The Purification Offering: We come now to a different kind of sacrifice. We are still in the Manual of Sacrifice, but the concluding verse of chapter 3 prepares the reader for a section on the breaking of prohibitions. Those sacrifices portrayed in chapters 1–3 are voluntary. Chapters 4 and 5 consider sin, or purification, offerings and guilt, or compensation, offerings. While chapters 1–3 place the sacrificial animal at the fore, chapters 4–5 focus on the type of sin that necessitates the sacrifice and on the position of the offerer.

Wenham points out that chapter 4 describes offerings for inadvertent sins, and Leviticus 5:1–13 describes offerings for sins of omission (Leviticus, p. 87). (Lev. 5:14–19 has to do with guilt offerings for inadvertent sin and Lev. 6:1–7 for deliberate sin.) Mo…