Leviticus 4:13

(13) And if the whole congregation.—As the whole Church, in its corporate body, is no more exempt from human frailty than its highest spiritual chief, the law now prescribes the sin offering for the congregation (Leviticus 4:13-21). The case here assumed is that of the whole congregation having ignorantly committed some act which at the time of its committal they believed to be lawful, but which they afterwards discovered to be sinful. The two terms respectively rendered in the Authorised Version by congregation and assembly denote the same body of people, and are used interchangeably, so that the same congregation or assembly which inadvertently committed the sin afterwards recognised it. (Comp. Numbers 15:24-26.) An instance of such a national and congregational sin is recorded in 1 Samuel 14:32, where we are told that the Israelites, after smiting the Philistines, “flew upon the spoil, and took sheep, and oxen, and calves, and slew them on the ground, and the people did eat them with the blood.” According to the ancient interpretation, however, which obtained at the time of Christ, “the whole congregation of Israel” and “the assembly” here spoken of denote the great Sanhedrin, the representatives of the people, who, through error, might proclaim a decree calculated to mislead the nation, thus accounting for the apparent discrepancy between this passage and Numbers 15:22-26.