The Guilt Offering אשם-Asham

The LORD said to Moses: “When anyone is unfaithful to the LORD by sinning unintentionally in regard to any of the LORD’s holy things, they are to bring to the LORD as a penalty a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value in silver, according to the sanctuary shekel. It is a guilt offering.-Leviticus 5:15

Today we are going to discuss the guilt offering which in Hebrew is referred to as asham. Thus far, the sacrifices discussed do not deal with the paying of a penalty or making reparations for specific sins committed. The Olah, Minchah and Zevah were all about atoning for our inherent sin nature and the hata’at was about purifying us from the negative effects of our sins. Now, in, Leviticus Chapter 5, we are finally introduced to a sacrificial offering that allows us to make reparations for our wrongdoings.

Now I know you are going to think I’m splitting hairs here but an important distinction has to be made between “paying a penalty” and “making reparations”. Although at first glance they appear to be the same thing, biblically speaking they are different. For example, let’s say you decide to light up a cigarette in a no-smoking hotel room where the penalty for smoking is $100 if caught. After finishing your cigarette you decide to just flick the charred butt on the carpeted floor. What happens next is that a fire results causing significant damage to the carpet and the furniture in the room. After the fire is put out and the hotel management assesses the damages, you are presented the following bill:

Penalty for breaking the No-smoking Policy: $100
Reparation for damaged carpet and furniture: $1000
TOTAL= $1,100

The “guilt offering” or “asham” represents the reparations portion of your bill. Now the Scripture states that this sacrifice is to be offered when one has sinned with regards to any of the L-rd’s holy things. Now what in the heck does that mean? Well, to tell you the truth, even the rabbis of old have struggled with this one. However, the first clarifying point that needs to be made is that this is dealing with direct affronts against G-d as opposed to direct affronts against one’s fellow man. Affronts against G-d are considered to be more offensive than affronts against man. Here are some examples that the rabbis came up with for when this particular sacrifice had to be offered.

1) Eating food designated only for priests.
2) Failing to fulfill a vow made using G-d’s holy name.
3) A priest eating sacrificed food in his home that should have been eaten inside the outer court tabernacle area.
4) Failing to pay a required tithe.

And on and on and on. Furthermore, the verses Leviticus 5: 14-19 also appear to divide offenses requiring this sacrifice into those sins that we were aware of at the time we committed them and those we weren’t aware of when we committed them. For those we were aware of, the offender is to bring the required lamb and in addition pay 1/5 the value of the lamb in minted shekel coins. The lamb offered had to be of the proper value. If one was unaware that he or she had sinned, then just the lamb of proper value alone would suffice.

Now let’s look at Leviticus 5:17 concerning this sacrifice.

If anyone sins and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD’s commands, even though they do not know it, they are guilty and will be held responsible.

I need to explain this idea of what exactly the Bible means here when it states that the offender was unaware. What this is referring to are those times when you are feeling guilty for a sin committed but you are not exactly sure what it was. So sometimes the asham was offered to appease one’s feelings of guilt. One wasn’t 100% sure whether he or she had committed a sin or not but just to be on the safe side, the asham was offered.

In closing, it should be stressed that it was also important that the offender have a contrite and repentant heart or the sacrifice was of no effect. One couldn’t just adopt the attitude that it was okay to be careless with the things of the L-rd because all he had to do was offer the asham sacrifice and all would be well. The same NT Principle of the necessity of a repentant heart applies with equal force and validity in the OT.

Dear L-rd, please accept our asham offerings via Yeshua’s sacrifice for all of our offenses against you known and unknown.

Amen.