their sin offering", H2403H + suffix) — construct noun with suffix, paired with ishsheh ("fire offering", H801) to specify the two offering types brought.

What the text says

The verse opens with two sequential perfect verbs joined by the narrative vav (H9001): khiPer ("he will make atonement") and nislach ("it will be forgiven"). Both continue directly from the preceding verses' sequence, so the grammar presents atonement and forgiveness as consecutive stages rather than simultaneous events. The subject of khiPer is ha-kohen ("the priest", H3548), explicitly named, while nislach is niphal — a passive form with no stated agent, so the text records that forgiveness happens "to them" (lahem, H9038 suffix) without grammatically assigning an agent to the act of forgiving itself.

The causal clause ki-shegagah hi' ("for it is inadvertence") uses the independent pronoun hi' ("it", H1931) to emphasize the nature of the wrongdoing — this is the stated ground for the ritual outcome. The final section shifts to a completed (perfect, non-sequential) verb, he.Vi.'u ("they have brought", H935P), describing the people's own prior action of bringing the qorban ("offering") — an ishsheh ("fire offering") la-Yehovah and a chattat ("sin offering") li-fnei Yehovah ("before Yehovah", H6440G construct). The repetition of shegagah/shigatam at both the start and end of the verse frames the entire ritual around this single category of unintentional error, with the final phrase 'al-shigatam ("on account of their inadvertence") closing the clause by restating its cause.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders shegagah ("inadvertence", H7684) as akousion ("involuntary"), a term repeated for shigatam at the verse's end, matching the Hebrew's double occurrence. The Vulgate expands the causal clause into "non sponte peccaverunt" ("they did not sin willingly"), making explicit an idea of sin that the Hebrew shegagah clause states more compactly without the verb "to sin." The Vulgate also adds "pro se" ("for themselves") when describing the offering, a phrase without a direct counterpart among the Hebrew words listed. The SBLIBRE translation renders the final phrase as "para reparar su falta" ("to repair their fault"), interpreting the causal 'al-shigatam ("on account of their inadvertence") as purpose rather than cause, differing from the more literal causal sense visible in the Hebrew preposition 'al (H5921A).