Once Again, the Expiatory Sacrifices

Once Again, the Expiatory SacrificesAuthor(s): Adrian SchenkerSource: Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 116, No. 4 (Winter, 1997), pp. 697-699Published by: The Society of Biblical LiteratureStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3266553 .

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JBL 116/4 (1997) 697-719

CRITICAL NOTES

ONCE AGAIN, THE EXPIATORY SACRIFICES

Jacob Milgrom, one of the great specialists on questions concerning the ritual of Leviticus and Numbers, has recently published a certain number of criticisms of posi- tions that I defend on the interpretation of expiatory sacrifices.' The following reactions to his criticisms will try to set aside, if possible, any misunderstanding that would hinder a clear view of what I hold.

The first point concerns the theme Mts in its different realizations (verb, nouns), which, in my view, contains the meaning "(to be) liable, responsible." Milgrom, we know, interprets it otherwise ("to have a bad conscience, to feel guilty") and raises this objection to my interpretation: "But how can a person be liable if neither he nor anyone else is aware of what he has done?"2 It seems to me, however, that in antiquity the con- viction was widespread that one had to account for all one's deeds, conscious or not (see Ps 19:13[12]). A good example would be Pharaoh in Gen 12:17-19 and Abimelech in Genesis 20 and 26 (see 20:10 and 26:10!). People had a fear of real but hidden guilt and the liability resulting from it. For tS the proof is found in 1 Sam 6:3, where affliction struck the city of Ashdod, which was unaware of the guilt it had contracted by bringing the ark of the Lord into the temple of Dagon in order to honor this god (1 Samuel 5). They did not expect to be held responsible for it by the God of Israel as a sacrilege. It is in the light of subsequent calamities that the Ashdodites became aware of having committed a grave fault that they had to repair by votive offerings called Dws. We conclude that in ancient Israel one could be "liable and responsible" for a fault of which one is not conscious because, conscious or not, the person who has offended God has to compen- sate for the offense. (Indeed, this "objective" obligation of compensation is precisely an important dimension of biblical thought on the subject of culpability.)

The second point concerns Lev 5:17-18, which I interpret precisely in the light of the responsibility one could have contracted without knowing it. For the text says this expressis verbis: "though he does (or did) not know it." But when the person learns that he is liable, bound by a responsibility, and must as a consequence repair and make restitution (as the inhabitants of Ashdod), he is then in a position to assume the responsibility and make restitution for what he has done. Milgrom regards this interpretation as purely hypothetical and replaces it with the explanation that the author of the deed suspects a culpability that he has perhaps contracted, but of which he is not sure. This is the classi-

1 Jacob Milgrom, "Further on the Expiatory Sacrifices,"JBL 115 (1996) 511-14. 2 Ibid., 511.

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Journal of Biblical Literature

cal rabbinic interpretation of the 'asham talay. But this explanation seems to me even more hypothetical than mine, for where does the text speak of his suspecting some-

thing? My hypothesis, by contrast, is based on two arguments that are found in the texts

themselves: first, in 1 Samuel there is a clear parallel of such an =t, that is, of a culpability at first unknown, then discovered, and finally set right and rectified by a gift called CD?w. On the other side, no clear parallel exists of a suspected Otir in the Bible, so far as I know. My second argument addresses the tautology that Milgrom must postulate in Lev 5:17 between Djnl and lV 31t:1, whereas in my interpretation each one of the two ele- ments has its specific meaning, the first phrase meaning the guilt contracted (for exam-

ple, the sacrilege committed in regard to the ark at Ashdod in the temple of Dagon), and the second phrase meaning the negative consequences that are necessarily going to result from it in the absence of any restitution (the plagues of Ashdod). Now the ritual texts are very precisely worded and normally avoid redundancy or tautological expres- sions. (Besides, it is easy to understand why rabbinic exegesis no longer accepted the idea of guilt for an offense of which one is unaware, for such an idea seemed archaic in the more modem or enlightened context of the Hellenistic-Roman era. That is, it ran counter to a notion of guilt and responsibility that seems to imply free will and a conscious moral decision or choice. This is how we can perhaps explain the rabbinic search for another solution to the problem posed by Lev 5:17-19.)

