The Purification (So-Called “Sin”) Offering (4:1–35)

Sins unintentionally (4:2). In the ancient Near East, deities were believed to possess superhuman powers of perception and to hold human beings accountable for their faulty actions, whether they knew that they had done wrong or not. Therefore a person could suffer evil consequences without knowing why. So an Egyptian prayer asks a god for mercy: “Visit not my many offenses upon me, I am one ignorant of himself. I am a mindless man, who all day follows his mouth, like an ox after grass.”49 This kind of uncertainty was compounded by the difficulty of knowing what deities wanted. A Mesopotamian “righteous sufferer” expressed this problem: “I wish I knew that these things were pleasing to a god! What seems good to one’s self could be an offense to a god. What in one’s own heart seems abominable could be good to one’s god!”50

Such uncertainty demanded a solution. Besides knowing which sacrifices, incantations, or magical rituals to perform in order to appease deities or otherwise turn away evil (which could be demonic), priests often practiced divination to sort out the variables, such as why the gods reacted as they did and what would placate them.51 However, divination was not always successful.52

In Israel, divination was unnecessary because several factors greatly simplified reconciliation with the Lord:

1. In monotheism there was no need to determine which deity to approach.

2. Sin that required a ritual remedy was defined as violation of a command that the Lord had communicated to the Israelites.

3. Israelites who committed inadvertent wrongs were liable for offering purification offerings only when they came to know what they had done wrong (Lev. 4:14, 23, 28; but see comment on 5:17).

4. A limited number of ritual types (burnt, purification, and reparation offerings) were prescribed to remedy a wide range of offenses.

As a sin offering (4:3). This sacrifice purified offerers (throughout the year) or parts of the sanctuary (at its consecration and on the Day of Atonement) from moral faults and/or physical ritual impurities, which were not sins in the sense of moral faults (12:6–8; 14:19, etc.). Thus, the name of the sacrifice is better translated “purification offering.”53 The procedure was unique in requiring application of blood to the horns of the outer altar or the incense altar. This ritual has no close parallel outside Israel (cf. comment on 1:5).

Horned incense altar from Megiddo

Kim Walton, courtesy of the Oriental Institute Museum

Burn it in a wood fire on the ash heap (4:12). There is no indication that remnants of Israelite purification offerings were regarded as having absorbed dangerous demonic impurity. By contrast, a Hittite law warns: “If anyone performs a purification ritual on a person, he shall dispose of the remnants (of the ritual) in the incineration dumps. But if he disposes of them in someone’s house, it is sorcery (and) a case for the king.”54 Israelites were not subjected to this kind of fear because the sources of their impurities were human beings and some kinds of animals, not demons.

And he will be forgiven (4:26). The idea of reconciliation with a just deity who mercifully remits sin also appears in the Mesopotamian Poem of the Righteous Sufferer.55