What Does Leviticus 4:14 Mean?
When the falling short in which they have missed the mark is perceived, the assembly brings near a young bull as an offering for falling short, and brings it before the tent of meeting.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
When the sin, which they have sinned against it, is known, then the congregation shall offer a young bullock for the sin, and bring him before the tabernacle of the congregation.THE KEY
The same Hebrew word names both the congregation’s missing and the offering it brings, holding failure and response in one root.
THE MEANING
When the congregation’s missing becomes known, the whole assembly brings a young bullock before the meeting tent. Recognition receives a concrete, communal response: the offering belongs to the congregation, not only to the person who notices the failure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A community’s failure belongs only to the person who first discovers it.
THE ROOT
חַטָּאת
ḥaṭṭāʾt
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥāṭāʾ
To miss, err, or go wrong.
“falling short” in this verse is ḥaṭṭāʾt. The Hebrew noun חַטָּאת appears for what the congregation has done and again in the phrase describing what the bull is offered for. Context lets this same word name both the missing and an offering for the missing, linguistically joining the failure to its communal response.
ALSO GROWS
chata: To miss, err, or sin.
חָטָא
This verb names the act beneath the noun in the verse: the congregation has missed the mark.
chattat: Missing; an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The verse uses this word for both the known failure and the offering brought in response.
נוֹדְעָה
noda'ah
GROWS FROM
ידע
yādaʿ
To know or perceive; in this form, to become known.
“perceived” in this verse is noda'ah. The verse turns on the moment the missing becomes known to the congregation. The same root names knowing and knowledge, making recognition the hinge between a hidden failure and a shared response.
ALSO GROWS
yada: To know or perceive.
יָדַע
The verse uses this root in a form that says the congregation’s missing comes to be known.
da'at: Knowledge or understanding.
דַּעַת
This related noun names the knowledge reached when what was hidden becomes recognized.
THE PATTERN
When shared failure comes into view, scripture treats it as the community’s matter and gives it a communal response.
Then it shall be, if anything is done in straying, hidden from the eyes of the assembly, that all the assembly shall offer one young bull as a rising offering, for a scent that settles to the LORD, with his gift and his poured offering, according to the judgment, and one young goat as an offering for falling short.Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For even the Anointed One, our Passover, was slaughtered for us.Speak your stumbles into the open to one another, and pray over one another, that you may be made whole. The asking of an aligned one, working within, is very strong.THE THREAD
And if the whole assembly of Israel misses the mark through straying, and the word is hidden from the eyes of the assembly, and they do against one of the commandments of the LORD, concerning the things which ought not to be done, and they are guilty;The preceding verse describes the congregation’s missing as hidden from its own eyes; this verse begins when that missing becomes known. Both forms grow from חטא (ḥāṭāʾ), linking the unseen act to the recognized one the congregation now brings into view.
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