Third, I gladly accept that the expression ': 'im opens a protasis. That is how I

interpreted it myself in my study on the 'asham sacrifice,3 where I translated the protasis by a main clause and the apodosis by another main clause, in order to break up the

long and complicated proposition Lev 5:1-5 (and the following verses). If one reads my translation carefully, one will readily perceive that my parataxis of the two main clauses serves quite well as the semantic equivalent of a hypotaxis made up of a protasis and an

apodosis. Fourth and finally, leaving aside other points that would require a lengthy treat-

ment to be persuasive, I would like to take a stand with regard to the distinction between intentional sins without malice and intentional sins with malice, which I introduced and which Milgrom energetically rejects.4 We should certainly grant that Lev 5:1-4 does not

speak of sins committed by inadvertence, and Milgrom is forced to recognize this ("a clear indication that they [i.e., the acts mentioned in Lev 5:1-4] include the possibility of

intentionally committed acts"). But apart from w. 2-3, one should go beyond the "possibility." Not to bear witness and not to fulfill an oath can only be voluntary (under the cir- cumstances described in this passage). The question then arises: What is the difference between the fault with the oaths of v. 4 and those of w. 20-26 (Eng. 6:1-7)? Milgrom answers: Verse 4 deals with an unkept or an imposed oath; w. 20-26 deal with perjury. Yes, certainly for w. 20-26 I never suggested otherwise. But where do we read in the text of v. 4 that it is dealing with an oath that has not been kept or has been imposed by force?

But we should not too readily accuse one another of eisegesis. The same phenom-

3 A. Schenker, "Die Anlasse zum Schuldopfer Ascham," in Studien zu Opfer und Kult im Alten Testament (ed. A. Schenker; Tiibingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1992) 49.

4 Milgrom, "Further on the Expiatory Sacrifices," 512-13.

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Critical Notes

ena of concise expression just mentioned sometimes mean that we cannot understand the ritual texts of Leviticus without making explicit what is only implicit in them. The hard part is to discern what is really implied in a given text. A criterion for this process of discernment is the coherence of the text and the consistency of the terminology employed.

I would here like to draw attention to the difference in formulation between Lev 5:1 and 5:21. In v. 21 the act is qualified using a verbal form of tn, "the person sins," along with the expression 5b nrQi~, "and commits a sacrilege," whereas in v. 1 only stn (sin) is mentioned. The quality of the sin is thus different in the two cases. In what does this difference consist? The sin in w. 21-24 is a perjury and an injustice done to a neighbor. In w. 1-4 the text does not mention either perjury or injustice; the sins are thus less serious for that very reason. But they are voluntary in w. 1 and 4, as Milgrom himself concedes, at least as a possibility. This is why we must conclude that there are two different intentionalities, one leading to a sacrilege, :~r (vv. 20-26), the other only to a sin, stn (w. 1-4). The first intentionality is evil since it wills the perjury and the injustice, which implies malice. The second is not evil since it neither wants to lie (Milgrom concedes this for v. 4) nor to commit injustice (otherwise this would have been explicitly stated as in w. 20-26). The expression n',7 (v. 4) does not argue against this interpretation, because it does not mean "for evil purpose" as Milgrom translates (p. 513), but rather "unfortunately." This is clearly shown by Saul's oaths, which he had sworn not "for evil purpose" (1 Sam 14:24, 39), but "unfortunately" for him, for his army, and for his son. There was no malice in those oaths, but they were unfortunate oaths. By the way, the nonfulfillment of these oaths had to be compensated (v. 45), in line with what Lev 5:4 ff. prescribes. We thus see clearly the distinction between an intention with malice and an intention without malice, which would result in a responsibility (since it is a "sin") for both of them, entailing the obligation to make restitution, but differently in each case.

The Bible knows analogies elsewhere. It distinguishes a malicious will from a will without malice, which cannot perform an act it should. In the latter case it must com- pensate for what it could not do. For example, the second Passover of Num 9:6-14, where persons objectively prevented, without bad will on their part, from celebrating Passover must celebrate it later on, while the person who did not celebrate it due to malice would be excluded from the community (v. 13). We can clearly see here the distinction between two intentions, one with malice (omitting through contempt the celebration of Passover), and the other without malice (obliged to omit this celebration due to an impurity incurred). The two omissions are voluntary, the first through evil will, the second through the will to obey a divine commandment requiring purity for the Passover celebration. In the case of the intention without malice one must nevertheless make up for the omitted celebration. According to this analogy, the person envisaged in Lev 5:1-4 omitted without malice acts he would normally have to do; that is why he must make them up by compensatory offerings, just as those who, without malice, failed to keep the Passover must "make it up" by the second Passover.

Adrian Schenker OP University of Fribourg, CH-1700 Fribourg, Switzerland

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Once Again, the Expiatory Sacrifices