What Does Leviticus 5:1 Mean?
And if a living soul misses the mark, and hears the voice of an oath, and he is a witness, whether he has seen it or perceived it; if he does not speak it out, then he carries his crookedness.
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
And if a soul sin, and hear the voice of swearing, and is a witness, whether he hath seen or known of it; if he do not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity.THE KEY
The verse treats knowledge as something that can move outward: the witness who keeps it within ends up carrying the crookedness.
THE MEANING
When you hear the voice of an oath and stand as a witness through what you have seen or know, silence does not dissolve your part in the matter. What you know remains yours to declare, and withholding it leaves you bearing the crookedness named by the verse.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that silence makes what you know disappear from your responsibility.
THE ROOT
יָדָע
yādaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“perceived it” in this verse is yādaʿ. The verse does not limit testimony to what the eye sees; it explicitly includes what is known. This root also forms a verb meaning to make known, so the hidden hinge is whether knowledge moves outward into disclosure.
ALSO GROWS
yōdēaʿ: One who knows; a knower.
יֹדֵעַ
This participle from the same root names the person who holds the knowledge.
hōdīaʿ: To inform; to make known.
הוֹדִיעַ
This form carries the root’s knowing into disclosure, echoing the movement from private knowledge to spoken testimony.
תֶחֱטָא
teḥĕṭāʾ
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss, err, or incur fault.
“misses the mark” in this verse is teḥĕṭāʾ. This root connects missing or error with the term for a purification offering, holding breach and purification in one word family. Here the passage narrows the failure to the witness who does not speak what is known.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss, err, or do wrong.
חָטָא
It is the same root in a basic verbal form, naming the fault that opens the verse.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Missing or guilt; also a purification offering.
חַטָּאת
The same consonants connect the language of the breach with the offering associated with purification.
THE PATTERN
Knowledge that reaches a witness creates responsibility to bring it into the open.
But if the watchman sees the sword come, and does not blow the horn, and the people are not warned; if the sword comes and takes any living soul from among them, he is taken away in his crookedness; but his blood I will seek out from the watchman's hand.Open your mouth for the mute, in the judgment of all who pass away.For we cannot keep from speaking what we have perceived and heard.THE THREAD
If you say, "Look, we did not know this," does not the one who weighs hearts separate it out? Does not the one who guards your living soul know it? Will he not return to each man according to his deed?Proverbs uses the same root, יָדַע (yādaʿ, know), in the speaker’s claim, “we knew it not.” Its question exposes the same hinge as Leviticus: denial cannot remove knowledge from the one who bears it.
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