Responsibility Reaches from the Priest to the People

A new speech begins. Chapters 1 to 3 dealt with offerings a worshipper chose to bring; from here the offerings are required, set off by a wrong that has been done. The same four words that open the book’s instructions now open its first law of obligation.

“Through ignorance” is bishgagah, from a verb meaning to stray or wander, the word Ezekiel 34:6 uses for sheep that wandered. It means inadvertence, a wrong done without meaning to. “Things which ought not to be done” limits the law to prohibitions, which is how the rabbis read it.

“The priest that is anointed” is ha-kohen ha-mashiach, and this is the first time the adjective mashiach, anointed, appears in the Bible; the same word gives English “Messiah”. Here it simply means the high priest, the one on whose head the oil was poured.

“Sin offering” is chatta’t, the same word as sin itself. Jacob Milgrom argued that it should be called the purification offering, since its blood cleanses the sanctuary. The procedure at the door is that of the burnt offering: the hand on the head, the slaughter before the LORD.

The high priest carries the blood for his own offering himself. No other priest acts for him; the one who has sinned is also the one who takes the blood inside the tent, where no other offering in chapters 1 to 3 had gone.

The finger is dipped and the blood flicked seven times toward the veil. Whether it touched the veil was debated; the Talmud (Yoma 57a) records a view that the drops were aimed at the veil without reaching it. “The vail of the sanctuary” is the curtain of the most holy place.

Two altars receive the blood: a finger’s worth on the horns of the gold incense altar inside, and all the rest poured at the foot of the bronze altar outside. “Pour” is shafakh, the verb of shedding blood in Genesis 9:6. The larger share never enters the tent.

The fat of the sin offering is removed and burned exactly as a peace offering’s would be, though nothing else of this bull goes on the altar or is eaten. The fat is treated as the LORD’s in whatever kind of offering it is found.

The flanks are kesalim, the loins. The same Hebrew root yields kesel, which can mean confidence (Psalm 78:7, “hope”) and also folly (Ecclesiastes 7:25), perhaps because the fat of the loins suggested both security and sluggishness. Here it is only the location of the kidney fat.

“As it was taken off from the bullock of the sacrifice of peace offerings” is law written by reference. Chapter 3 is the template, and chapter 4 relies on it instead of spelling the procedure out afresh, which only works because the peace offering was legislated first.

The skin goes with everything else. For the burnt offering the hide went to the priest (7:8); for this bull nothing is kept. Even the dung is listed among what is carried out, the whole animal accounted for down to what was in its gut.

The dump for the altar ashes lies “without the camp” yet is called a clean place, so outside the camp is not automatically unclean. “Burn” here is saraf, to burn up, the ordinary destroying fire, not hiqtir, the verb for turning an offering to smoke on the altar.

The verse uses two words for the people, edah, congregation, and qahal, assembly. The rabbis took the qahal here to be the high court, whose mistaken ruling the whole nation had followed (tractate Horayot); the plain sense may simply be the people as a body.

The congregation brings the same young bull as the high priest in verse 3, the largest offering in the chapter. An error of the anointed priest is weighed with an error of the whole nation. “Is known” is passive; the verse does not say who discovers it.

This is the one case in the chapter where more than one person lays hands on the animal. The Mishnah (Sanhedrin 1:3) required three elders for it. The elders stand in for the thousands who could not all reach one bull’s head.

The anointed priest who needed his own bull in verse 3 now carries the blood for everyone. The same man and the same procedure serve both cases, his own error and the people’s.

Seven is the regular number of sprinklings in Leviticus: the oil on the altar at the ordination (8:11), the blood on the healed leper (14:7), the blood before the mercy seat on the Day of Atonement (16:14). The count here matches the high priest’s in verse 6.

The incense altar is identified only by its place, “before the LORD... in the tabernacle”. Exodus 30:10 spoke of atoning blood on its horns once a year; this law adds occasions whenever a high priest or the whole people have gone astray.

The fat list of verses 8 to 10 shrinks to a single clause. Having set out the procedure once, the chapter now abbreviates it; the reader is expected to fill in the rest.

“It shall be forgiven them” uses salach, a verb that in the Hebrew Bible has only God as its subject; people never salach one another. The passive leaves the forgiver unnamed, but the verb itself names him.

“As he burned the first bullock” points back to verse 12. The first two cases end outside the camp; the next two do not, because the flesh of those animals was eaten by the priests (6:26). The rule seems to be that the priests do not eat a sin offering made for themselves.

The ruler is the nasi, a tribal chief. His case alone begins with “when”, asher, rather than “if”. The Sifra, quoted by Rashi, played on asher and ashrei, “happy”: happy the generation whose ruler owns his errors and brings an offering for them.

“A kid of the goats” is se’ir izzim, a hairy goat; se’ir means hairy, the word used of Esau (Genesis 27:11). The same term names the goats of the Day of Atonement in chapter 16. The ruler’s animal is male.

The sin offering is killed on the same spot as the burnt offering. The Talmud (Sotah 32b) drew the kindness out of this: no onlooker could tell from the place of slaughter whether a man was bringing a voluntary gift or atoning for a wrong.

Blood on the horns of the outer altar is applied with the finger, a small, exact act. For the burnt and peace offerings it was dashed from a basin against the altar’s sides. The dabbing is what marks this blood as a sin offering’s.

“As concerning his sin” is mechatta’to, literally “from his sin”, with the preposition of separation: the atonement takes him away from it. The ruler’s case ends with the same “forgiven” as the congregation’s.

“The common people” is am ha’arets, “the people of the land”. In later rabbinic usage the phrase became a slur for the unlearned; here it simply means a layperson, anyone who is neither priest nor ruler.

The layperson’s goat is female, where the ruler’s was male, and a she-goat is usually taken to have been the less costly offering. Rank changes the animal required; the procedure that follows does not change.

The animal is called “the sin offering” even before it is killed; the Hebrew names it by its purpose from the moment the hand is laid on it. The ordinary Israelite slaughters it himself, as the ruler did.

The priest touches the blood to the horns with his finger; the Mishnah (Zevachim 5:3) records the order, going round the altar from the south-east corner. The rest of the blood goes to the altar’s base, as in each case before.

Of all the sin offerings in the chapter, only this one, the ordinary person’s goat, is called “a sweet savour unto the LORD”. Nowhere else in the chapter does the phrase appear.

Only the common person is given a choice of animal: a goat or a lamb. The high priest, the congregation and the ruler each had one prescribed beast. The lamb must again be female.

“For a sin offering” marks the purpose of the slaughter. The Mishnah (Zevachim 1:1) later held that a sin offering slaughtered under the name of another offering was invalid, which rests on phrasing like this.

The chapter never says what happens to the flesh of the ruler’s or the layperson’s animal. That is left for 6:26, where the priest who offers it eats it in the holy place. The instructions here stop at the altar.

The cross-reference is to 3:9, the lamb of the peace offering, whose fat included the whole fat tail. So the tail goes on the altar here as well. The chapter ends on “it shall be forgiven him”, its fourth promise of forgiveness.