What Does Leviticus 6:6 Mean in the King James?
And he shall bring his trespass offering unto the LORD, a ram without blemish out of the flock, with thy estimation, for a trespass offering, unto the priest:
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Guilt here is not an invisible feeling: it is named as liability, measured in value, and carried whole before the LORD.
THE MEANING
The verse gives guilt a tangible shape: a sound ram is valued and brought before the LORD through the priest. What is wrong does not stay a private feeling; it enters a measured process of responsibility.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that wrongdoing is only an inward feeling, with no weight that can be measured or brought into the open.
THE ROOT
אָשָׁם
ʾāšām
GROWS FROM
אשם
To incur guilt or liability; the noun can name both the guilt and the reparation offering associated with it.
“trespass offering” in this verse is ʾāšām. The offering carries the same name as the liability it answers. English can make guilt sound like an inward state, while this root joins it to a tangible response.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāšēm: One who bears guilt or liability.
אָשֵׁם
The offering answers an actual liability, not merely a feeling of regret.
ʾāšām: The offering associated with bearing or answering guilt.
אָשָׁם
The shared word keeps responsibility and its material answer joined together.
תָּמִים
tāmîm
GROWS FROM
תמם
To be complete, whole, or sound.
“Without blemish” carries the sense of something whole and sound. The valued offering is not an abstract token: its assessed worth belongs to something intact.
ALSO GROWS
tāmam: To become complete or reach wholeness.
תָּמַם
It shows the root sense beneath the ram’s required soundness.
tōm: Wholeness or integrity.
תֹּם
This branch echoes the verse’s emphasis on the offering’s intact condition.
THE PATTERN
When harm creates a liability, responsibility takes a concrete measure that answers what was lost.
If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it; he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.If the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die.And Zacchæus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.THE THREAD
And he 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: and the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering, and it shall be forgiven him.The same אָשָׁם (ʾāšām, guilt or reparation offering) appears alongside explicit amends and an added fifth. It opens the valuation in this verse as part of a larger movement: liability becomes tangible, then is brought to the priest.
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