Numbers 5:5-10--Confession and Restitution

Numbers 5:5-10
English Standard Version
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Confession and Restitution
5 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 6 “Speak to the people of Israel, When a man or woman commits any of the sins that people commit by breaking faith with the Lord, and that person realizes his guilt, 7 he shall confess his sin that he has committed. And he shall make full restitution for his wrong, adding a fifth to it and giving it to him to whom he did the wrong. 8 But if the man has no next of kin to whom restitution may be made for the wrong, the restitution for wrong shall go to the Lord for the priest, in addition to the ram of atonement with which atonement is made for him. 9 And every contribution, all the holy donations of the people of Israel, which they bring to the priest, shall be his. 10 Each one shall keep his holy donations: whatever anyone gives to the priest shall be his.”

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This is such an important section for us to see how sin breaks fellowship and God desires the sinner to be reconciled to the man he sinned against and to the God he sinned against, but confession and restitution precede reconciliation, and reconciliation comes at a price.

There is one rule for all the people--whenever they damage someone else's property that can be valued, they are to pay back 120% of the value of the item that they damaged.  If the man they sinned against has since died, they are to make restitution to his heir, but if he has no heir, they are to pay the restitution to Lord by giving it to the priest at the time he brings his sacrifice to make atonement.

The restitution given to the priest is to be considered a holy donation and belongs to him.  In this way, the LORD made sure that the people understood that there was a price to pay for sin and that empty words would not suffice with confession, contrition, and sacrifice.  There would always have to be a blood sacrifice (we read about those sacrifice in Leviticus)--maybe more than one depending on the situation--to atone for the sin and guilt and restore fellowship, and there was a financial cost to be paid as well.  I believe courts today would do well to learn the principle--there was an assumption that there was no need to sue each other as each man was going to desire reconciliation and the man who was damaged set the valuation for that which he lost (unless the LORD already set the value of the item in the Law) and the man who caused the damage was responsible to pay the restitution and that was the end of it.  They were brothers and were not supposed to hold grudges against each other or hate each other or let any root of bitterness spring up between each other.