va THE FIVE MAJOR SACRIFICES IN LEVITICUS 1-7
Wenham contends that “the two sacrifices were quite different. The ritual was different. The sacrificial animals were different. The circumstances in which they
were offered differed ... In short, different names denote different sacrifices.”
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Occasions for va in Lev 5-6
These chapters set out three different occasions for a reparation offering: 1 When a person commits a violation and sins unintentionally in regard to any of
the LORD’s holy things Lev 5:15. Levine
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follows rabbinic tradition which understood that “holy things of Yahweh” here were limited to the tent of meeting and its sancta. Milgrom,
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though, has shown that the term is wider and includes things that belong to priests
—such as portions of
ymlv Lev 7:31-34 and tithes Lev 27:30ff—and anything dedicated to Yahweh. In Lev 19:5ff meat of the
ymlv is classified among the holy things of Yahweh.
A layman who took anything that was holy would commit a violation. An example is found in Lev 22:14: “If anyone eats a sacred offering by mistake, he must
make restitution to the priest ... ” Anyone discovering his fault was to return the
property or its value, plus 20 per cent of the value, plus a ram as reparation offering Lev 5:15f.
2 If a person sins, and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD’s commands, even
though he does not know it, he is guilty and will be held responsible Lev 5:17. The syntax of the Hebrew in this text makes it difficult to interpret what it is
“he does not know”. This has provoked different interpretations. JPS translates the verse on the basis that the offender did not know that his
action was forbidden. Levine
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points out, though, that this would mean that there is no distinction between the occasions for the reparation offering and the individual’s
purification offering Lev 4:27-35: both would deal with the situation of inadvertent offences.
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Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, p.105.
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Levine, Leviticus, p.30.
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Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, p.322.
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Levine, Leviticus, p.32.
Levine follows the rabbinic interpretation that the offender suspected he may have committed an offence, but did not know for certain. He cites the case of Job
who used to make a “contingent sacrifice”—in case his sons had sinned Job 1:5. Since the exact offence is unknown, there can be no return of the property as in the
first case; simply a ram is offered in sacrifice. Another part of the verse difficult to interpret is the word
va, which appears here as a verb. It is translated in NIV as “he is guilty”. Kiuchi points out that this
translation makes the protasis simply an objective statement and does not answer the question as to when one should bring the sacrifice. He argues, “Since the term
usually comes just before the bringing of the sacrifice or the confession e.g. Lev 5:5,17, it is most likely that the term refers to the existential situation of the
sinner.”
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Milgrom renders va as “he feels guilt”. It does not refer to the state of guilt
but “the suffering brought on by guilt, expressed now by words such as qualms, pa
ngs, remorse, and contrition.”
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Kiuchi prefers “he realises guilt”. His position is summarised as follows: “va connotes both a legal status and the idea that ‘guilt’
works itself into the conscience ... so that the sinner becomes aware of his sin.”
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However, as the offerer remains unaware of what has caused him to feel guilty, Kiuchi’s emphasis on actual legal guilt seems, at least in the context of this verse,
misplaced. The traditional rabbinic view was that the reparation offering here was for
unconscious breaches of any of God’s laws; but Wenham and Hartley
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follow Rabbi Akiba
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and argue that, in the context, it is rather trespasses against sacred property that are in view. Milgrom agrees that “basically the text predicates sancta
desecration,”
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but go es on to argue that “the term for desecration,
,
was deliberately excluded, in order to teach that the
offering is prescribed not just for the desecration of the sancta, but also for the unconscious violation of all of the
Lord’s prohibitive commandments.”
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275
Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature, p.32.
276
Quoted in Kiuchi, The Purification Offering in the Priestly Literature, p.31.
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Hartley, Leviticus, p.82.
278
Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, p.107; Hartley, Leviticus, p.82.
279
In Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, p.331.
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Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, p.332.
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Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, p.332.
The offerer’s lack of knowledge of the exact offence supports Milgrom’s wider interpretation here. The typical offerer, Milgrom postulates, has been suffering
psychologically or physically, and unaware of the cause of his feelings of guilt, would often imagine the worst case scenario, that he has committed some sacrilege,
though in fact it may have been something else.
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3 The third occasion for the reparation offering is found in Lev 6:2ff which reads: “If anyone sins and is unfaithful to the LORD by deceiving his neighbour
about something entrusted to him or left in his care or stolen, or if he cheats him, or if he finds lost property and lies about it, or if he swears falsely, or if
he commits any such sin that people may do ... ” Recent commentators
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generally follow Milgrom
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who considers this text as essentially dealing with religious rather than c
ivil law. “Swearing falsely” does not specify a discrete wrong, but applies to all the preceding cases. The offender has
defrauded his neighbour by one of the various means listed, but on top of that, when accused of his fraud, he has denied it under oath, using the name of Yahweh.
This position clarifies the phrase, “unfaithful to the LORD” Milgrom translates as “sacrilege against the Lord” which heads the pericope v2. The
sacrilege occurs because “the Lord has been made an accomplice to the defrauding of man.”
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As in the first case, the offender has to return the property to its rightful owner, plus 20 per cent, and make a reparation offering to Yahweh Lev 6:4f.
Other occasions for offering va
The va is required elsewhere in several cases:
1. A Nazirite whose vow of consecration had been broken through corpse
contamination had to reconsecrate himself and renew his vow and then present an va Num 6:7-21.
