What Does Leviticus 5:19 Mean?
It is a guilt offering. He is surely guilty before the LORD.
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
It is a trespass offering: he hath certainly trespassed against the LORD.THE KEY
The Hebrew names both the offering and the offense with the same root, then repeats the verb for emphasis: the offering does not hide the guilt it names.
THE MEANING
This verse puts wrongdoing in clear view: this is a guilt offering, and the offense is truly against the LORD. The word-family holds the liability and the offering together, naming the response without softening what it addresses.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that renaming wrongdoing as a harmless mistake makes it cease to be a real liability before God.
THE ROOT
אָשָׁם
ʾāšām
GROWS FROM
אשם
ʾ-sh-m
To be guilty; to incur liability.
The noun for the guilt offering and the emphatic verb translated “hath certainly trespassed” share אשם (ʾ-sh-m), meaning to incur guilt or liability. The offering bears the same name as the liability it addresses, while the repeated verb makes the charge unmistakable.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāshēm: Guilty; liable.
אָשֵׁם
This form names the state of bearing liability, making the verse’s word-family describe more than a single act.
ʾashmāh: Guilt; culpability.
אַשְׁמָה
This related noun names the condition itself, showing how the same root can speak of both guilt and the offering associated with it.
THE PATTERN
The text names liability plainly and places a response beside it.
Likewise this is the instruction of the trespass offering. It is most set apart.Yet the LORD delighted to crush him, and to sicken him. When you make his living soul a guilt offering, he shall see his seed, and lengthen his days, and the delight of the LORD shall break through in his hand.If we speak our shortcomings into the open, he is steady and aligned, to release our shortcomings, and to cleanse us from all crookedness.THE THREAD
Yet the LORD delighted to crush him, and to sicken him. When you make his living soul a guilt offering, he shall see his seed, and lengthen his days, and the delight of the LORD shall break through in his hand.Isaiah uses אָשָׁם (ʾāshām), meaning a guilt offering, the same word that names the offering in this verse. That shared root makes “offering for sin” more specific: the offering carries the name of the guilt it addresses.
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