CHAPTER VI.

THE TRESPASS OFFERING.

LEVITICUS V. 14–19; vi. 1-7; and vii. 1-7.

"THE trespass offering was provided for certain transgressions committed through ignorance, or else, according to Jewish tradition, where a man afterwards voluntarily confessed himself guilty. The offering for certain trespasses covered five distinct cases (see Lev. v. 5; vi. 2; 19, 20; xiv. 12; Numb. vi. 12), which had all this in common, that they represented a wrong for which a special ransom was given. It forms no exception to this, that a trespass offering was prescribed in the case of a healed leper, and in that of a Nazarite, whose vow had been interrupted by sudden defilement with the dead, since leprosy was regarded as a wrong to the congregation as a whole, while the interruption of the vow was a kind of wrong directed towards the Lord.*

The Hebrew name for sin offering is the same as that for sin; and the name for trespass offering is the same as that for trespass. The word "trespass" is a word directing attention to our evil action and its

* Rev. Dr. Edersheim: "Temple and its Services."

effects, and not to the personal condition of him who commits it. The action is acknowledged to be contrary to the principles which the actor acknowledges, but which, through forgetfulness or inadvertence, or else deliberately, he has committed. Sin is the evil of our nature, and the sin offering is provided as an atonement for this condition of our nature. The trespass offering is for what we have done for actual wrong done to some one. Such, then, is the meaning of "trespass," and the difference between the sin offering and the trespass offering.

Thus

In the Lord Jesus is united the two offerings. In the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah it is written, “When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin (Hebrew, trespass) he shall see his seed." (Verse 10.) Again, in the same chapter, "He was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." (Verse 12.) the trespass offering is the last of the offerings brought before us in Holy Scripture. Like all the previous offerings, we see it perfectly fulfilled in Christ. The whole of the Jewish economy pointed to Him, and in Him received to the very letter its most glorious fulfilment. The great seal to this fulfilment was set in blood, A.D. 70, when the nation, for their rejection and crucifixion of their Messiah, was delivered for judgment into the hands of the Roman Empire, when they "fell by the edge of the sword," and were "led away captive into all nations," and Jerusalem was "trodden down of the Gentiles," and will thus remain "till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." (See Luke xxi. 24.)

It is common to regard such sins as these enumerated in this chapter (ii.) as sins of the greatest magnitude-worse than those committed ignorantly. This, however, is often a serious mistake. Outbreaks of sin, however flagrant, do not always indicate a worse condition than those committed in ignorance. A man may frequently be like Peter overcome by some sudden gust of temptation while his heart all the time may beat true to God. We cannot, from a sin knowingly committed, infer the greatest depravity of nature. A far worse condition of soul may his be who is fair in the eyes of men, but who is more under restraint, and who is merely kept in check by the dread of losing his reputation. When we deepen our ignorance by avoiding the light which would have dispelled it, or when we wilfully familiarize our minds and hearts with courses which cause them to lose their freshness and sensitiveness, or when we secretly espouse a cause because we like it, winking at its obliquities on the plea that nothing here is perfect, we are in a worse condition of soul than thousands who have gone to the gallows for some overt act of crime. With our shortsightedness, our utter inability to penetrate beneath the surface, we judge of men by what we see rather than by what they are. But, oh, how different all may be in God's sight!

In making these remarks I am not speaking of the unconverted. With them trespasses, or outward acts of sin is all they can see. Sin in them, apart from every outward act of this kind, is never thought of or is denied altogether. With the young Christian,