Leviticus 5: Guilty Before He Knew It, and the Fifth Part

Verses 2 and 3 of Leviticus 5 look like one sentence said twice, and they aren't. Both describe a man touching something unclean without knowing it. Verse 2 carries straight on to "he also shall be unclean, and guilty," while verse 3 waits: "when he knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty."

So in one case guilt arrives with the touch and in the other it arrives with the knowledge, and the chapter doesn't stop to say which it means. I'm going to leave that sitting there, because verse 17 comes back to it and I don't like where it lands.

What is the trespass offering in Leviticus 5?

The chapter opens with four cases, and they're an odd set. A witness hears "the voice of swearing" and says nothing (verse 1). Someone touches the carcass of an unclean beast or unclean cattle or unclean creeping things (verse 2), or touches "the uncleanness of man" (verse 3). Someone swears with his lips "to do evil, or to do good" and the oath slips away from him (verse 4). Even the vow to do good can leave you guilty if you lose track of it.

Verse 5 is short, "he shall confess that he hath sinned in that thing," and I keep stopping on those last words because the confession has an object. I think the summary we usually give, confess and then sacrifice, drops it. The man names the touch or the oath or the silence. He doesn't say he's had a bad year.

The chapter's own vocabulary is looser than the charts we make of it. Verse 6 calls the lamb "his trespass offering" and a few words later "a sin offering." Verse 7 does the same thing with the birds. The ram in verses 15 and 18 is only ever a trespass offering. I've handed out the neat two-column chart in Gospel Doctrine, so I'm not throwing stones, but the text is messier than the chart. Where the line does show is verse 16, where something has been damaged and the damage gets repaid. If you want the sin offering on its own terms, Leviticus 4 and the sin nobody knew about is where I went through it.

Why does the offering change with what a person can afford?

There are three tiers and the second and third each turn on the same hinge. The first is a female lamb or kid from the flock (verse 6). If he's "not able to bring a lamb," it's two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a sin offering and one for a burnt offering (verse 7), and if he's "not able to bring two turtledoves, or two young pigeons," it's the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour (verse 11).

What stops me is the flour, since the ordinary flour offering in Leviticus 2:1 has oil poured on it and frankincense laid on top, and this one gets neither: "he shall put no oil upon it, neither shall he put any frankincense thereon." The reason comes in six words, "for it is a sin offering." I'm not going to say more than the text does.

The closing words are identical, since "it shall be forgiven him" follows the birds in verse 10 and follows the handful of flour in verse 13, the same sentence for a man who could afford two doves and a man who couldn't. The lamb tier in verse 6 ends at atonement and never uses the word at all. I don't know what to make of that, and I'd be wary of anybody who's sure.

Is a man guilty if he never knew?

And if a soul sin, and commit any of these things which are forbidden to be done by the commandments of the Lord; though he wist it not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity.

Leviticus 5:17

Verse 18 follows with a ram and says the priest shall make atonement "concerning his ignorance wherein he erred and wist it not, and it shall be forgiven him." Verse 19 closes the section with a flat line: "he hath certainly trespassed against the Lord."

Last January I borrowed five bar clamps from Brent, the four-footers with orange paint on the handles, to glue up a tabletop. I took them back over the fence in a bucket and told him that was all five. In April I moved the lumber rack to the other wall and the fifth one was behind the cherry boards, orange handle and all, where it had been the whole time. Brent had been a clamp short for three months and as far as I could tell hadn't noticed, so nothing in my life had been different either.

I walked it over that evening.

He said he hadn't counted them, which made me feel about the way you'd expect.

I'd say I wasn't guilty of anything in January, and verses 3 and 4 agree with me, since guilt there waits for "when he knoweth of it." But I did tell him that was all five and it wasn't, and a man who says "that's all of them" is putting his name to a count. Something changed in April behind the cherry boards, and I'm fairly sure it was me and not the clamp. Verse 3 reads that way. Verse 17 reads as though the clamp had been the problem from the first day, and I can't tell you which of those two I'd have wanted Brent to believe about me.

I also brought him a box of the rubber pads he's always short on, which came to eight dollars. The clamp had cost forty. I did that arithmetic in the truck on the way back, so nobody should credit me with planning it from scripture.

What is the added fifth, and who gets it?

The repayment shows up in verse 16, where a man who sins "in the holy things of the Lord" brings a ram without blemish and "shall make amends for the harm that he hath done in the holy thing, and shall add the fifth part thereto, and give it unto the priest." The harm is to a holy thing, so the amends go to the priest.

Chapter 6 has the same arithmetic for a wrong done to a neighbor. If a man lied about something left with him to keep, or found a lost thing and swore falsely about it, he is to restore it "in the principal, and shall add the fifth part more thereto, and give it unto him to whom it appertaineth, in the day of his trespass offering" (Leviticus 6:5). That's the verse I'd actually mark in the margin of chapter 5. The person wronged gets the thing back plus a fifth, and he gets it the day the ram goes up. Repayment and offering happen together, and I find that harder to picture doing than either one alone.

The Church's seminary material puts confession and restitution together in repentance, and the chapter's order backs it up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a trespass offering in Leviticus 5?

It's the offering for a wrong with a measurable harm, like a damaged holy thing. The man pays the harm back and adds a fifth. The chapter blurs the line, though. It calls the lamb and the birds both trespass offerings and sin offerings, so I wouldn't lean on a rigid chart.

Does ignorance excuse sin in this chapter?

No, and verse 17 says so about as plainly as a verse can: "though he wist it not, yet is he guilty." But verse 18 doesn't stop there. The man who "erred and wist it not" still gets a ram, a priest and the words "it shall be forgiven him." Whether that makes the guilt lighter I can't tell from the text, and neither can anyone who tells you it does.

Who gets the added fifth?

In Leviticus 5:16 it goes to the priest, because the harm was done to a holy thing. In Leviticus 6:5 it goes to the neighbor who was wronged. If you owe somebody something, the second verse is the better pattern.

Does Leviticus 5:1 mean staying silent is a sin?

Verse 1 says a man who hears the voice of swearing and is a witness, and "do not utter it," bears his iniquity. It doesn't say who he's supposed to tell, or what happens to him if he does, so I wouldn't build much more on it than the text gives. I'd say it's a hard verse for anyone who has stood in a meeting and let something go by.

I still don't like verse 17. I understand the reading that a boundary is a boundary whether you saw it or not, and I understand that forgiveness arrives in verse 18 in the same breath. But "guilty" is a heavy word for a man who touched something he couldn't have known about, and "certainly trespassed" in verse 19 is heavier. The chapter asks him to carry a ram and gives him no word for the days between touching the thing and learning of it, which is most of the time he'd have lived with it. Nothing in the seminary material or the commentaries I've read smooths that for me.

— D.