Leviticus 5:14–6:7 (Heb. 5:26)
THE LORD SAID to Moses: 15“When a person commits a violation and sins unintentionally in regard to any of the LORD’s holy things, he is to bring to the LORD as a penalty a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value in silver, according to the sanctuary shekel. It is a guilt offering. 16He must make restitution for what he has failed to do in regard to the holy things, add a fifth of the value to that and give it all to the priest, who will make atonement for him with the ram as a guilt offering, and he will be forgiven.
17“If a person sins and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD’s commands, even though he does not know it, he is guilty and will be held responsible. 18He is to bring to the priest as a guilt offering a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value. In this way the priest will make atonement for him for the wrong he has committed unintentionally, and he will be forgiven. 19It is a guilt offering; he has been guilty of wrongdoing against the LORD.”
6:1The LORD said to Moses: 2“If anyone sins and is unfaithful to the LORD by deceiving his neighbor about something entrusted to him or left in his care or stolen, or if he cheats him, 3or if he finds lost property and lies about it, or if he swears falsely, or if he commits any such sin that people may do—4when he thus sins and becomes guilty, he must return what he has stolen or taken by extortion, or what was entrusted to him, or the lost property he found, 5or whatever it was he swore falsely about. He must make restitution in full, add a fifth of the value to it and give it all to the owner on the day he presents his guilt offering. 6And as a penalty he must bring to the priest, that is, to the LORD, his guilt offering, a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value. 7In this way the priest will make atonement for him before the LORD, and he will be forgiven for any of these things he did that made him guilty.”
MAKING REPARATION TO HEAL A WRONG. Under certain circumstances, an Israelite was to offer a kind of sacrifice labeled as an ʾašam (“reparation offering,” 5:15, 18; 6:6). Reparation offerings were distinguished from purification offerings in that the former were required for offenses that created literal, quantifiable debt, which called for literal restitution if possible.1
Instructions for the ritual procedure appear later in 7:1–7. There the activity system parallels that of the purification offering, except that the blood is dashed on the (sides of the) outer altar, as in a burnt or well-being offering, rather than daubed on its horns (7:2).2 So the expiatory significance of the blood is less in a reparation offering. This correlates with the fact that the suet/fat of the reparation offering, unlike that of the purification offering, is called an ʾiššeh (“gift,” 7:5). This is because the offerer makes a literal payment for a specific amount before the reparation offering is performed. The purification offering, by contrast, constitutes total debt payment because it remedies sin to which no price tag can be attached.3
From our discussion of the same word in 5:6–7, there with the meaning “reparation,” we already know that the customary rendering “guilt offering” is inadequate because it fails to capture the sense that an ʾašam redresses a liability that has been incurred. Furthermore, “guilt offering,” like the translation “sin offering” for the purification offering, is too general: Both kinds of sacrifices remedy sin and guilt.
Whereas the graduated purification offering serves as an ʾašam (“reparation,” 5:6–7) for cases of omission/neglect that require action, the reparation offering serves as an ʾašam (“reparation,” 5:15; 6:6; NIV “penalty”) for situations in which property belonging to God or to another human being has been misappropriated and therefore must be restored with a 20 percent (one fifth) penalty before the reparation offering is performed.
In a case that requires a reparation offering, misappropriation of property is done through “unfaithfulness,” as described by the verb and noun from the root mʿl (5:15; 6:2), which refers to violation of a “legally definable relationship of trust.”4 In the Hebrew Bible, mʿl is an offense against the Lord (cf. Num. 5:6) involving the covenant unfaithfulness of “sacrilege,” that is, desecration of something sacred (e.g., Josh. 7; 2 Chron. 26:16–18; 28:19–25; 36:14). Sacrilege includes violation of an oath (e.g., Ezek. 17:18–20), which misuses God’s holy name (Lev. 19:12; cf. 20:3; Ezek. 36:20–22).5 Needless to say, sacrilege is a grave offense that carries severe penalties, as shown by the stoning of Achan for misappropriating property devoted to the Lord for destruction (Josh. 7) and the national exile that resulted from King Zedekiah’s violation of an oath (Ezek. 17:18–21).6
Leviticus 5:14–6:7, specifying wrongs for which sinners must bring reparation offerings, divides itself into two sections. Each section is introduced as divine speech dealing with a kind of legal case “when” (ki) a person (nepeš) commits mʿl (“sacrilege,” vv. 14–15; 6:1–2). The first kind of case concerns misuse of property belonging to God (5:14–19); the second has to do with misuse of human property through misuse of God’s name in an oath (6:1–7).
