Fifth Reading 4:1 God spoke to Moses, saying,
“With the exception of the two obligatory offerings briefly mentioned above, our discussion thus far has been of voluntary offerings. We will now turn to the subject of obligatory offerings. Speak to the Israelites, saying: ‘There are two types of sacrifices whose purpose is to counteract the effects of wrongdoing: the sin-offering and the guilt-offering. Both of these types of sacrifices counteract only specific types of sins, as will be described, but of the two, the sin-offering is more general. It will therefore be discussed first.
If a person unintentionally transgresses any of the passive commandments of God, then he or she must sacrifice a sin-offering if (a) the punishment for transgressing that passive commandment would be excision (i.e., dying prematurely and childless) were it committed intentionally, and (b) he either completed one of these acts or committed part of one of them—provided that the partial act was also a complete act in its own right.
The sin-offering and the circumstances that occasion it differ for a high priest, the Sanhedrin, a king, or a commoner, as follows:
Leviticus 4:3
If the anointed high priest commits the same sin that, as will be described presently, implicates the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the people, obligating them to bring a sin-offering—specifically, if he mistakenly concludes and rules that a particular act is permitted when in fact it is both prohibited and punishable by excision if performed intentionally, and then commits the act, relying on his mistaken conclusion—then, when his mistake is discovered, in order to atone for it, he must bring a sin-offering.
