What Does Leviticus 6:6 Mean?
And he shall bring near to the LORD his guilt offering, a whole ram from the flock, by the worth you set in order, as a guilt offering, to the priest.
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 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 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.
“guilt 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 slaughter it, or sell it; he shall make whole five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.If the wicked man turns back the pledge, repays what he had torn away, walks in the statutes of life, and does no crookedness; he shall surely live, he shall not die.And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Look, Lord, I give half of what I have to the emptied, and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I give back fourfold."THE THREAD
And he makes whole what he has missed from the set-apart thing, and adds its fifth upon it, and gives it to the priest; and the priest makes a covering for him with the ram of the guilt offering, and it is released to 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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