For the hundredth time

Today I am in Leviticus chapter five still, yet and again.

Like in most of these first seven chapters that I’ve been musing over for a number of months,

somewhere about the hundredth time I look at one of them, it makes sense.

Particularly if Scott or Mike have written and shed some light on the passage.

Chapter five is about trespass offerings, also called guilt offerings.

The first and fourth wrongdoing presented (5.1 and 5.4) have to do with the mouth,

what a person did or did not say (sometimes, “to keep my mouth shut” is not what God is looking for.).

The second and third (5.2-3) are a bit touchy,

they are about touching unclean dead animals, or human uncleanness.

God mentions that it doesn’t matter if the person was unaware of it, it still needs to be taken care of.*

Further along, starting in 5.14 there is no more mention of “unaware,”

but rather, God uses the term “unintentionally.”

I suppose there is a fine line between the unaware and unintentional,

although I am not sure I see it.

The class of sins spoken about here (5.14) are holy things, again,

and (5.17) “committing any of the things which are forbidden to be done by the commandments of the Lord.”

That’s a mouthful, and I think it covers a lot of ground.

Each and every one of these wrongdoings creates a need for atonement,

but for the latter two there needs to be restitution made before atonement can happen.

Question:

With the atonement Jesus gave us, was there restitution?

*Did you know it’s ok to hang a dangling participle at the end of a sentence?

If I had known, 57 years ago, that the rules would change,

I could have skipped 9th grade English class altogether.

(I don’t imagine my friend Roland agrees with the leaving things hanging,

he’s a stickler for things correct,

but it’s something he’ll just have to deal with.)