It’s clear that you misunderstand the entire sacrificial system. Sacrifices were for unintentional sins only. Repentance was the only remedy for intentional sins.

We all know that there were different functions for the sacrifices, including ritual purification, thanksgiving, personal consecration, and making of vows, along with atonement for unintentional sins. But the sacrifices on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) provided atonement for both intentional and unintentional sins, something taught emphatically in the Talmud and Law Codes.

Scripture is clear on this, and Jewish tradition never questioned it. There was also one particular sacrifice (namely, the ʿasham, the guilt offering or reparation offering) that in conjunction with repentance served as atonement for intentional sins (called “transgressions” in the Bible). We should point out too that according to some Rabbinic traditions, repentance could “convert” intentional sins to unintentional sins, hence paving the way for atonement through sacrifice.

Before answering your objection, it’s important that I clear up some misconceptions. First, as we have noted previously, Christians and Messianic Jews do not believe for a moment that sacrifices without repentance and faith did anyone any good (see vol. 1, 1.11, and above, 3.8–3.9). Second, we do not believe that after every sin an Israelite had to go to the Temple in Jerusalem (or before that, to the Tabernacle) and offer a sacrifice. Every animal in the land fit for sacrifice would have been slaughtered within days if that were the case, and no one would have had time to do anything except offer sacrifices day and night. Normal life would completely cease if such an impossible scenario existed. Third, we do not believe that God’s people can sin freely, then repent and bring a sacrifice, then sin freely again. Rather, as we pointed out in an earlier discussion, we agree with the Talmudic statement that “he who says, I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent, repentance is not vouchsafed to him” (m. Yoma 8:9, and see above, 3.8). As the psalmist expressed it, “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Ps. 66:18). Fourth, we believe that for those who continue in willful and defiant sin, there is no forgiveness (well come back to this point shortly).

What then was the purpose of sacrifices and offerings in Israel? We must remember that there were different kinds of sacrifices and different functions for those sacrifices in the religious life of our people. Some sacrifices, such as the burnt offerings (Hebrew, ʿolah, also known as the whole offering or holocaust), were offered up as symbols of complete dedication and devotion to the Lord.²²⁰ Other sacrifices, such as the todah, were offered in thanksgiving to the Lord, while other sacrifices, such as the sin offering (Hebrew, hattaʾt), were offered to remove ritual impurity (among other things), and still others, such as the fellowship (or peace) offerings (Hebrew, shelamim), were offered in worshipful communion.

As to differences between the sin and guilt offerings (hattaʾt and ʿasham respectively), Hebrew professor George Buchanan Gray, lecturing in the 1920s, could state, “The precise distinction between the sin offering and the guilt or trespass offering is not altogether clear, and has been much discussed.”²²¹ More recently, however, R. Laird Harris, a Christian biblical scholar and Hebraist, wrote:

The difference between the sin offering and the guilt offering was in the nature of the sin. The former was for what might be called general sins; the latter for sins that injured other people or detracted from the sacred worship. The guilt offering thus involved not only a sacrifice but also restitution plus a fine of 20 percent (6:5 [5:24 in the Hebrew]). The sins for which the sin offering was prescribed are called “unintentional sins” (4:2), or those done “through ignorance” (KJV). The same expression is used in connection with the guilt offering (5:15).²²²

Or as expressed by Baruch Levine, a leading Jewish authority on atonement and sacrifice:

Chapters 4, and 5 [of Leviticus] contain the laws governing expiatory sacrifices, the purpose of which is to secure atonement and forgiveness from God. These offerings are efficacious only when offenses are inadvertent or unwitting. They do not apply to defiant acts of premeditated crimes. Whenever an individual Israelite, a tribal leader, a priest, or even the chief priest, or the Israelite community at large is guilty of an inadvertent offense or of failing to do what the law requires, expiation through sacrifices is required.²²³

However, under certain circumstances, the ʿasham could atone for intentional sins. As Levine noted:

The offenses outlined here [in Lev. 5:20–26, or 6:1–7 in most English translations] were quite definitely intentional! A person misappropriated property or funds entrusted to his safekeeping, or defrauded another, or failed to restore lost property he had located.… If, subsequently, the accused came forth on his own and admitted to having lied under oath—thus assuming liability for the unrecovered property—he was given the opportunity to clear himself by making restitution and by paying a fine of 20 percent to the aggrieved party. Having lied under oath, he had also offended God and was obliged to offer an ʿasham sacrifice in expiation … God accepts the expiation even of one who swears falsely in His name because the guilty person is willing to make restitution to the victim of his crime.²²⁴

This observation alone shoots a hole in the anti-missionary teaching that only unintentional sins could be atoned for with blood sacrifices.²²⁵

“But,” you object, “that’s hardly sufficient proof. If anything, all you’ve demonstrated is that for a very small number of specifically enumerated sins, one particular sacrifice brought atonement. What about all the other sins people commit? Where does the Torah say that sacrifices provided atonement?”

