One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
שְׁגָגוֹת
Offerings for Unintentional Transgressions 3-5
Sefer Korbanot · Who is believed about his own sin, whose offering is refused, and the arithmetic that turns lapses of awareness into a count of sacrifices
43
Transgressions carrying a fixed sin-offering
1
Offering, however many repetitions in one lapse
3
Conditions letting one deed carry several prohibitions
8
Sin-offerings derived from a single constructed act
SHG 3Believed, designated, refused, and what Yom Kippur clears
- Denial exempts, silence obligates. Told by unwarned witnesses that he ate forbidden fat, a man who answers that he is certain he did not is exempt, since he could have claimed he acted deliberately and been exempt anyway; if he stays silent he is liable, even where the one who told him was a single woman. (3:1, 3:2)
- An offering fits one lock only. A sin-offering set aside for forbidden fat may not be brought for Shabbat desecration or for blood, and if he brings it he disqualifies it; but one set aside for fat eaten yesterday, brought for fat eaten today, should not be done and nevertheless achieves atonement. (3:3)
- Two animals, one sin, and the spare goes to a freewill offering. He sacrifices whichever he chooses; the second grazes until blemished, is sold, and its proceeds buy a freewill offering, since no second transgression is waiting for it. (3:5)
- Refused at one door, admitted at another. No offering at all is taken from an idolater or a public Shabbat desecrator; one who is an apostate to a single prohibition is refused for that sin until he repents, whether he violated it to spite Heaven or merely to satisfy himself, yet his offering for a different sin is accepted. (3:7)
- Yom Kippur clears only the doubtful offering. Sin-offerings and definitive guilt-offerings survive the day; the tentative guilt-offering does not, so a doubt that arises even at nightfall on Yom Kippur is already cleared, unless the man passed the day in rebellion, in which case he owes every one of them after he repents. (3:9, 3:10)
RememberA living animal is never permanently rejected; the owner who became unfit and then fit again restores it.
SHG 4One deed, and how many prohibitions it can carry
- Every transgression in the lapse gets its own animal. Many transgressions inside one lapse of awareness mean a sin-offering for each, and the Rambam states plainly that all 43 transgressions carrying this liability, done in one lapse, mean 43 sin-offerings. (4:1)
- Three ways a later prohibition can still attach. One deed carries several prohibitions only if they all take effect at the same moment, or the later one extends the ban to additional people, or it sweeps in other objects alongside the one already forbidden; slaughtering a consecrated animal outside the Courtyard, on Shabbat, for a false divinity yields three sin-offerings on the first ground. (4:1)
- Those additional people have to be alive. A prohibition that works by extending the ban to others only attaches if those others exist at that moment; we do not reason that had the man possessed a son or a brother she would have been forbidden to them. (4:3)
- Three prohibitions, one body, one offering. Where one woman is at once his mother-in-law, the mother of his mother-in-law, and the mother of his father-in-law, three distinct prohibitions take effect together and he brings only one sin-offering, because Scripture uses a single phrase for all three and thereby treats them as one body. (4:4)
- The mirror case counts three. Where she is his sister and also his father's sister and his mother's sister, he is liable for three sin-offerings, since Scripture names each relationship on its own. (4:5)
RememberLiability follows the Torah's own way of naming a thing, not our sense of how many wrongs occurred.
SHG 5Where one lapse of awareness ends and the next begins
- Knowledge is the seam. Repeating the same transgression with the same person throughout one continuous lapse means one sin-offering however much time passed between the acts; let awareness break in even once and each subsequent act carries its own offering. (5:1)
- Two people, two separate counts. If he remained in one lapse while she came to know between each act, he brings one sin-offering and she brings one for every act, and the arithmetic reverses if their situations reverse. (5:2)
- Separate persons divide, separate spans divide. Transgressing with several different people in one unbroken lapse means a sin-offering for each of them even under the identical prohibition, and one span of a woman's impurity is reckoned distinct from a later span as though two different women were involved. (5:3, 5:5)
- Compulsion is not inadvertence. A couple together at a time she was not expected to become impure are exempt when she does, because inadvertence carries guilt only where he should have checked and asked, and here there was nothing to check; but relations close to her expected time, hoping to finish first, are inadvertence and carry the offering. (5:6)
- Two gaps inside one act, two offerings. Where he knew one prohibition and not the other, entry and withdrawal are treated as two lapses and he brings two sin-offerings; where he knew neither, the same act yields only one. (5:7)
RememberThe unit being counted is never the deed. It is the gap in awareness that let the deed happen.