Leviticus5chapter 5

Leviticus 5:1-2

The chapter opens with four cases and the first one is a silence. A man put under oath as a witness who keeps back what he saw shall bear his iniquity, and that phrase occurs here for the first time in Scripture before returning at verse 17 to close the chapter. Verse 2 turns from what a man withholds to what he touches, and the word unclean occurs here for the first time in Scripture, six chapters ahead of the laws that define it.

Leviticus 5:3-5

All four cases share one condition. The thing was out of sight, which verses 2, 3 and 4 each state, once as hidden from him and twice as hid from him, and twice the text reads when he knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty. Verse 5 asks for something chapters 1 to 4 never asked for, that the man confess the sin aloud, and the word confess occurs here for the first time in Scripture. Leviticus 16:21 puts that same word in the high priest's mouth over the living goat.

Leviticus 5:6

The phrase trespass offering occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and the same verse calls the animal a sin offering, so two names rest on one beast. Commentators have worked at the distinction ever since, and Leviticus draws no line between them in words. A female from the flock is the cheapest animal on the scale of chapter 4, where a bullock answers for the priest and a female kid or lamb for a common man.

Leviticus 5:7-8

Poverty changes the offering and leaves the atonement standing. The same clause runs again at Leviticus 12:8 for a woman after childbirth, and Luke 2:24 records Mary bringing the pair of birds, so the family of Jesus came to the temple under the provision written for those who could not reach a lamb. Both birds are still required, one for a sin offering and one for a burnt offering, and verse 8 has the priest wring off the head without dividing the bird asunder.

Leviticus 5:9-10

The blood goes on the side of the altar and the rest is wrung out at the bottom, lower than the horns where chapter 4 put the blood of a bullock. John Gill quotes the Mishnah, the rabbinic law code compiled around AD 200, which places this blood beneath the scarlet thread that marked the middle of the altar's height. The sin offering is handled before the burnt offering in verse 10, and the verse ends with it shall be forgiven him, a sentence the chapter says four times, at verses 10, 13, 16 and 18.

Leviticus 5:11-13

Below the birds the text goes down to flour, and the offering keeps the name sin offering while carrying no blood at all. No oil and no frankincense go on it, so the two things that make the meat offering of chapter 2 a glad gift are taken out of this one. Hebrews 9:22 says that almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and the word almost is doing work here, since this is the offering the rule steps around. Leviticus gives no reason for the exception, and the priest still burns the handful on an altar that carries blood already.

Leviticus 5:14-16

A new speech begins here, one of the thirty-three in this book that open with the LORD speaking to Moses, and it turns from things done in ignorance to property. A trespass in the holy things costs a ram valued in shekels of the sanctuary, and verse 16 adds the harm back with a fifth part on top, paid to the priest. Sacrifice and repayment run together, so a man who has taken what belonged to the altar settles it with money as well as with an animal. Numbers 5:7 carries the same rule over to wrongs done to a neighbour, with the principal and the fifth part paid to the man wronged.

Leviticus 5:17-19

The last case is a man who suspects he has done wrong and cannot say what. He wist it not, a phrase that occurs only here and in verse 18 across the whole of Scripture, and the verse holds him guilty and returns to the words that opened the chapter, that he shall bear his iniquity. The ram is required as before and no fifth part is named, since a harm nobody can measure has no sum attached to it. Verse 19 closes with a bare naming, that it is a trespass offering and he hath certainly trespassed against the LORD.