והוא ידע ואשם, “it came to his attention some time after the event so that he now had become guilty;” according to Rashi he had known, but had forgotten that this contact had made him ritually impure, so that he considered himself ritually pure. According to Rashi, how could he have become guilty since he had not been warned that he had committed something that results in his becoming impure?

לאחת מאלה, “be guilty concerning one of these things.” Concerning this Rashi asks what the Torah means to tell us with these words? (Actually on verse 13, where the same expression occurs, not on this verse) he answers that the three different sins all involving oaths that are being mentioned here are being treated equally. He answers that I could have thought that the type of offering demanded would be determined by the relative severity of the sin, whereas theTorah reveals that it is determined by the economic status of the sinner concerned. For example: if the person concerned had by mistake eaten part of an offering, he basically has to atone for this by offering a sheep or female goat. If he had committed a less serious sin, by failing to testify to something he had been a witness of, he has to bring a bird offering. If his inadvertent sin consisted of swearing an oath concerning what he would or would not do, and had forgotten that he had expressed this by words that made it an oath, he will bring a meal offering as atonement consisting of about two kilos of flour.

והביא את אשמו, “he shall bring as his guilt offering, etc;” this offering does not have to be accompanied by a libation, but it does require that the person bringing it places his weight through his hands upon it (when confessing his guilt). (Sifra)

ואם לא תגיע ידו, “if he is financially unable, etc.” the Torah does not demand that he must borrow money in order to be able to atone for his unintentional sin, and it does not require that he use the products of his special skill and bring this as an offering. But if he owns a lamb, which is what is basically required of him as an offering, but he does not have money to cover his basic expenses, he does have to bring this lamb as his offering. The sages derive this rule from the Torah having written: די שה. (Sifra on that verse)

אחד לחטאת ואחד לעולה, “one of which (the two birds) as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering.” Only the blood of a bird offering that is a sin offering is brought to the altar, so that the altar has something that can be “eaten.” When a wealthy person has to bring a sin offering, the Torah is satisfied with either a female sheep or goat, seeing that there is enough meat on these animals to provide a meal for the officiating priest, and the entrails provide the ”meal” for the altar.

והקריב את אשר לחטאת ראשונה, “he (the priest) is to present the offering serving as the sin offering, first;” the verse does not discuss what is offered first on the altar, but what is slaughtered (pinched) first. Any left over blood will be squeezed out on the altar.

ולא יבדיל, “he must not sever the head (of the bird) completely. Only one of the vital conduits of the bird, either the one for breathing, or the one for leading to the stomach needs to be pinched.

והנשאר בדם ימצה, “and the remainder of the blood shall be drained out;” the priest walks around the side of the altar and squeezes the bird against the wall of the altar so that the blood drains by itself. The word ימצה is spelled here with the letter א at the end to suggest that the blood ends up the same way as does the blood which had been sprinkled, namely at the base of the altar.[I have not in any of the editions of the chumash or training Torah scrolls at my disposal. According to one commentary I have seen the author had the same spelling in front of him as do we, but he means that the vowel tzeyre instead of the vowel segol the result is that the meaning is as if the letter ה had been written instead of the letter א. Ed.]

One tenth of an ephah. A commandment performed at its proper time is more welcome to the Lord than at a later time, i.e. the sinner having expected some substantial money coming his way and therefore preferring to wait with the sin offering until he can present an animal of greater worth. The same rule applies to the poor person who, although not even having sinned, promises his own worth as a donation to G-d. It is preferable that he donates one sela (or whatever the Kohen determines he can afford) rather than wait until he becomes rich and give 50 shekalim. (See Leviticus 27.2-8)

כי חטאת היא, “for it really should have had the rules pertaining to a sin offering, requiring libations so that the sinner would not emerge as having actually profited. The reason why the Torah decided to forego this requirement is so that the sinner would not be able to boast about what kind of costly sacrifice he had brought in order to atone for what was, after all, only an inadvertent sin. In the case of someone who offers a sin offering after having been healed from the affliction of tzoraat, since [at least according to the written text of the Torah, Ed.] he had not been afflicted for a specific sin that he had been guilty of, and since this offering is required only in order to enable the person offering it to be able to eat of sacrificial meat when the occasion arises, this offering requires libations, as our sages have stated in the Talmud tractate Sotah folio 36.

והיתה לכהן כמנחה, “and it (the remnant) will belong to the priests, just as a giftoffering. All male priests are allowed to partake of it within the sacred precincts of the Temple only.

איל תמים, “an unblemished ram, according to Rashi, a two year old ram, fully mature.

