Numbers 15:30 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The soul that doeth aught presumptuously Hebrew, With a high hand, or, with violence. It is meant to express the action or conduct of a man who knowingly and wilfully broke the law, and when admonished, despised the admonition, and set the law at naught. Maimonides and other rabbis think this law is to be restrained to sins of idolatry, which certainly are most properly a reproaching of Jehovah, and a despising of his word, and therefore were commanded, in the law of Moses, to be punished with greater severity than other crimes, as being high treason against their state, subversive of the essential form of their government, and an implicit rejecting of Jehovah for their God and King, and yielding their allegiance to the idols of the nations. The same reproacheth the Lord He sets God at defiance, and exposeth him to contempt, as if he were unable to punish transgressors. But every wilful sin is, in the nature of things, a reproach or dishonour to the Lord, Romans 2:23. It is saying, in effect, that his commandments are not wise, just, and good, and that we know better what is fit for ourselves than he can judge for us. But acts of idolatry, or whatever tended to favour it, whether in a Jew or proselyte, were especially reproachful to God, for the reasons just mentioned. That soul shall be cut off Here this phrase signifies put to death, though in many other places it seems to denote only exclusion from the privileges of the Jewish community. Persons sinning thus presumptuously could have no benefit by the expiatory sacrifices of the law, for they blasphemed the Lawgiver, and disowned the authority of the law. Thus, (Hebrews 10:29,) He that despised Moses's law died without mercy, under two or three witnesses.