What Does Leviticus 4:3 Mean?

(3) **The priest that is anointed.**—To illustrate this law, the conduct of the high priest is adduced as the first instance, to show when and how this exalted functionary is to bring the sin offering in question. By this the Levitical law indicates that even the chief of the priesthood was but a frail being like the rest of the people, and was exposed to the same infirmities as the laity, thus precluding the assumption of spiritual superiority. Hence the remark of the Apostle, “the law made those high priests who had infirmity, and who needed daily to offer up sacrifices, first for their own sins, and then for the people’s; but our high priest, Christ Jesus, was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens” (Hebrews 7:27-28). The phrase “the priest that is anointed” for “the high priest” is restricted to this book, where it occurs four times (Leviticus 4:3; Leviticus 4:5; Leviticus 4:16; Leviticus 6:15 in Heb.; 22 in the English). “The great priest,” or high priest, is the appellation used in the other portions of the Pentateuch (Leviticus 21:10; Numbers 35:25; Numbers 35:28), and in Joshua (Joshua 20:6); whilst in the later books of the Old Testament this functionary is called chief priest (2Kings 25:18; 2Chronicles 19:11; 2Chronicles 24:11; 2Chronicles 26:20; 2Chronicles 31:10; Ezra 7:5). He is called “the anointed priest,” because, like Aaron, he alone was anointed when he succeeded to the high office, whilst the ordinary priests were simply consecrated. Their anointing descended with them to all futurity by virtue of being the descendants of Aaron. (See Leviticus 8:12.) **According to the sin of the people.**—That is, he having in ignorance committed the same sin as the common people, to which he is as liable as they. From the phrase “against any commandments of the Lord” in the preceding verse, as well as from Leviticus 10:6; Leviticus 21:10-15, it is evident that the sin of ignorance here alluded to does not refer to the inadvertent neglect of his official duty, which devolves upon the high priest as the spiritual head of the people, but to any offence whatsoever ignorantly committed. According to the marginal reading, *to make the people guilty, *or more literally, *to the guilt of the people, *which is equally admissible, the meaning of the passage is, that he by committing a sin causes the people to transgress, inasmuch as his example is followed by them; or that, in virtue of the intimate connection which subsisted between the representative of the nation and the people, the sin of the one was the sin of the other. (Comp. Leviticus 10:6; 1Chronicles 21:3.) **A young bullock.**—Literally, *a steer, the son of a bull. *The sacrificial rules which obtained at the time of Christ minutely defined the respective ages of the bullock: the steer, the son of a bull, and the calf. The bullock or ox which was brought as a sacrifice had to be three years old: “the steer the son of a bull” rendered in the passage before us, and in the Authorised Version generally, by “a young bullock” (Exodus 29:1; Leviticus 4:14; Leviticus 16:3; Leviticus 23:8, &c.), had to be two years old; whilst the calf had to be of the first year.