In regard to any of the LORD’s holy things (5:15). Such respect for holy things, such as gifts dedicated to a deity (cf. Num. 18), was basic to all ancient Near Eastern religion. The Hittite document Instructions to Priests and Temple Officials takes pains to specify and prohibit several categories of sacrilege, including temple personnel appropriating sacrificial portions that are not theirs or taking dedicated things from the temple for their families, and farmers cheating gods out of property or delaying presentation of dedicated offerings.66 At one point the document warns: “You may steal it from a man, but you cannot steal it from a god. It (is) a sin for you.”67
Guilt offering (5:15). Because the unique element associated with this sacrifice was literal reparation, J. Milgrom prefers to call it the “reparation offering.”68 While problems of impurity, culpability, and sacrilege addressed by purification and reparation offerings were widespread in the ancient Near East and various rituals were devised to remedy them, no close parallels to the mandatory Israelite sacrifices of expiation (removal of evil) have been found in other ritual systems.
Even though he does not know it, he is guilty (5:17). Here the reparation offering addresses the problem of suspected but unidentified sin, which could be sacrilege that would lead to adverse consequences, regardless of intention.69 A prayer of Assurbanipal expresses similar uncertainty: “[Through a misdeed] which I am or am not aware of, I have become weak!”70 Notice that circumstances indicate divine disfavor. Similarly, when the Anatolian deity Telipinu became angry, he disappeared and took fertility with him until ritual reconciled him.71 Unlike other ancient Near Eastern people, when an Israelite could identify no particular sin but was led by circumstances to suspect that he/she was no longer enjoying divine favor, there was only one deity to approach and only one kind of sacrifice to offer (see comment on 4:2).
Unfaithful to the LORD by deceiving his neighbor (6:2). Verses 1–7 deal with cases of sacrilege that involve fraud: misuse of the divine name by swearing falsely to avoid human detection of an act that takes advantage of another person. In the ancient Near East, oaths were used to resolve disputes when other evidence was insufficient. For example, the Mesopotamian Laws of Eshnunna make the provision:
If the man’s house has been burglarized, and the owner of the house incurs a loss along with the goods which the depositor gave to him, the owner of the house shall swear an oath to satisfy him at the gate of (the temple of) the god Tishpak: “My goods have been lost along with your goods; I have not committed a fraud or misdeed”; thus shall he swear an oath to satisfy him and he will have no claim against him.72
Like Leviticus 6, the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope also speaks of false oaths as a way to satisfy greed, but warns of accountability to superhuman power.73