2. A man who slept with a betrothed slave Lev 19:20-22.
3. In post-exilic Jerusalem, those who were guilty of mixed marriages and had to
divorce their foreign wives Ezra 10:19.
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Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, p.332f.
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E.g. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, Levine, Leviticus, and Hartley, Leviticus.
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Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, p.336f.
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Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, p.365.
4. The Philistines returned the Ark they had captured together with valuable objects
to appease the wrath of God they were experiencing 1Sam 6:3-5. 5.
One healed of an infectious skin disease offered an va as part of a complex rite of aggregation Lev 14:12, 21.
These can each be interpreted as examples of breach of faith or sacrilege: the first two involve breach of vows in the second, the oath of betrothal taken before
Yahweh has been broken.
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In the case of mixed marriage, the leaders talk of desecration of the holy people of Israel: “They have taken some of their daughters as
wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them.” Ezra 9:2 The Philistines had desecrated the holy ark of Yahweh.
As for the person cured of the skin disease, Hartley
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suggests that as illness was generally thought of as punishment for sin, and skin disease as the worst curse
one could experience, a sufferer may well believe he had unknowingly desecrated sacred property. Wenham,
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while not discounting this theory, suggests an alternative, that the reparation offering here compensated God for the loss of all
sacrifices, tithes and firstfruits the sufferer had been unable to present during his uncleanness.
The material
The reparation offering was to consist of a ram “one without defect and of proper value
in silver according to the sanctuary shekel” Lev 5:15. The latter phrase in my italics has attracted various interpretations. Some of these require the
text to be emended. The two that interpret the text as it stands are as follows: 1.
The ram must possess a certain value measured in shekels, though the number is not given.
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The rabbinic view is that as “shekels” is given in the plural, the
animal must be worth at least two shekels. Hartley suggests the value was varied from time to time by the officiating priest.
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2. The offender had the option of providing his own ram or remitting the cost so
one could be purchased on his behalf.
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Milgrom supports this by pointing to
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Milgrom, in Hartley, Leviticus, p.79.
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Hartley, Leviticus, p.79.
288
Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, p.210.
289
Hartley, Leviticus, p.81.
290
Hartley, Leviticus, p.81.
291
Levine, Leviticus, p.31.
2 Kings 12:16 which talks of the “money from the guilt offerings”. Although the
phrase is only found in Lev 5:15, he argues that it functions as a standard for the second and third cases which follow Lev 5:17f and 6:2ff.
Unlike other sacrifices, there was no provision for a poor man, and there was no alternative species to the specified ram. The description of the rite is relatively
brief, and from these facts Wenham concludes that for the reparation offering the “value of the animal presented was more important than the procedure at the
altar.”
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Purpose of the va
Whereas the tafj was offered by individuals and by the Israelites
collectively, the va was uniquely for individuals.
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For Hartley,
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the common thread running through all the occasions on which reparation offerings were made was
lum, which he translates as “breach of faith”. The crimes of mishandling a neighbour’s property he conjectures were
elevated to a breach of faith against Yahweh by swearing an oath of innocence in his name.
Milgrom’s analysis, however, is more precise and helpful. His studies reveal that the key word
lum in all occurrences in the OT constitutes a sin against God, and that its antonym is “to sanctify”.
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So the common thread is desecration of something holy: holy property or offerings, or the holy people of Israel, or the holy
name of Yahweh. When an offender feels guilt concerning some desecration, he is to make, if
the offence is known, full compensation or reparation to all offended parties to put them back in the same position as before, plus a twenty per cent additional penalty.
In all cases, on top of any compensation, he is to present a reparation offering to Yahweh so that the priest will make atonement for him and he will be forgiven Lev
5:16,18; 6:7. Milgrom notes that there is a paradox raised by the forgiveness of intentional
desecration of the name of Yahweh in Lev 6:1-7, for elsewhere the Priestly author
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Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, p.105.
293
Hartley, Leviticus, p.78.
294
Hartley, Leviticus, p.77.
295
Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, p.345.
asserts the person who sins with a high hand is excluded from the benefits of atoning sacrifice Num 15:30f. He finds that the paradox is resolved in Num 5:6-7, a
passage parallel to that in Lev 6: “If a man or woman commits any wrong against man whereby he commits
sacrilege against the Lord, when that person feels guilt, he shall confess the wrong he has done, make reparation in its entirety, and add one-fifth to it,
giving it to the one to whom he has incurred liability.”
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Milgrom
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argues that this passage is more general than the cases in Lev 6 and confirms that
lum applies to all cases of fraud through oath. It further stipulates that restitution must be preceded by confession. He surveys the passages Lev 5:1-5;
16:21; 26:40; Num 5:6f where the priestly author requires confession and finds that the passages all deal exclusively with deliberate sin. So he deduces that while for
involuntary sacrilege, it is sufficient that the offender feels remorse
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and presents the reparation offering to make atonement, in the case of deliberate sacrilege, there
must also be verbal confession. In other words, repentance through remorse and confession “reduces ... intentional sin to inadvertence, thereby rendering it eligible
for sacrificial expiation.”
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Conclusion
A reparation offering is a costly offering presented by an individual to compensate Yahweh for desecration of his property or his name.