The Torah says so explicitly in Leviticus 16, the most important atonement chapter in all of the Pentateuch, the chapter in which the rituals for the Day of Atonement are laid out. However, before turning to Leviticus 16, let me give you an important Talmudic perspective. As noted by the Rabbinic scholar Solomon Schechter in his discussion of sacrifices and atonement,

The continual offering was a communal offering, nor is there in the Bible ascribed to it any atoning power; but there is a marked tendency in Rabbinic literature to bestow on all sacrifices, even such as the burnt-offering and the peace-offering, some sort of atoning power for certain classes of sins, both of commission and omission, for which the Bible ascribes no sacrifice at all.²²⁶

Thus, the rabbis went beyond the Torah in ascribing atoning power for all kinds of sins to all kinds of sacrifices. Again, we see how flawed the anti-missionary position actually is, also exposing that in its zeal to counteract the claims of the New Testament, it will sometimes counteract the claims of Rabbinic Judaism too. And when we read Leviticus 16, we see that the position is not flawed in a minor way. It is fatally flawed. Look carefully at these key verses:

When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat [in English, this is commonly known as the “scapegoat”]. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the desert in the care of a man appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a solitary place; and the man shall release it in the desert.

Leviticus 16:20–22

Notice carefully what the text says: The High Priest is to confess over the head of this goat “all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins”—and “all” means “all.” Notice also that the text specifically speaks of the “wickedness” (or “iniquity”; Hebrew, ʿawon) and “rebellion” (Hebrew, peshaʾ, meaning willful transgression) of the Israelites, not merely their unintentional sins.

“But what do the rabbis say about this? What is written in the Talmud?”

With regard to the kinds of sins atoned for by the sacrificial goats of Yom Kippur, the Talmud is even more explicit than the biblical text. Here are two different translations of m. Shevuʿot 1:6, a well-known text in traditional Jewish law:

1. And for a deliberate act of imparting uncleanness to the sanctuary and its Holy Things, a goat [whose blood is sprinkled] inside and the Day of Atonement effect atonement.
2. And for all other transgressions which are in the Torah—
3. the minor or serious, deliberate or inadvertent, those done knowingly or done unknowingly, violating a positive or a negative commandment, those punishable by extirpation [karet] and those punishable by death at the hands of the court, the goat which is sent away [Lev. 16:21] effects atonement.²²⁷
4. And for uncleanness that occurs in the Temple and to its holy sacrifices through wantonness, [the] goat whose blood is sprinkled within [the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement] and the Day of Atonement effect atonement, and for [all] other transgressions [spoken of] in the Law, light or grace, premeditated or inadvertent, aware or unaware, transgressions of positive commands or negative commands, sin whose penalty is excision or sins punishable by death imposed by the court, the scapegoat makes atonement.²²⁸

As codified and explained by Maimonides almost one thousand years later (Laws of Repentance, 1:2):

Since the goat sent [to Azazeil]²²⁹ atones for all of Israel, the High Priest confesses on it as the spokesman for all of Israel, as [Lev. 16:21] states: “He shall confess on it all the sins of the Children of Israel.”

The goat sent to Azazeil atones for all the transgressions in the Torah, the severe and the lighter [sins]; those violated intentionally and those transgressed inadvertently; those which [the transgressor] became conscious of and those which he was not conscious of. All are atoned for by the goat sent [to Azazeil].

This applies only if one repents. If one does not repent, the goat only atones for the light [sins].

