What Does Leviticus 5:9 Mean?
And he sprinkles some of the blood of the offering for falling short upon the side of the altar; and the rest of the blood is squeezed out at the foundation of the altar. It is an offering for it.
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 he shall sprinkle of the blood of the sin offering upon the side of the altar; and the rest of the blood shall be wrung out at the bottom of the altar: it is a sin offering.THE KEY
The Hebrew name for the “sin offering” grows from the root for missing, so the offering carries the very condition it addresses in its name.
THE MEANING
The verse gives the act a precise shape: some blood touches the altar’s side, and the rest drains at its base. The Hebrew name חַטָּאת (chatta’t, “sin offering”) carries the root sense of missing or going wrong, keeping that sense within the name of the rite.
THE ROOT
חַטָּאת
chatta’t
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
To miss or go wrong.
“offering for falling short” in this verse is chatta’t. The offering’s name grows from the root for missing or going wrong, so the rite’s word carries the condition it addresses. The English phrase “sin offering” separates two ideas that Hebrew gathers into one form, חַטָּאת.
ALSO GROWS
chata: To miss or do wrong.
חָטָא
This verb shows the root’s basic sense: the offering is named from the same seed as the act of missing.
chet: Missing, offense.
חֵטְא
This noun names the missing itself, connecting the offering’s name to the condition at the center of the rite.
chatta’t: Sin; in ritual contexts, a sin offering.
חַטָּאת
The same form can name both the missing and the offering, holding the act and its ritual response together.
THE PATTERN
Blood makes covenant and purification visible through concrete placement and contact.
And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has cut with you concerning all these words.And the priest sets some of the blood upon the horns of the altar of smoke before the LORD, which is in the tent of meeting, and pours out all the blood of the young bull at the foundation of the altar of the rising offering, which is at the opening of the tent of meeting.And nearly all things are cleansed in blood according to the instruction, and without the pouring out of blood, no release comes.THE THREAD
For I perceive my rebellions, and my falling short stands facing me always.The Hebrew חַטָּאתִי (ḥaṭṭāʾtî, “my sin”) comes from חטא, the same root embedded in חַטָּאת (“sin offering”) here. The shared root connects the altar rite to the missing itself, which the psalm names as ever before the speaker.
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