Leviticus 4-7

Remember, there's five total offerings.

We've covered three in chapters one through three.

Here we get two more.

And the first one, as I said, is traditionally called sin offerings, but I'm gonna recommend we call it the purification offerings.

I'll explain why here in a second.

These offerings, the purification offerings, go from chapter 4:1 through 5:13.

And these purification offerings are how atonement could be made for inadvertent sins, unintentional sins.

And we'll learn later in Leviticus, it's also how, uh, atonement, cleansing could be made for major ritual impurities.

Uh, and so why a broader term like purification offering rather than sin offering? Well, it's because of that last thing I just noted.

As I said, we'll see later in Leviticus that major ritual impurities like having a skin disease or even like childbirth, those kinds of major ritual impurities aren't sins, but they require this kind of offering.

In fact, when we read about those major ritual impurities, it never says their sins will be forgiven like it does here in chapters four and five.

Instead, what it says there in those sections about major ritual impurities, they will be cleansed.

So you're offering this same offering, but it has sort of like two different emphases depending on the situation.

In the cases of inadvertent sins, it makes atonement for their sin and their sins are forgiven.

In the case of major ritual impurities, it makes atonement for their impurity and they are cleansed but not forgiven.

And that's why I think a broader term like purification offering works better than just sin offering because sin offering is too narrow and limits it to only one of the two situations where this offering is needed.

Now in this section, chapter 4:1 through 5:13, there's a lot of detail and a lot of repetition about how to, uh, do a purification offering.

So what I wanna do here is I'm just gonna read you a sample, uh, to make it clear how this offering is performed.