What Distinguishes the Chatat and Asham/2

What Distinguishes the Chatat and Asham?

Exegetical Approaches

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Function of the Offering

While the Chatat is first and foremost a purification offering, the Asham is a reparation offering.

Sources:R. David Zvi HoffmannVayikra 5:17About R. David Zvi Hoffmann, modern scholars

Meaning of חטאת – According to these sources, the root "חטא" means to purify, as proven by the many verses where it is clearly mentioned in the context of purification (sometimes being parallel to the root "טהר") including Vayikra 14:48-52, Bemidbar 8:7, Bemidbar 19:19 and Yechezkel 43:23-26.¹

Chatat: common denominator – R. D"Z Hoffmann points out that the Chatat is brought for either spiritual or physical impurity.  Thus, both those who have unintentionally transgressed a prohibition² and those who have contracted physical impurity (including a birthing mother, one who has been struck with tzara'at, one who has an emission, and a nazirite who has been defiled) all bring a Chatat.³ 

What does the Chatat purify? R. Hoffmann explains that sin defiles not just the person, but also the Mikdash, and as such, the Chatat comes to purify the Mikdash itself from impurity.  As evidence thatt he Mikdash itself can be polluted not just via physaical impurity but by sin as well he points to Vayikra 16:16, "וְכִפֶּר עַל הַקֹּדֶשׁ מִטֻּמְאֹת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וּמִפִּשְׁעֵיהֶם לְכׇל חַטֹּאתָם" and Vayikra 20:3. "כִּי מִזַּרְעוֹ נָתַן לַמֹּלֶךְ לְמַעַן טַמֵּא אֶת מִקְדָּשִׁי".

Where the Chatat is brought and blood sprinkled

Meaning of Asham

Asham: common denominator

Animals brought?

"בְּעֶרְכְּךָ"

Severity of Sin

While both the Chatat and Asham serve an atoning role, they do so for different types of sins.

Asham More Severe

The more severe offenses necessitate an Asham offering rather than a Chatat.

Asham Less Severe

Less severe sins are expiated with an Asham rather than a Chatat.

¹ See also Shemot 29:36, Vayikra 8:15, and Yechezkel 45:18. 

² Though the verses appear to speak of transgression of any prohibition, R. Hoffmann, like Chazal, assumes limits them to only those which one would have been obligated with כרת had one transgressed them intentionally.

³ The red heifer whose ashes come to purify one who ha come into contact with a dead body is also referred to as a Chatat.