“If anyone sins, doing any of the things which Yahweh has commanded not to be done, though he didn’t know it, he is still guilty, and shall bear his iniquity. He shall bring a ram without defect from of the flock, according to your estimation, for a trespass offering, to the priest; and the priest shall make atonement for him concerning the thing in which he sinned and didn’t know it, and he will be forgiven.
To offer the guilt offering of uncertain status (asham talui)
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְהֵבִיא אַיִל תָּמִים מִן־הַצֹּאן בְּעֶרְכְּךָ לְאָשָׁם אֶל־הַכֹּהֵן
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו להקריב קרבן כאשר יתחדש לנו ספק באותן החטאים הגדולים שחייבין על זדונם כרת ועל שגגתן חטאת קבועה וזה הקרבן יקרא אשם תלוי, והוא שיהיו לפניו שתי חתיכות אחת של שומן ואחת של חלב ואכל אחת משתיהן ונאבדה האחרת ונתחדש לו ספק ולא ידע אי זו מהן אכל, הנה הוא יקריב קרבן על הספק המתחדש ומתכפר לו, והוא הנקרא אשם תלוי. ואם התאמת לו אחר כן כי החתיכה שאכל היתה חלב הכליות הנה נתאמתה השגגה ויקריב קרבן חטאת קבועה. והכתוב שנה בזה הקרבן, והוא אמרו בויקרא ונפש כי תחטא ועשתה אחת ממצות וגו' וכפר עליו הכהן על שגגתו אשר שגג. וזה הענין קראוהו חכמים לא הודע. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו במסכת כריתות. (ויקרא אל משה, הלכות שגגות פ"א):
That is that He commanded us to offer a sacrifice when a doubt arises about one of the big sins for which we are liable excision when volitional, and a fixed sin-offering when inadvertent. And this sacrifice is called an uncertain guilt-offering. And that is when there were two portions in front of him - one was of permissible fat and the other of forbidden fat - and he ate one of the two, and the other was lost. And the doubt arises for him and he does not know which one he ate. So he must offer a sacrifice for this doubt that arises, and it is atoned. And this is called an uncertain guilt-offering. But if afterwards it is demonstrated to him that the portion that he ate was [forbidden] fat, it has become demonstrated that he erred, such that he must offer a fixed sin-offering sacrifice. And the verse [that appears] about this sacrifice is His saying in Leviticus (Leviticus 5:17-18), "And when a person sins in regard to any of the commandments, etc. so the priest shall atone on his behalf for the error that he committed inadvertently." And this matter, the Sages called, "he was not aware." And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Tractate Keritot. (See Parashat Vayikra; Mishneh Torah, Offerings for Unintentional Transgressions 1.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a case law — "if X, then Y"
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Requires a standing Temple
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
- A guilt-offering (asham)
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Not binding
- Reconstructionist Not binding
- Karaite Binding, with modification
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 1.234-238 (on guilt offerings generally) rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.230-232 (general treatment of sacrificial offerings, not specific to asham talui) paraphrased it
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi exculpatory oath resolving procedural-legal liability under doubt (fugitive-slave provisions) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§20-23 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor 2nd ed. (1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.