Which are light sins and which are severe ones? Severe sins are those which are punishable by execution by the court or by premature death [karet]. [The violation of] the other prohibitions that are not punishable by premature death are considered light [sins].²³⁰

Here, then, is a perfectly clear statement from the most authoritative sources of traditional Judaism that the sacrifices offered and the ceremonies performed on the Day of Atonement effected atonement for all kinds of sins, intentional and unintentional, willful and inadvertent. The only question raised by the Rabbinic sources is to what degree repentance was a necessary part of the equation, a question that all Messianic Jews would answer by saying, “Repentance plays a vital part in the equation!” (See below, 3.21.) In this context, Jacob Milgrom notes:

Even the annual purification rite for the sanctuary and nation requires that the high priest confess the deliberate sins of the Israelites (Lev. 16:21), while the latter demonstrate their penitence, not by coming to the Temple—from which deliberate sinners are barred—but by fasting and other acts of self-denial (Lev. 16:29; 23:27–32; Num. 29:7). Thus, contrition for involuntary sin and confession for deliberate sin are indispensable to the atonement produced by the sacrificial system, and they differ in no way from the call to repentance formulated by the prophets.²³¹

Returning to the Talmudic discussion, I should also point out to you what the Talmud says about the atoning power of the goat whose blood is sprinkled inside the Most Holy Place. As we read previously in m. Shevuʿot 1:6, “And for uncleanness that occurs in the Temple and to its holy sacrifices through wantonness, [the] goat whose blood is sprinkled within [the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement] and the Day of Atonement effect atonement.” The Talmud explains this with reference to Leviticus 16:15–16:

He [i.e., the High Priest] shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain and do with it as he did with the bull’s blood: He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it. In this way he will make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been. He is to do the same for the Tent of Meeting, which is among them in the midst of their uncleanness.

The rabbis (see b. Shevuʿot 2b; 6b–14a) comment specifically on the words rebellion (transgressions in Hebrew) and sins, explaining that “transgressions” refers to acts of rebellion—which are certainly intentional—while “sins” refers to inadvertent acts.²³² And it is the goat whose blood is sprinkled in the Most Holy Place that effects atonement for the people, just as the blood of the bull offered up by the High Priest effects atonement for him (m. Shevuʿot 1:7, following Lev. 16:11, “Aaron shall bring the bull for his own sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household, and he is to slaughter the bull for his own sin offering.”). Notice also that it is a sin offering that effects atonement for Aaron and the people of Israel, demonstrating that it is not only the guilt offering that effects atonement for willful sins.²³³

Let me also remind you of the prayer of Solomon offered up at the dedication of the Temple (1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 6), in which he asked God to forgive his sinning people when they turned to God in repentance and prayed toward the Temple. The Lord promised that he would, in fact, forgive and restore—because of the sacrifices offered up in the Temple (see 2 Chron. 7:12–16, and the discussion above, 3.9)—and the text makes clear that inadvertent or unintentional sins were not the only things covered by Solomon’s prayer. See, for example, 1 Kings 8:33–36, 46–50; 2 Chronicles 7:14, clearly referring to all kinds of sins and transgressions.

We can also ask why many Orthodox Jews still practice the custom of kapparos (or kapparot) on the eve of Yom Kippur (or Rosh Hashanah) if sacrifices only atoned for unintentional sins. Why then do they take a live fowl and wave it around their heads while confessing that the fowl is their substitute and payment? As described by Rabbi Abraham Chill:

A custom that has prevailed in many Jewish communities throughout the world for centuries and which was the cause of a great deal of controversy and apologetics is that of Kapparot, the expiatory offering. This ritual, which takes place during the night and early morning preceding Yom Kippur, involves taking a live white fowl, swinging it around one’s head while reciting: “This is my atonement; this is my ransom; this is my substitute.” As if saying: if on Yom Kippur it is decreed that I must die, then this fowl which will shortly be slaughtered should serve as my substitute.”²³⁴

It’s also fair to ask, What kinds of sins do Jews confess every year on Yom Kippur? The answer—known to all who have ever recited the prescribed prayers and confessions for that day—is that Jews confess to almost every imaginable sin on Yom Kippur, leaving almost no stone unturned. Yet, while the Temple was standing, those were the very sins for which atonement was sought through sacrifice, repentance, and fasting. We could also ask, If prayer and repentance replace sacrifices according to Rabbinic teaching, what are they actually replacing if sacrifices were so ineffective?²³⁵ The answer is obvious: The sacrifices were anything but ineffective.

