What Does Leviticus 5:6 Mean?

(6) **And he shall bring his trespass offering . . . a lamb or a kid of the goats.**—Better, *a sheep, or a shaggy she-goat *(see Leviticus 4:23; Leviticus 4:32). The first thing to be noticed is that the sacrifice is here called (*āshām*) “trespass offering,” which is the right rendering of the word, and is so translated in thirty-five out of the thirty-six passages in which it is used for a sacrifice. In the verse before us, and in the rest of this section, viz., Leviticus 5:7-13, which treat of this sacrifice, no distinction is made between the ranks of the offenders. There is no special legislation for the high priest, the whole congregation, or the prince, as in the case with the (*chātāth*) sin offering, which is described in the former chapter. The spiritual officer and temporal sovereign are here on a level with the ordinary layman. There is no scale in the sacrifices corresponding to the position of the sinner. They are all alike to bring the *same *victim, either sheep or she goat. Though nothing is here said about the sacrificial rites which were to be performed in connection with the victim, in this case it is implied that, apart from the minor deviations here specified, they were to be the same as those in connection with the sin offering. The rule which obtained during the second Temple, is as follows: the trespass offerings were killed, and their blood sprinkled, as is before described in Numbers 4; they were then flayed, the fat and the inwards taken out and salted, and strewed on the fire upon the altar. The residue of this flesh was eaten by the priests in the court, like the sin offerings.