1“‘And should a person offend when he has heard a voice in adjuration, he being witness, or has seen or known, if he does not tell, he shall bear his punishment. 2Or a person who touches any unclean thing, whether the carcass of an unclean beast or the carcass of an unclean domestic animal, or the carcass of an unclean crawling thing, and it be hidden from him, and he is unclean and guilty, 3or should he touch human uncleanness, of any of the uncleannesses with which one may be defiled, and it be hidden from him, and he be guilty, 4or should a person swear to utter with the lips, whether for evil or for good, of all that a human utters in a vow, and it be hidden from him, and he know and be guilty of one of these, 5it shall be when he is guilty of any of these, he shall confess that concerning which he has offended. 6And he shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD for his offense that he has committed, a female from the flock, a ewe or a she-goat, as an offense offering, and the priest shall atone for him for his offense. 7And if his hand cannot attain as much as a sheep, he shall bring as his guilt offering for what he has committed two turtledoves or two young pigeons to the LORD, one for an offense offering and one for a burnt offering. 8And he shall bring them to the priest, who shall bring forward first the one for the offense offering and pinch its head at its nape but not sever it. 9And he shall sprinkle from the blood of the offense offering against the wall of the altar, and what is left of the blood shall be drained at the base of the altar. It is an offense offering. 10And the second one he shall make a burnt offering according to regulation, and the priest shall atone for him for his offense that he has committed, and it shall be forgiven him. 11And if his hand cannot attain two turtledoves or two young pigeons, he shall bring as his offering for what he has committed a tenth of an ephah of fine semolina as offense offering. He shall not put oil on it nor shall he place frankincense on it, for it is an offense offering. 12And he shall bring it to the priest, and the priest shall scoop up a fistful from it as its token and turn it to smoke on the altar together with the fire offerings of the LORD. It is an offense offering. 13And the priest shall atone for him for his offense that he has committed of any of these, and it shall be forgiven him, and it shall be for the priest like the grain offering.’”
14And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 15“Should a person betray trust and offend errantly in regard to any of the LORD’s sancta, he shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD, an unblemished ram from the flock, or its equivalent in silver shekels, according to the sanctuary shekel, as a guilt offering. 16And that concerning which he has offended from the sanctum he shall pay and a fifth part he shall add to it and give to the priest, and the priest shall atone for him with the ram of the guilt offering, and it shall be forgiven him. 17And if a person offends and does any one of all the commands of the LORD that should not be done and does not know and is guilty, he shall bear his punishment. 18And he shall bring an unblemished ram from the flock, or its equivalent, as a guilt offering, to the priest, and the priest shall atone for him for his errancy that he has committed without knowing, and it shall be forgiven him. 19It is a guilt offering. He has surely incurred guilt to the LORD.” 20And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 21“Should a person offend and betray the LORD’s trust and dissemble with his fellow about a deposit or pledge, or by theft, or defraud his fellow, 22or should he find something lost and dissemble about it and swear falsely about anything of what a person may do to offend, 23and it shall be, when he offends and is guilty, he shall return the theft that he stole or the fraud that he committed or the deposit that was placed with him or the lost thing that he found, 24or anything that he swore about falsely, and he shall pay back the principal and add a fifth, to him to whom it belongs he shall give it, when his guilt is confirmed. 25And his guilt offering he shall bring to the LORD, an unblemished ram from the flock, or its equivalent, as a guilt offering, to the priest. 26And the priest shall atone for him before the LORD, and it shall be forgiven him for whatever he may have done to incur guilt thereby.”
CHAPTER 5 NOTES
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2. Or a person who touches. The language of this entire chapter is characteristic of the uncompromising legal style of Leviticus, which makes no concession to rhetorical gesture (in contrast to Deuteronomy), lays out regulations with dry technical precision, and tries to cover a whole range of legal instances—in the present case, the incurring of unwitting guilt, whether through ritual impurity or in vow taking (the catalogue of possibilities, and then the cultic redress required, does not come to the end of a sentence until the conclusion of verse 5).
3. any of the uncleannesses with which one may be defiled. These would include contact with a corpse, a menstruating woman, and a man who has just had a seminal emission.
and he be guilty. The Hebrew ʾashem (here, at the end of verse 2, and elsewhere in this chapter) primarily means to be in a state of guilt, to incur guilt. Because what is involved in these laws is unwitting infraction, many interpreters have understood the verb to indicate something like an acknowledgment of guilt, though it is not entirely clear that it bears that meaning.
7. if his hand cannot attain. The primary sense of the verb is “reach.” “Hand” in biblical idiom is often used, as here, metonymically to indicate power or capacity. The law that follows here is what the rabbis called “an ascending and descending offering” (qorban ʿoleh weyored), that is, a sliding-scale offering which is devised to accommodate people of limited means.
15. betray trust. The verb maʿal is used in Numbers 5 to indicate the betrayal of marital trust in cases of infidelity. (In modern Hebrew, it has come to mean embezzlement, reflecting a certain continuity with its ancient usage.) In this verse, the sense is committing sacrilege, and the use of the verb may be dictated by an assumption that preserving the sacred integrity of everything belonging to the sanctuary is a special obligation with which all Israelites are entrusted. In verse 21, betrayal of trust in its more obvious sense is at issue, although the deception of one person by another is conceived as a betrayal of God’s trust because it is God who insists on a standard of honesty from humanity.
or its equivalent. The literal sense of the Hebrew is “in your estimation.” The possessive pronominal component of this expression (“your”) reflects the fact that it is, as Baruch Levine rightly observes, a bound expression, a colloquial “you” becoming fixed as a part of an idiom that means monetary equivalences.
16. that concerning which he has offended from the sanctum he shall pay. A characteristic case that this law envisages is when someone eats food not realizing it has been consecrated for cultic use. He would thus pay the monetary cost of the food consumed plus a fine of 20 percent.
21. theft. Rabbinic interpretation distinguishes between gazeil (the term used here), “robbery” (taking another’s property by main force), and geneivah, “theft” (taking by stealth). However, the present context of fraud and dissembling encourages the idea that theft is meant.
23. is guilty. Again, many interpreters understand this to mean: acknowledges his guilt. The sense could also be: he is found guilty, after which he acknowledges his guilt.
24. when his guilt is confirmed. The literal sense of the two Hebrew words beyom ʾashmato is: the day of his guilt.