Misusing the Lord’s property. In 5:14–19, there are two subcases, the first regarding inadvertent misuse of which the sinner later becomes aware (vv. 14–16) and the second concerning inadvertent misuse of which he or she remains unaware (vv. 17–19). In the first subcase, an Israelite violates the boundary of holiness by inadvertently misappropriating something that belongs to the Lord for his or her own purpose. An example could be eating produce that has been dedicated as tithe or firstfruits. Such misuse must be committed inadvertently (v. 15) in order to be expiable by sacrifice. This implies that the same offense committed deliberately would have no sacrificial remedy, as in the New Testament account of Ananias and Sapphira, whom the Lord killed because they deliberately withheld something they had dedicated to him (Acts 5:1–11).
Before the reparation offering is performed, the sinner must repay the misappropriated amount plus a 20 percent (one-fifth) penalty to the Lord via the priest. Because of the seriousness of sacrilege, a reparation offering victim is always a ram, the most valuable animal ever required of a commoner (cf. 4:23—chieftain). However, unlike other sacrifices, the offerer has the option of paying the value of the ram to the sanctuary in silver by the kind of shekel weight that is the standard there (5:15; 6:6). Regarding convertibility of values into shekels, see also Leviticus 27.
The second subcase (5:17–19) is baffling if it is read in isolation, but it makes sense in context. The sin is inadvertent violation of any of the Lord’s prohibitive commandments (doing a “Thou shalt not”) without knowing it and continuing to not know about it. Whereas in chapter 4 a purification offering is required when the offender finds out what he or she has done wrong (4:13–14, 22–23, 27–28), in 5:17–19 a reparation offering is required even though the sin remains undisclosed to the sinner.
The stative verb ʾšm (“experience liability,” v. 17) indicates that the unknowing individual has a kind of negative experience (suffering, pain, etc.) involving cognitive dissonance (pangs of conscience) associated with consequences of sin, suggesting that all is not well with the divine-human relationship. Beyond this vague prompting, the sinner is clueless. So how does the sinner know that the wrong is sacrilege, which requires the reparation offering? He doesn’t. Neither does he know that it is not sacrilege, which is the worst-case scenario. So to cover any contingency, he offers the sacrifice that would cover the worst possibility: the reparation offering. However, without even knowing for sure that sacrilege is involved, it is impossible to make prior reparation, so this requirement is waived.
For the logic of paying the maximum in a case of uncertainty, I am reminded of the time I failed to pick up a toll ticket as I entered Highway 80/90 on the way to Chicago. When I reached the toll booth at the other end without a ticket to show how far I had come, I was required to pay the maximum toll because I could have come the maximum distance.
Misusing human property along with misusing the Lord’s name. In 6:1–7, misappropriation of another human being’s property is not said to be inadvertent. Indeed, it is inconceivable that the sins listed here could be anything but deliberate, since they involve being unfaithful to the Lord’s commands by deceiving one’s neighbor, lying to him, and swearing falsely. Such ethical wrongs against other persons would simply be handled by the civil courts (cf., e.g., Ex. 22:1–15) if it were not for the element of sacrilege (mʿl) against the Lord (cf. Num. 5:6) through swearing falsely, thereby misusing God’s holy name to defraud.
The key to understanding this passage is the fact that the clause “and he swears falsely” does not refer to a separate wrong.
Rather, it applies to all of the preceding cases: not only has the offender wronged his fellow but he has denied it under oath. Assumed is that in the ancient Near East the plaintiff could always demand that the unapprehended but suspected criminal be put under oath (e.g., Gudea, Statue B 5.7–9; cf. Thureau-Dangin 1907).
The “sacrilege against the Lord” (v 21) is, therefore, fully clarified: the Lord has been made an accomplice to the defrauding of man.7
A sinner who has wronged both a human being and God in this way must remedy the offense by making reparation to the wronged human party (including a 20 percent penalty) and by offering a ram as a reparation offering to the Lord (6:5–6). As with the graduated purification offering, while sacrifice expiates for sin, it does not replace fulfillment of duty.
Bridging Contexts
SACRIFICE AFTER REPARATION. Alas, sometimes we break things that we cannot satisfactorily fix. During a University of California archaeological expedition to Iraq in which my wife and I participated in 1989, one of our team members discovered a Neo-Assyrian (c. 700 B.C.) foundation box figurine. Unfortunately, even though he was being careful, his small hand pick found the artifact first and it came out of the ground in several pieces. Although it was glued back together, it will never be the same as if it had not been broken.