How then should we understand Numbers 15:22–31 ? These verses seem to teach that sacrifices could be brought to atone for unintentional sins, but for willful, defiant sins no sacrifice was possible. The sinner’s guilt would remain on him. Let’s look at this passage, allowing some Jewish biblical scholars to explain its meaning:

Now if you unintentionally fail to keep any of these commands the Lord gave Moses—any of the Lord’s commands to you through him, from the day the Lord gave them and continuing through the generations to come—and if this is done unintentionally without the community being aware of it, then the whole community is to offer a young bull for a burnt offering as an aroma pleasing to the Lord, along with its prescribed grain offering and drink offering, and a male goat for a sin offering. The priest is to make atonement for the whole Israelite community, and they will be forgiven, for it was not intentional and they have brought to the Lord for their wrong an offering made by fire and a sin offering. The whole Israelite community and the aliens living among them will be forgiven, because all the people were involved in the unintentional wrong. But if just one person sins unintentionally, he must bring a year-old female goat for a sin offering. The priest is to make atonement before the Lord for the one who erred by sinning unintentionally, and when atonement has been made for him, he will be forgiven. One and the same law applies to everyone who sins unintentionally, whether he is a native-born Israelite or an alien. But anyone who sins defiantly, whether native-born or alien, blasphemes the Lord, and that person must be cut off from his people. Because he has despised the Lord’s word and broken his commands, that person must surely be cut off; his guilt remains on him.²³⁶

Milgrom explains:

The possibility of sacrificial atonement is explicitly denied to the individual who presumptuously violates God’s law (Num. 15:30–31). This, however, does not mean, as many critics aver, that sacrificial atonement is possible only for involuntary wrongdoers. To cite but one exception, the asham offering is prescribed for that premeditated crime called by the rabbis asham gezelot (Lev. 5:20ff.; Num. 5:5–8). A more correct assertion, then, would be that the priestly system prohibits sacrificial atonement to the unrepentant sinner, for the one who “acts defiantly … it is the Lord he reviles” (Num. 15:30). This is an explicit postulate of post-biblical literature: “the hattat, the ʿasham, and death do not atone except with repentance” (Tosef., Yoma 5:9; cf. Yoma 8:8).²³⁷

Or as expressed concisely by Rashi, “Only at the time when his iniquity is upon him shall he be cut off, meaning, as long as he has not repented” making reference to b. Sanhedrin 90b, where the Talmud explains that Numbers 15:31 leaves open the possibility that the sinner might still repent. Thus, his guilt remains on him as long as he fails to repent.

Interestingly, there is almost an exact New Testament parallel to this warning in Numbers 15:30–31, and it is found—not surprisingly—in the Letter to the Hebrews:

If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Hebrews 10:26–31

The point in both cases is clear: There is no sacrifice, no forgiveness, no atonement for those who commit—and continue in—willful, defiant sin. If they don’t turn back in repentance, nothing will atone for them. As noted by R. L. Harris with reference to Numbers 15:30–31, “Here the NIV has correctly caught the sense of the unpardonable sin—not one done intentionally, but one done ‘defiantly’ i.e., in rebellion, sinning against light (cf. Matt. 12:31–32).”²³⁸ The Hebrew image is quite clear: The sinner transgresses “with a high hand” (beyad ramah)—almost challenging God to punish him or hold him to account. But God is not one to be challenged! As Moses reminded the children of Israel, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him” (Deut. 7:9–10).

But for those who would repent and perform the required Temple service, abundant mercy and pardon was available (see vol. 1, 1.11, and below, 3.21).

Looking back, then, at what we have seen so far, we can say categorically that sacrifices were not for unintentional sins only. The sacrifices on Yom Kippur argue against this position, specific sacrifices (the ʿasham and the hattaʾt) argue against it, other scriptural principles argue against it, the Talmud and Law Codes argue against it, the custom of kapparot argues against it, and the concept of repentance offered in conjunction with sacrifices argues against it. But there is something else we should look at briefly, namely, the Rabbinic view that through repentance, intentional sins, even quite deliberate sins, could be converted to unintentional sins, and thus covered through normal atonement rites. Dr. Rich Robinson, a research scholar for Jews for Jesus, has put together some important quotations on this subject. He observes that “according to the sages, repentance could turn an intentional sin into an unintentional sin and so be eligible for sacrifice,” offering the following ancient and modern sources in support:

1. Simeon b. Lakish said: Great is repentance, which converts intentional sins into unintentional ones (b. Yoma 86b; this is the rendering of Milgrom; as rendered in the Soncino edition, it reads: Great is repentance, for because of it premeditated sins are accounted as errors).

