The Guilt Offering (Asham)

Sacrifices & Feasts of the Old Testament collection. The reparation offering. The most directly Christological of the five.

Requirements

• A ram, without blemish, from the flock. Or a male lamb in some cases (Lev 14:12; Num 6:12).
• No other animal permitted. This means there is no graded provision for the poor, unlike the purification offering. That may itself be a signal about the nature of the offence.
• Two elements unique to this sacrifice:

Two features stand out in the latter: on the one hand, it is the only sacrifice of which an appraisal is made; on the other hand, it is the only one to which a sum of money must be added.

• Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology

• Valuation - "valued in silver shekels, according to the shekel of the sanctuary."
• Restitution + a fifth. Full value of what was violated, plus 20%. To the wronged person where the wrong was against a neighbour; to the priest where it was against the sanctuary (5:16; 6:5).

When It Was Required

• Unintentional misuse of holy things (5:14-16). Treating something dedicated to God as ordinary - eating holy food, using consecrated property.
• Suspected but unidentified sacrilege (5:17-19). Person suspects a violation but can't identify it. No restitution possible because the item is unknown but the offering is still brought.
  • This addresses an uneasy conscience with no diagnosable cause.
• Fraud + false oath (6:1-7). Deposit, pledge, robbery, oppression, or a found item denied, then swearing falsely about it. This is the most serious form.
• Three cases outside Lev 5-6: cleansing of skin disease (Lev 14:12-28), relations with a betrothed slave woman (Lev 19:20-22), Nazirite vow defiled by corpse contact (Num 6:12).
  • Osborne's observation - all involve defiling something sacred, whether another's property, one's own body, or a vow to the Lord.

The Rite - One Diagnostic Difference

• Procedurally close to the purification offering. Most holy (7:1). Slaughtered north of the burnt offering altar. Fat burned. Meat eaten by priests in a holy place (7:2-6).
• The difference is the blood. Purification offering blood was daubed on the horns with a finger. Reparation offering blood was thrown against the altar round about (7:2).
• The "on the altar" language matches the ransom language of Lev 17:11, suggesting atonement here focuses more on ransom than purification.
• The whole distinction: chattat blood cleans. Asham blood pays.

Breach of Covenant Loyalty

Whereas the purification offering focuses on sin as that which defiles (therefore requiring purification), the reparation offering focuses on sin as that which betrays covenant loyalty (therefore requiring reparation).

• Jay Sklar, Leviticus (TOTC)

• Hebrew in 5:15 = ma'al, an act of unfaithfulness, used of treachery against a covenant partner.
• To disrespect someone's property is to disrespect the person. Anyone whose things have been treated carelessly knows this without being told.
• In the ANE a breach of covenant loyalty could be atoned by acknowledging the wrong and paying a penalty, functioning as a mitigated ransom in place of the penalty deserved (as in 2 Kgs 18:7, 13-14). The reparation offering is that payment.

How the Two Offerings Divide the Work

• Historical proposals, all of which fail on close reading (Osborne):
  • Josephus - sin offering for sins of ignorance, guilt offering for intentional sins with no witness.
  • Origen - sin offering for mortal sins, guilt offering for venial.
  • Augustine - sin offering for intentional, guilt offering for unintentional.
• Modern consensus: sin offering dealt with contamination of the tabernacle, guilt offering with desecration or trespass against holy things.
• Waltke, from Milgrom via Averbeck - anchored in the priestly job description of Lev 10:10 (distinguish holy/common and pure/impure):
  • Asham made atonement for desecration - changing the status of a person or thing from holy to common.
  • Chattat made atonement for contamination - changing condition from pure to impure.
  • Cleanest formulation available: the guilt offering reconsecrates. The sin offering purifies.

What Sin Withholds

Every sin offers to God what ought not to be offered, an offence, and at the same time it withholds from God what ought to have been given to Him, obedience. If the sin-offering rectifies the former, the trespass-offering would then make restitution for the latter.

• Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology

• Sin has two directions. Puts something in that shouldn't be there; takes something out that should have been.
• Not every sin offering had a trespass offering attached. The reparation offering was required only where an actual property value had not been paid, so "the material substance in a limited sphere was thus made to symbolize the spiritual in the general sphere of sin."

Repentance

• The fraud case (Lev 6:1-7). Two sins at once: unfaithful to the Lord by using His name in a false oath, unfaithful to a covenant brother through fraud.
• Same two-step repentance required in both directions. Full acknowledgement to the offended party, then payment of an appropriate penalty.

Israelites learned by this that their sin against others must not only be confessed to the Lord, but also to those they had wronged. Jesus emphasizes the same (Matt. 5:23-24)… True repentance goes beyond saying, 'I'm sorry'; it extends to correcting the wrong as fully as possible (cf. Luke 19:8-9).

• Jay Sklar, Leviticus (TOTC)

• Zacchaeus knew the tariff. "If I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold" - well beyond the statutory 20%. And Jesus' response, "today salvation has come to this house," is a verdict on the repentance, not a purchase of it.

New Testament Fulfilment - the OT Applies It Itself

• Isa 53:10. "When his soul makes an offering for guilt" - the word is asham, the technical term.

The Hebrew word 'ašam underlying this phrase unmistakeably refers to the 'guilt offering' described in Leviticus 5-7 as an atoning sacrifice for sin (Lev. 5:16, 18; 7:7). By using the same word here Isaiah plainly intends to ascribe the same significance to the suffering Servant.

• Jeffery, Ovey & Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions

• Why the asham in particular fits:

The trespass-offering derives a unique interest from the fact that it is the only class of sacrifice with which the sacrificial death of Christ is directly connected in the Old Testament… this is quite in harmony with the idea, prevailing in the context, that the Servant not merely atones for the sins of the people, but gives to God what by their disobedience they have withheld.

• Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology

• If sin both offends and withholds, the Servant's work has to do both: bear the penalty for the offence, and render the obedience that was owed and never given.
  • That's the two halves of Christ's work - passive and active obedience.

The Objection + Why It Fails

• Whybray: this makes Isa 53:10 unique - "Nowhere else in the OT is it stated that a man's life can be a guilt-offering, whether in a literal or a metaphorical sense."
• Answer: uniqueness is the point, not a problem. Isaiah himself recognises the uniqueness of what he's describing. Taken to its conclusion the objection would also mean "the Lamb of God" couldn't be a person, which the NT writers evidently didn't think (John 1:29, 36; Rom 3:25; 8:3; Heb 9:26; 10:1-18; 1 John 2:2; 4:10).
• Their verdict, quoting David Peterson: those who deny penal substitution in this chapter "appear to be guilty of special pleading."

The Unpaid Restitution

• The offering required you to pay back what you'd taken, in full, plus a fifth. For most sins that was possible - return the deposit, restore the field, replace the animal.
• But the offering existed precisely because some debts couldn't be settled that way - hence Lev 5:17-19, where you can't even identify what you owe.
• Every human being is in that position with God. The obedience withheld across a lifetime can't be back-paid, because the years it was owed in are gone.
• What the asham teaches: this is a debt. Debts have to be settled by someone. Isaiah 53 says who.