אשם, אשם, “a guilt offering, he is guilty;” according to Rashi, he has to bring the offering decreed for having sexual relations with a Canaanite servant woman who has not yet completed the procedure for becoming free; This offering consists of a two year old ram. This is clear, as only after having attained that age is this animal referred to as איל. We might have asked what special “power” does a 2 year old ram possess to have been selected by the Torah as atonement for the sin of treating Temple treasury money as if it were secular money? At that age this animal is valued at two shekels. This is why the Torah repeats the word אשם. We might have thought that a sheep, כבש בן שנתו, one year old, such as is required from someone healed from the affliction of tzoraat, would have sufficed. This is to teach us that this is not so, the Torah emphasized: אשם, he is guilty, as opposed to a person afflicted with tzoraat concerning whom no specific guilt has been spelled out. As to the question of how we could have made such a mistake seeing that in the case of the sin offering for a Nazarene or a person afflicted with tzoraat, the Torah had spelled out the word כבש, which if not stated otherwise, is a one year old sheep?This is why we need to correct the wording in Rashi, and add the words “worth two shekels,” an expression not used in the Torah accept in connection with the atonement offering or people guilty of abusing money belonging to the Temple treasury, i.e. the sin of מעילה(Compare Torat Kohanim on Leviticus 19,11, where this has been spelled out already.)

ישבע עליו לשקר ושלם, “about which he has sworn falsely,” the Torah here tells us of the penalty for this sin, but where did the warning not to commit this sin which we expect, appear? Answer: compare Leviticus 19,11: לא תשקרו, “do not lie!”

ושלם אותו בראשו, “he shall repay the victim in full;” he does not have to pay twice the full amount, as in the case of a thief who has stolen tangible chattels. Neither does he have to repay the victim four or five times the value as in the case of a thief who has stolen an ox or a sheep (see Exodus 21.37). An alternate explanation of this verse: “he has to repay the stolen object, and in the event that the stolen goods have already passed to other hands so that we cannot determine its value, his sin offering would not be acceptable.

וחמשיתיו, “plus twice an additional 25%, i.e. 20% when counted after adding the full amount of the fine, if he had only owned up to his sin after witnesses have testified to his being guiltyIf he admitted his guilt without our having independent proof of it, it suffices if he adds 25% to the value of the goods in question.י

יתננו ביום אשמתו, “the robber has to make restitution on the day when he had admitted his guilt, in order for his guilt offering to become acceptable to the Lord.

או מכל אשר ישבע עליו לשקר, “or from anything concerning which he had sworn falsely;” this additional detail is meant to include תשומת יד, intangibles, such as pledges or loans which no longer can be collected from the sinner. It also includes false oaths as witness, or intangible damage caused by a non priest entering sacred precincts, which did not cause measurable damage to the Temple. In some of these examples the sinner did not enjoy a tangible or even intangible profit from having committed this sin. In such instances the Torah took this fact into consideration when assessing the penalty to be applied. This is why financially hard up people, guilty of either of these sins may attain atonement by low cost offerings, depending on how hard up they are. The reason the sages have tagged these sacrifices with the expression: עולה ויורד, “ascending or descending,” is that if a poor man delayed bringing the inexpensive offering he was entitled to due to his economic status, and he became wealthy in the interval, he cannot plead poverty as a reason for offering the low priced offering. On the other hand, if the sinner before having a chance to offer the higher priced offering became impoverished, G-d will accept the offering of a pair of birds instead of a sheep or goat, or in extreme cases even a meal offering. If someone ate (inadvertently, of course) forbidden fat from a sacrifice, or he ate any kind of blood, or he ate on the Day of Atonement, or he performed biblically prohibited kind of work on the Sabbath, or he indulged in sexual intercourse forbidden under the heading of “incest,” all sins from which he derived physical pleasure, he must bring the standard type of sacrifice prescribed by the Torah. Someone who ate from sacrificial meat that he was not entitled to eat from has actually enjoyed a dual benefit from his sin, so that he must bring a sin offering worth two shekels. Similarly, if he swore falsely not to have stolen what he has been accused of. If he is guilty of what is called: “a guilt offering valid while we are in doubt if he had committed a sin,” he first has to offer a sacrifice worth two shekels, and if it is eventually determined that he had indeed been guilty of having committed that sin, he offers an additional sacrifice worth one shekel. Although at first glance we may be puzzled by this, the reason is that the only reason why he had not known that he had indeed committed the sin in question, is because he chose to give himself the benefit of the doubt. Next time, hopefully, he will be more careful not to develop such a doubt.

לאשמה בה, “to become guilty thereby.” The only exception to this rule is if the sinfully acquired property is less than the lowest valued coin, called prutah (Compare Torah sh’leymah on this item 236 on our verse).