This literary image [of the “high hand”; Num. 15:30–31] is most apposite for the brazen sinner who commits his acts in open defiance of the Lord (cf. Job. 38:15). The essence of this sin is that it is committed flauntingly. However, sins performed in secret, even deliberately, can be commuted to the status of inadvertencies by means of repentance.²³⁹

… I submit that the repentance of the sinner, through his remorse … and confession…, reduces his intentional sin to an inadvertence, thereby rendering it eligible for sacrificial expiation.²⁴⁰

… The early rabbis … raise the question of how the high priest’s bull is capable of atoning for his deliberate sins, and they reply, “Because he has confessed his brazen and rebellious deeds it is as if they become as unintentional ones before him” (Sipra, Ahare par. 2:4, 6; cf. t. Yoma 2:1). Thus it is clear that the Tannaites attribute to repentance—strikingly, in a sacrificial ritual—the power to transform a presumptuous sin against God, punishable by death, into an act of inadvertence, expiable by sacrifice.²⁴¹

Of course, there are other scholars who reject this Rabbinic concept that intentional sins can be “converted” to unintentional sins through repentance, and I am not fully convinced of it myself.²⁴² I only bring it up because it reflects another problem (from a Rabbinic perspective) with the anti-missionary position regarding sacrifice and atonement.

In any case, I have presented clear, definite scriptural evidence, supported by Rabbinic tradition as well, that the sacrificial system instituted by God for the people of Israel, joined, of course, with repentance, provided atonement for intentional as well as and unintentional sins.

²²⁰ Jacob Milgrom has argued for the expiatory function of the burnt offering as well, with reference to similar ancient Near Eastern practices and with support from some Talmudic sources; see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 172–76. He notes that “some medieval commentators suggest the entire range of unwitting sins (Bekhor Shor; cf. Shadal) and even brazen sins, if their punishment is not specified (Ramban)” (175). Note, however, that any list of offerings that does not include guilt offerings and sin offerings—see, e.g., Jeremiah 17:24–26—would obviously not have the issue of atonement at the forefront, even if there were expiatory functions for burnt offerings under certain circumstances. See further below, 3.17.

²²¹ See George Buchanan Gray, Sacrifice in the Old Testament: Its Theory and Practice (New York: Ktav, 1971), 56.

²²² Harris, “Leviticus,” EBC, 2:547. Hartley, Leviticus, 78, offers several other distinctives between these sacrifices, summarizing the important studies of Levine and Milgrom. According to Levine, the guilt (or reparation) offering was primarily for personal needs, and the sin (or purification) offering was primarily for public needs. According to Milgrom, “A reparation offering is presented for desecration of sancta and a purification offering is offered to remove the contamination of sacred cultic objects from the pollution arising from inadvertent sins.”

²²³ Hartley, Leviticus, 18.

²²⁴ Ibid., 32–33. Milgrom, EJ, “Kipper,” observes that “the prescriptions of the asham offering ordained for cases of calculable loss to the deity stipulate that restitution must be made to the wronged party (man or sanctuary) before atonement by sacrifice is permitted. Indeed, the prophetic insistence that repentance is not an end in itself, but must lead to rectification of the wrongdoing (e.g., Isa. 1:13–17; 58:6–12; Micah 6:6–8), is only the articulation of a basic postulate of the sacrificial system.” Thus, repentance and sacrifices together effected atonement.

²²⁵ Hartley, Leviticus, 80, commenting on the fact that Isaiah describes the self sacrifice of the servant of the Lord with the term ʾasham, notes: “The choice of ʾ-sh-m to describe his sacrificial death may be twofold. First, it communicates that the servant’s death compensates God fully for the damages he has incurred by mankind’s sinning. Second, the servant’s sacrifice provides expiation for every kind of sin, inadvertent and intentional. That is, the serhvnt’s sacrifice provides expiation for any person who appropriates its merits to himself, no matter how grave his sin.”

²²⁶ Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 300.

²²⁷ This is the translation of Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah (New Haven: Yale, 1988), 622.

²²⁸ This is the rendering of Philip Blackman, Mishnayoth (Gateshead, England: Judaica Press, 1983), 4:340. He explains “wantonness” to mean “conscious premeditated sin by an unclean person who ate of qadošim, holy sacrifices, or entered the Temple,” the punishment for which would be “forty stripes after warning” (340, n. 1).

