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.
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The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
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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.
And the priest shall make an atonement for the soul that sinneth ignorantly, when he sinneth by ignorance before the LORD, to make an atonement for him; and it shall be forgiven him.
And the priest shall make atonement for the person, the one erring in a sin by mistake to the face of Yahweh, to make atonement for him, and it shall be forgiven for him.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
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.
And the priest shall make atonement before the LORD on behalf of the person who erred by sinning unintentionally; and when atonement has been made for him, he will be forgiven.
And the priest shall make atonement before the LORD on behalf of the person who erred by sinning unintentionally; and when atonement has been made for him, he will be forgiven.
And the priest shall make an atonement for the soul that sinneth ignorantly, when he sinneth by ignorance before the LORD, to make an atonement for him; and it shall be forgiven him.
And the priest shall make atonement for the soul that erreth, when he sinneth unwittingly, before Jehovah, to make atonement for him; and he shall be forgiven.
And the priest shall make atonement for the soul that erreth, when he sinneth unwittingly, before the LORD, to make atonement for him; and he shall be forgiven.
And the Priest shall make an atonement for the ignorant person, when hee sinneth by ignorance before the Lord, to make reconciliation for him: and it shalbe forgiuen him.
And the priest shall pray for him, because he sinned ignorantly before the Lord: and he shall obtain his pardon, and it shall be forgiven him.
and the priest hath made atonement for the person who is erring, in his sinning in ignorance before Jehovah, by making atonement for him, and it hath been forgiven him;
and the priest has made atonement for the person who is erring, in his sinning through ignorance before YHWH, by making atonement for him, and it has been forgiven him;
The priest must make atonement before Yahweh for the person who sins unintentionally. That person will be forgiven when atonement has been made.
And the priest shall make atonement for the person, the one erring in a sin by mistake to the face of Yahweh, to make atonement for him, and it shall be forgiven for him.
And the priest shall make atonement for the soul that hath done inadvertently, when he sinneth by inadvertence before Jehovah, to make atonement for him; and it shall be forgiven him.
The priest shall make atonement for the soul who errs when he sins unwittingly before the LORD. He shall make atonement for him; and he shall be forgiven.
And the priest shall make an atonement for the soul that sinneth ignorantly, when he sinneth by ignorance before the LORD, to make an atonement for him; and it shall be forgiven him.
The priest will make the person who sinned unintentionally right before the Lord on their behalf. Once they have been made right, they will be forgiven.
And the priest will take away the sin of the person who has done wrong, if the wrong was done unconsciously, and he will have forgiveness.
And the priest shall make atonement for the soul that erreth, when he sinneth through error, before the LORD, to make atonement for him; and he shall be forgiven,
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
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These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
Notable vocabulary
The rarest word here is בִשְׁגָגָ֖ה to go astray H7683 — appearing just 4 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
בִשְׁגָגָ֖ה to go astray H7683 occurs in 4 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
Verb forms
Repetition
Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 26 words from the Hebrew and 26 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the same length.
A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.
Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.
In the original languages it is 13 Hebrew tokens and 17 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.
Topical passages linked to Numbers 15:28 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
וְכִפֶּ֣ר הַכֹּהֵ֗ן עַל הַנֶּ֧פֶשׁ הַשֹּׁגֶ֛גֶת בְּחֶטְאָ֥ה בִשְׁגָגָ֖ה לִפְנֵ֣י יְהוָ֑ה לְכַפֵּ֥ר עָלָ֖יו וְנִסְלַ֥ח לֽוֹ
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.
World English Bible · Public Domain
καί ἐκἱλάσκομαι ὁ ἱερεύς περί ὁ ψυχή ὁ ἀκουσιάζω καί ἁμαρτάνω ἀκουσίως ἔναντι κύριος ἐκἱλάσκομαι περί αὐτός
And the priest shall make atonement for the soul that committed the trespass unwillingly, and that sinned unwillingly before the Lord, to make atonement for him.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.
וִיכַפַּר כַּהֲנָא עַל אֱנַשׁ דְאִשְׁתְּלֵי בְּמֵחֲבֵהּ בְּשָׁלוּ קֳדָם יְיָ לְכַפָּרָא עֲלוֹהִי וְיִשְׁתְּבֵק לֵהּ
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
וִיכַפֵּר כַּהֲנָא עַל בַּר נְשָׁא דְאִשְׁתְּלֵי כַּד סָרַח בְּשָׁלוּ קֳדָם יְיָ לְכַפָּרָא עֲלוֹי וְיִשְׁתְּרֵי לֵיהּ
and let the priest make atonement for the man who hath erred in sinning through ignorance before the Lord to atone for him, that it may be forgiven him;
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
Numbers, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 13 words (10 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is shâgag (“to go astray”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on Numbers 15:28 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
John Gill's Exposition
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.