Confession, Restitution, Then Offering

The next claim concerns the past:

“In those days, if you sinned, you could just go to the temple and offer a sacrifice.”

Many people carry this picture without ever putting it into words. In their minds the temple worked like a cash machine. You sinned, you brought an animal, the priest did his part, and forgiveness came out: one goat in, one pardon out, and the same again the next week. If that is what the Torah was, then repentance with fruit naturally sounds like something new, something the Old Testament never asked for.

The picture is easy to believe, because the Torah does speak about sacrifices a great deal, and the verses around them are seldom read. Those verses are where we begin.

First You Confess

This is the Torah’s instruction for a person who has become guilty:

Leviticus 5:5-6 and it shall be, when he becomes guilty in one of these, that he shall confess that in which he has sinned; and he shall bring his guilt offering to the LORD for his sin which he sinned, a female from the flock, a ewe-lamb or a female goat, for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for him from his sin.

The order is plain. First, “he shall confess that in which he has sinned.” Then “he shall bring his guilt offering.” The confession comes first, and the animal after it.

The Hebrew word for becoming guilty is asham אָשַׁם aw-shawm', to offend or be guilty, and the word for sin is chata חָטָא khaw-taw', to miss or go wrong. A person who has sinned stands guilty, and the first thing the Torah asks of him is not a lamb but his own mouth: he must say what he did.

Then You Pay It Back, and More

When the sin has harmed another person, the Torah requires more:

Numbers 5:6-7 "Speak to the sons of Israel: A man (ish אִישׁ eesh) or woman (ishah אִשָּׁה ish-shaw'), when they do any of the sins of the man (adam אָדָם aw-dawm'), to commit a trespass against the LORD, and that soul (nephesh נֶפֶשׁ neh'-fesh) is guilty, then they shall confess their sin which they have done, and he shall restore his guilt in its principal, and add to it its fifth, and give it to him to whom he is guilty.

Three things happen here before any offering is mentioned. First, “they shall confess their sin which they have done.” Second, “he shall restore his guilt in its principal,” so that whatever was taken is given back in full. Third, he shall “add to it its fifth.” The Hebrew verb is yasaph יָסַף yaw-saf', to add, to increase. On top of the full amount comes one fifth more.

Suppose you had taken a hundred dollars from your neighbor. Under the Torah you could not slip into the temple courts with a lamb and walk out clean. You would have to go to your neighbor’s door, admit what you had done, hand back the hundred, and then count out twenty more from your own pocket. Only after all of that did the matter come to the altar.

The word Numbers uses for the sin itself is telling: “to commit a trespass against the LORD.” The Hebrew is ma‘al מַעַל al, an unfaithful act, a betrayal of trust. Wronging a neighbor was counted as unfaithfulness toward God, and so making it right with the neighbor came first.

This is the fruit of repentance, written into the Torah itself. Confession, restitution, and the added fifth all came before the sacrifice. The animal was not a replacement for repentance; it came at the end of repentance.

Sins With No Offering

The cash-machine picture misses a second point, and it is a sobering one. The sin offering was given for a particular kind of sin:

Leviticus 4:2 "Speak to the sons of Israel, saying: A soul (nephesh), when it sins through error from any of the commandments (mitzvot מִצוָה mits-vaw') of the LORD which shall not be done, and does one of them—

The phrase “when it sins through error” means unintentionally. A person who did wrong without meaning to, or without knowing it, could bring the offering, and Numbers 15:27-28 says that “he shall be forgiven.”

Three verses later, however, comes this:

Numbers 15:30 But the soul (nephesh) who acts with a high hand, whether native-born or sojourner, he blasphemes the LORD; and that soul (nephesh) shall be cut off from the midst of its people.

Set against sin done “in error” in the verses just before, “with a high hand” describes sin done in open contempt of God, and the next verse gives the reason: “he has despised the word of the LORD and broken his commandment (mitzvah מִצוָה mits-vaw').” Scripture says that such a person “blasphemes the LORD,” and for this sin the Torah names no offering at all. There was nothing to bring. The text says only that “that soul (nephesh) shall be cut off from the midst of its people.”

The cash machine, then, was never there. For sins done in error there was an offering, and repentance came before it. Even a wrong done knowingly against a neighbor came to the altar only after confession and full repayment with a fifth added (Leviticus 5:20-26; Numbers 5:6-8). For sins done with a high hand there was no offering to bring.

Why David Did Not Bring a Bull

This explains a passage in the Psalms.

King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then arranged the death of her husband to cover it. Psalm 51 is headed as his prayer after the prophet Nathan confronted him. As king, David could have ordered a thousand bulls, and if sacrifices worked like a machine, his way out would have been easy. Instead he wrote this:

Psalm 51:18-19 For you do not desire sacrifice, else I would give it; a burnt offering you do not delight in. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit (ruach רוּחַ roo'-akh); a broken and contrite heart, God, you will not despise.

(YLV Psalm 51:18-19, Masoretic verse order)

Read beside Numbers 15, these lines say something exact. What David did was not done in error. It was adultery and murder, which the Torah punished with death (Leviticus 20:10; Numbers 35:31), and no offering in the Torah could be brought for it. He was not speaking poetically. He was telling the truth about where he stood: “For you do not desire sacrifice, else I would give it.” He had nothing to lay on the altar, and all he could bring was “a broken spirit (ruach); a broken and contrite heart.”

Then come the words of hope: “God, you will not despise.” Standing beyond the reach of any offering, David threw himself on the mercy of God. That is grace, and it is found in the Old Testament.

What Was Always True

This claim, then, tells the story backward. It imagines that in the past sacrifice made repentance unnecessary, and that only now do we hear about turning and fruit.

The Torah says the opposite. Confession came first, and restitution with a fifth added. Sacrifice came last, and for some sins it could not come at all. Repentance and its fruit were never optional extras on the way to the altar. They were the way to it.

None of this makes repentance a price, then or now. As Chapter 1 laid out, a sinner is made righteous by grace, through faith in the Messiah’s blood. This chapter shows only that the Torah never pictured repentance as a feeling with nothing to do. It pictured a man walking to his neighbor’s door.

Many sincere believers would answer that the heart of repentance is not deeds at all, but sorrow and a longing to be rid of sin, and that claim deserves a fair hearing.