What Does Leviticus 7:1 Mean?
Likewise this is the instruction of the trespass offering. It is most set apart.
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
Likewise this is the law of the trespass offering: it is most holy.THE KEY
The offering for liability is itself called most set apart, placing the handling of wrong inside the sacred.
THE MEANING
This verse gives instruction for the guilt offering and marks it as most set apart. It places the concrete handling of liability within the sacred order of life now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the sacred concerns only inward devotion: here, the way guilt is addressed belongs among the most set-apart things.
THE ROOT
תּוֹרָה
torah instruction
GROWS FROM
ירה
y-r-h
To point or direct; by extension, to instruct or teach.
The verse opens with torah, instruction that directs how the offering is handled. Liability is not left vague: its response is taught and given a form.
ALSO GROWS
moreh: Teacher; one who directs or instructs.
מוֹרֶה
The shared root links instruction with a guide who points the way.
yoreh: He instructs or directs.
יוֹרֶה
This verb makes the root’s sense of guidance active: the instruction points toward a defined response.
אָשָׁם
ʾāshām guilt or
GROWS FROM
אשם
ʾ-sh-m
To incur guilt or be liable.
“trespass offering” in this verse is ʾāshām guilt or. The offering’s name shares its root with the state of being liable. The word holds together the wrong and the offering that addresses the resulting obligation, rather than reducing trespass to an inward feeling.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāshēm: Guilty or liable.
אָשֵׁם
This form names the condition the offering addresses.
ʾăshāmô: His guilt or liability.
אֲשָׁמוֹ
This form appears in Leviticus 5:16, where the liability is met through making amends.
קֹדֶשׁ קָדָשִׁים
qōdesh qādāshîm set
GROWS FROM
קדש
q-d-sh
To set apart as sacred.
“most holy” in this verse is qōdesh qādāshîm set. The Hebrew phrase intensifies the offering’s status: it is set apart among set-apart things. The verse marks the handling of liability as sacred, not ordinary business.
ALSO GROWS
qādōsh: Set apart; sacred.
קָדוֹשׁ
This adjective shares the root used to mark the offering’s status.
miqdāsh: Sanctuary; a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
The sanctuary is a place bearing the same root of sacred setting-apart.
THE PATTERN
When a wrong creates liability, the response names what is owed and gives repair a concrete form.
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.Then they speak their falling short into the open, which they have done; and he makes his crossing over whole, with its head, and adds to it a fifth of it, and gives it to the one against whom he crossed over.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 Hebrew word אָשָׁם (ʾāshām, guilt or liability offering) links this verse to the ram named in Leviticus 5:16. That verse makes the offering’s instruction concrete: liability is met by making amends and giving what is owed.
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