When you see the tassels, you will remember and obey all the commands of the Lord instead of following your own desires and defiling yourselves, as you are prone to do.
Parallel translations
- WEB and it shall be to you for a fringe, that you may look on it, and remember all Yahweh’s commandments, and do them; and that you not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you use to play the prostitute;
- KJV And it shall be unto you for a fringe, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the LORD, and do them; and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring:
- BSB These will serve as tassels for you to look at, so that you may remember all the commandments of the LORD, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by following your own heart and your own eyes.
- NKJV And you shall have the tassel, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the Lord and do them, and that you may not follow the harlotry to which your own heart and your own eyes are inclined,
- NASB It shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord, so that you will do them and not follow your own heart and your own eyes, which led you to prostitute yourselves,
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
The tassels were to prompt them to remember and obey God's commandments rather than follow their own hearts and eyes into unfaithfulness. The heart's wandering must be restrained by remembering God.
Overview
The fringes were meant to redirect Israel from the spiritual prostitution of pursuing their own desires back to faithful obedience. The verse exposes the heart's tendency to stray after sin. It points to the need for a new heart, ultimately given in Christ, who frees believers from the tyranny of their own wandering desires (Ezekiel 36:26-27).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 18
- Prov 28:26One who trusts in himself is a fool; but one who walks in wisdom is kept safe.
- Ps 73:27For, behold, those who are far from you shall perish. You have destroyed all those who are unfaithful to you.
- Ps 106:39Thus were they defiled with their works, and prostituted themselves in their deeds.
- Ezek 6:9Those of you that escape will remember me among the nations where they are carried captive, how I have been broken with their lewd heart, which has departed from me, and with their eyes, which play the prostitute after their idols. Then they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed in all their abominations.
- Exod 13:9It shall be for a sign to you on your hand, and for a memorial between your eyes, that Yahweh’s law may be in your mouth; for with a strong hand Yahweh has brought you out of Egypt.
- Prov 3:1My son, don’t forget my teaching; but let your heart keep my commandments:
- Deut 29:19and it happen, when he hears the words of this curse, that he bless himself in his heart, saying, “I shall have peace, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart, to destroy the moist with the dry.”
- Eccl 11:9Rejoice, young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth, and walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes; but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.
- Jas 4:4You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
- Deut 4:23Be careful, lest you forget the covenant of Yahweh your God, which he made with you, and make yourselves an engraved image in the form of anything which Yahweh your God has forbidden you.
- Job 31:7if my step has turned out of the way, if my heart walked after my eyes, if any defilement has stuck to my hands,
- Hos 2:2Contend with your mother! Contend, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband; and let her put away her prostitution from her face, and her adulteries from between her breasts;
- Exod 34:15–16“Don’t make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, lest they play the prostitute after their gods, and sacrifice to their gods, and one call you and you eat of his sacrifice;
- Jer 9:14but have walked after the stubbornness of their own heart, and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them.”
- Deut 11:28–32and the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of Yahweh your God, but turn aside out of the way which I command you today, to go after other gods, which you have not known.
- Deut 6:6–9These words, which I command you today, shall be on your heart;
- Deut 6:12then beware lest you forget Yahweh, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
- Deut 11:18–21Therefore you shall lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.
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Christ at the center
In the wilderness Christ is the water from the rock, the bronze serpent lifted up that the dying might look and live (John 3:14), and the star and scepter that Balaam saw rising out of Jacob.
How Numbers 15:39 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
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