Similarly, the requirement for an Israelite to offer a reparation offering even though he or she had already paid literal reparation to the injured party reflects the principle that the best human efforts to fix problems caused by moral faults are inadequate. In addition to any other liabilities we incur, whether to God or human beings, the historical fact of relational damage (sin) creates an additional kind of debt that must be paid by sacrifice even when we discharge our earthly responsibility to make wrongs right as best we can. We can never come up with enough to pay this debt. All we can give are tokens, which is what the ancient animal sacrifices were.
Having fallen, we are like Humpty Dumpty in that we cannot fix even our own brokenness, even with the aid of “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.” When we acknowledge that we have done damage and patch things up to the limited extent of our ability, we can only depend on the sacrifice of the King’s Son to put everything back together again. He can complete our unfinished business because he is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev. 22:13).
Ultimate reparation. If the Israelite reparation offering reveals a role of Christ’s sacrifice (cf. John 1:29), it encapsulates a mystery. When sinners commit wrong against God, it is God who pays the reparation by giving his Son (cf. John 3:16)!8 What kind of sense does that make? This grace is the profoundly wise “foolishness” of the gospel (1 Cor. 1:18, 21, 23, 25), so paradoxical that it is best expressed with oxymorons.
By giving his Son to the human race to become one of us in order to live and die among us, God has carried out the most effective means of healing our relationship with him. It is faintly reflected in a human strategy for achieving peace between warring groups as told by Don Richardson, who pioneered work for Regions Beyond Missionary Union among the Sawi tribe of Irian Jaya in 1962. He reports his experience with a powerful “redemptive analogy”:
As told in the book Peace Child, the Sawi tribe, my wife and I were shocked to learn, honored treachery as a virtue. Accordingly, Judas Iscariot seemed to them to be the hero of the gospel. Within the Sawi culture, however, existed a means of making peace that required a father to entrust one of his own children to an enemy father who would raise the child. This child was called a “peace child.” At a crucial juncture of tribal strife, we were able to present Christ as God’s “Peace Child.” The Sawi soon grasped the redemptive story of God as the greatest Father giving His Son to reconcile alienated people. Today, seventy percent of the Sawi profess faith in Jesus.9
The genius of the “peace child” strategy of reconciliation is that it overcomes the need for reparation on an item-by-item, tit-for-tat basis that can never be adequately satisfied, as gruesomely illustrated by ongoing blood feuds around the world. A “peace child” is the ultimate reparation because his flesh and blood binds two groups into one so that whatever problems they have are shared within a common destiny. The “peace child” covenant of grace absorbs hostilities and liabilities, paying a price and securing a peace that cannot be achieved in any other way.
Identity and reputation. “Identity theft,” by which one individual uses another person’s name or other identifying information to commit fraud, is big business in the modern world. It is estimated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service that since the mid-1990s, approximately 50,000 people a year have been victims of identity theft. The U.S. Secret Service investigated personal and institutional losses of $745 million in 1997 from this form of crime.
In addition to economic losses, which are bad enough, identity theft often harms the reputation of the victim, in whose name crimes are committed. In an op-ed piece for the New York Times, journalist Stacy Sullivan vividly recounts her personal misery since someone ordered telephone service in Los Angeles County in 1996 by using her Social Security number while she was living overseas. The mysterious thief vanished, leaving Sullivan with unpaid phone bills and a damaged rating with the country’s three major credit bureaus. After four years and strenuous efforts to navigate through a bureaucratic maze in order to clear her name, her credit report still reflected the delinquent phone bills, and consequently she was unable even to rent an apartment!10
A reputation, such as a credit rating, is not simply a matter of ego. Rather, it carries weighty practical consequences because a person’s reputation determines whether or not others want to have dealings with him or her.
Identity fraud was not invented in the twentieth century. An Israelite who defrauded another person by misusing the Lord’s name in a false oath (Lev. 6:2–3) thereby used that name/identity to steal. Such abuse of God’s name constituted an additional crime against God.
The fact that the Lord protected his name by one of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:7) and by requiring a person who defrauded through a false oath to sacrifice a reparation offering shows his concern to maintain his reputation. In a broader sense, God’s people affect his reputation by whatever they do because they belong to him and are called by his name (Lev. 22:31–32; 2 Chron. 7:14; cf. Ezek. 36:16–32).11
Through our relationship with the Lord, we enjoy the benefits of his name and all that goes with it. So gratitude and common decency demand that we treat his holy reputation with the utmost respect and care in whatever we do because we carry it with us wherever we go. His reputation is essential to his mission of saving human beings. Only as people see that God’s character is love as he claims (Ex. 34:6–7; 1 John 4:8) will they want to interact with him and allow his love to rule in their lives.