²²⁹ While most English readers are familiar with the term scapegoat, so-called because it escaped into the wilderness, the Hebrew text at Leviticus 16:21 speaks of the goat laʿazʾazel, which some translate “to [or for] Azazel.” Here, Maimonides speaks of “the goat sent,” which the translator Rabbi Eliyahu Touger explains with the bracketed words “to Azazeil.” For a summary of the issues concerning the “scapegoat,” see Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1021–22, 1071–79, with reference to other literature. Note also Lester L. Grabbe, “The Scapegoat Tradition: A Study in Early Jewish Interpretation,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 18(1987): 152–67.

²³⁰ Touger, Laws of Repentance, 1:2.

²³¹ Milgrom, “Kipper,” EJ (CD ROM), 10:1039–44. He adds that “deliberate sins and impurities, however, cannot be purged by the offender’s own hattat (Num. 15:30–31) but must await the annual rite of purgation for the sanctuary and the nation (Day of Atonement).”

²³² See also the commentary of Bertinoro—the “Rashi” of Mishnah commentaries—to m. Shevu‘ot 1:6.

²³³ See further Richard E. Averbeck, “ḥaṭṭaʾt,” NIDOTTE, 2:93–103; note also the comments of Jacob Milgrom on burnt offerings (with background from Hittite sources) cited by Robinson on the Jews for Jesus web site (above, n. 177).

²³⁴ Abraham Chill, The Minhagim (New York: Sepher-Hermon, 1979), 200–201. The first definite reference to this custom dates to the ninth century of this era. Interestingly, Maimonides doesn’t mention the custom at all in his law code, and four hundred years later, Joseph Karo spoke against the practice in his law code (Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim 605). However, the expanded commentary of Moses Isserles on the Shulhan Arukh—printed as part of the law code itself—actually praised the custom of kapparot, to the point that Karo’s negative comments were later removed from some editions of his own law code. The practice of kapparot was so widespread that it has continued to this day, being codified again in the early twentieth century in Yehi’el Mikhael Epstein’s Arukh Hashulhan (Orah Hayyim 605, expanded to six subdivisions). It is also fascinating to see how this blood sacrifice was replaced in some communities with an offering to charity, the price of the fowl substituting for the bird itself. Once again, tradition came up with a replacement for blood sacrifices. See Chill, Minhagim, 200–202.

²³⁵ See above, 3.10, for references to the mizbah kapparah, altar of atonement, in Rabbinic literature, along with the Talmudic expression ʿen kapparah ʿellaʾ baddam, “There is no atonement without the blood.”

²³⁶ Commenting on the NIV’s rendering here, R. Laird Harris offers the following useful comments: “The expression ‘to sin unintentionally’ (ḥaṭṭaʾ bishegagah) in 5:2 [of ch. 4] calls for some comment. The NIV reading may give the impression that there was no sacrifice for intentional sins. This would be a problem, for many of our sins are more or less intentional though not necessarily deliberate. The word shagag and its by form shagah and their cognates basically seem to mean ‘to err,’ ‘go astray,’ ‘wander,’ ‘stagger.’ The nouns mean ‘error,’ ‘mistake.’ Outside the Pentateuchal legislation, the NIV always translates these words with such expressions (about twenty five times). The idea of intent is not basic to the word and ought not to be imported.”

²³⁷ Milgrom, “Kipper,” EJ (CD ROM), 10:1039–44.

²³⁸ Harris, “Leviticus,” 547. He notes: “The sense of the verb shagag will be adequately caught if in all the verses concerned here in Leviticus 4–5, the phrase ‘sins unintentionally’ is rendered by ‘goes astray in sin’ or ‘does wrong’ or the like. In Numbers 15:22–29 the translation ‘wrong’ or ‘wrongly’ or ‘in error’ will better replace ‘unintentional’ or ‘unintentionally.’ Indeed, the NIV translates shegagah by ‘wrong’ in Numbers 15:25 (second instance) and in Leviticus 5:18. ‘Unintentional’ seems better to fit shagag and its cognates only in the manslaughter passages (Num. 35:11–22; Josh. 20:3–5), and even there ‘inadvertently’ or ‘by mistake’ would actually fit better.”

²³⁹ Milgrom, Numbers, 125.

²⁴⁰ Jacob Milgrom, “The Priestly Doctrine of Repentance,” Revue Biblique 82 (1975): 186–205.

²⁴¹ Milgrom, Leviticus, 373.

²⁴² For the danger of unintentional sins according to the Talmudic rabbis, see the quotes compiled by Robinson on the Jews for Jesus web site (above, n. 177).

Brown, M. L. (2000). Answering Jewish objections to Jesus, Volume 2: Theological objections (126). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books.