ContradictionsReading order 328Bible context 2 min read
What to do if you sin through ignorance?
The offerings differ, but the first two passages specify an office or offense that the third states more generally.
- Textual conflict
- Weak tension
- The alleged conflict needs substantial assumptions, such as treating an omission as a denial or figurative language as literal.
- Importance
- Major
- A major event or claim with wider implications.
Different sacrifices address a priest, sacred-property trespass, and a general inadvertent sin rather than clearly identical cases.
An editorial assessment of the quoted passages. Importance describes the stakes; it does not increase certainty. Reading order weighs both.
An anointed priest brings a bull for his sin
If the priest that is anointed do sin according to the sin of the people; then let him bring for his sin, which he hath sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the Lord for a sin offering. And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord; and shall lay his hand upon the bullock’s head, and kill the bullock before the Lord.
Leviticus 4:3-4
Translation / edition: King James Version (KJV)
Read the full chapter:Leviticus 4
An inadvertent offense against holy things requires a ram and restitution
If a soul commit a trespass, and sin through ignorance, in the holy things of the Lord; then he shall bring for his trespass unto the Lord a ram without blemish out of the flocks, with thy estimation by shekels of silver, after the shekel of the sanctuary, for a trespass offering: And he shall make amends for the harm that he hath done in the holy thing, and shall add the fifth part thereto, and give it unto the priest: and the priest shall make an atonement for him with the ram of the trespass offering, and it shall be forgiven him.