Contemporary Significance
THREE ENDURING PRINCIPLES. Reparation offerings exemplify three principles that the modern people of God will do well to apply. (1) We are accountable to God for our treatment of things that are dedicated to him. If we misappropriate something holy, such as tithes or offerings, we should restore that which we have wrongfully taken. The Bible indicates that it is not enough to give back the principal. In addition to that, an ancient Israelite was obligated to pay a 20 percent penalty plus offer a ram (Lev. 5:15–16). This was only for inadvertent misuse of something holy. Needless to say, the cost would assist a person to pay closer attention in the future! Anyone inclined to the view that Christians are exempt from such carefulness when it comes to dedicated property should reread the story of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–11).
(2) A second principle is that we cannot expect God’s acceptance and forgiveness for wronging another person until we have done everything in our power to put things right (Lev. 6:5–6). Jesus affirmed this: “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift” (Matt. 5:23–24).
“Forgiveness through Christ is not a ‘cheap grace’ way to declare bankruptcy on our obligations to other people.”12 Zacchaeus understood: “If I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount” (Luke 19:8). D. L. Moody forthrightly applied the principle to modern life:
We may sing our hymns and psalms, and offer prayers, but they will be an abomination to God, unless we are willing to be thoroughly straightforward in our daily life. Nothing will give Christianity such a hold upon the world as to have God’s believing people begin to act in this way. . . . These were the laws that God laid down for His people, and I believe their principle is as binding today as it was then. If we have taken anything from any man, if we have in any way defrauded a man, let us not only confess it, but do all we can to make restitution. If we have misrepresented anyone—if we have started some slander, or some false report about him—let us do all in our power to undo the wrong.13
(3) A third principle is that we can give up our guilt feelings to God. Unidentified Guilt Hangups (UGH) drive people to distraction, despair, drinking, drugs, and divorce. Unresolved guilt is one among many causes of “anxiety disorder,” which is estimated to afflict nineteen million Americans as “the most common mental illness in the U.S.”14 Often “anxiety is greatest when we don’t know why we are anxious.”15 UGHs erode assurance and give birth to depression. But thousands of years ago Leviticus 5:17–19 supplied God’s people with a solution: They could be freed from worry by giving the burden of suspected guilt over to God at his sanctuary through a reparation offering.
A person who is at a loss to know what to confess is not obliged to figure it all out as Martin Luther vainly tried to do before he grasped grace by faith. There is no need for Freudian psychoanalysis or transcendental meditation to bring subconscious evils to light. Working through the conscience, God’s Holy Spirit will reveal all that is necessary (cf. John 16:8). Anything left unknown can be safely turned over to the transcendental medication of Christ’s sacrifice. Even when we don’t know how to confess, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express” (Rom. 8:26).
Accountability to God is crucial to society. The reparation offering underlines the fact that misappropriating something that belongs to someone else, which is stealing (cf. Ex. 20:15), is a serious matter for which the offender is accountable to God. Today misappropriation is still a serious crime. For example, a real estate agent who makes personal use of entrusted funds constitutes a felony.
People who commit crimes think they can get away with it. Often they can, at least temporarily. Human inability to detect or prove covert wrongdoing is a major problem. In ancient Babylonia, one solution was to have a suspected offender thrown into the Euphrates River, which was regarded as divine. If he survived, he was innocent, but if he drowned, he was guilty.16 Presumably this system worked tolerably well until people learned to swim.
A more common ancient way to get at the truth when insufficient details were known was to require suspects/defendants to take oaths, which could include conditional curses, before God/gods to affirm the veracity of what they were saying. Belief in divine power and all-seeing knowledge would provide incentive to disclose the truth in order to avoid lying to and thereby offending a deity (cf. Lev. 19:12).17
Oaths are used similarly in legal situations today for the same reason—lack of sufficient evidence—and they are subject to the same limitation: The value of such an oath in human law enforcement depends largely on whether or not a person believes in and respects deity. Without basic respect for higher power, respect for obligations toward other human beings is compromised.
The fact that a person who does not believe in divinity lacks adequate external accountability leads Dennis Prager, a Jewish radio talk-show host in Los Angeles, to say that he does not trust such a person. Prager recognizes that safety in human relations ultimately depends on healthy (not fanatical) respect for God. We would be a lot worse off without the amount of such respect that exists in the world today, insufficient as it is. “The fear of the LORD” is not only “the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 111:10; Prov. 9:10); it is also the basis of stability in society because a healthy respect for God is a formidable deterrent against many a dastardly deed.