Public charge to testify (5:1). In the ancient Near East, it was common for heralds to make public proclamations and summons.56 For example, a law of Hammurabi reads: “If a man should harbor a fugitive slave or slave woman of either the palace or of a commoner in his house and not bring him out at the herald’s public proclamation, that householder shall be killed.”57 The procedure was similar in Israel, where compliance of witnesses, whose negligence could easily go undetected by human beings, was enforced by the deity. Following discovery of a crime, the “legal process began with the pronouncement of an ʾalah, a general imprecation that demanded that anyone with knowledge step forward. Divine punishment would follow the person who knows something but keeps quiet.”58
Serving as a witness against a member of one’s community could be uncomfortable or even hazardous. So the early Mesopotamian Shuruppak Composition advised: “Do not loiter about where there is a dispute. Do not appear as a witness in a dispute” (cf. Prov. 26:17).59 In Leviticus 5 the concession of amnesty through a purification offering for the deliberate sin of failure to respond to a binding summons to testify would encourage reticent witnesses to speak up even though they have delayed.60
He will be held responsible (5:1). Literally, “he will bear his culpability.” Culpability is viewed as a burden that inevitably leads to punishment, unless or until someone takes it away.61 To illustrate the concept that a higher authority requires the punishment of the culpable, compare the Turin Judicial Papyrus regarding judgment on conspirators against Pharaoh Ramses III: “And they examined them; they found them guilty; they caused that their punishment overtake them; their crimes seized them.”62 Here the judges are human, but in Leviticus 5 it is God who sees to it that culpability bears its fruit, even if the guilty party is not apprehended by other human beings.
Confess (5:5). Confession is necessary here because the faults in question are not inadvertent but have been hidden deliberately (v. 1) or were the result of forgetfulness (vv. 2–4).63 Other ancient Near Eastern peoples were also keenly aware that confession is a vital part of restoration.64 A Sumerian poem of confession and reconciliation shows several important points of contact with biblical teaching regarding the sinful nature of the present human condition, need for recognition of sins, distinctions between sins in terms of whether they are recognized/visible or forgotten, and the value of sincere (rather than artful) confession and supplication in gaining reconciliation with the deity so that joy rather than punishment results (cf. Ps. 51).65