Origin Biblical in vocabulary; the graded reading by intention is rabbinic, from roughly the second to the sixth century CE.
The Hebrew Bible does not use one word for sin. Three stand together in the scapegoat rite of Leviticus 16 and again among the thirteen attributes of Exodus 34, and the rabbinic tradition reads them as a graded scale of intention rather than as synonyms piled up for emphasis. Chet is built on a root meaning to miss, and the verb describes slingers in the book of Judges who can aim at a hair and not miss. In the rabbinic gloss it is the offence committed inadvertently, in error or in ignorance. Avon carries the sense of bending or twisting, and names the wrong a person does knowingly, out of appetite, while still acknowledging the standard being bent. Pesha is rebellion; the same verb describes a vassal kingdom revolting against its overlord in the books of Kings, and it names an act committed precisely because it is forbidden. The order matters, and the liturgy preserves it. The high priest's confession over the scapegoat, as the Talmud's tractate on the Day of Atonement reports it, moves through all three, and the tractate records an argument about which order is correct, because the sequence encodes a claim about whether one confesses upward from the least offence or downward from the worst. Nothing in the scheme grades the punishment. It grades the act, and the remedy for all three is the same movement of return described under Teshuvah. The Day of Atonement liturgy then makes the confession communal and plural, so a worshipper recites the whole alphabet of offences whether or not each one is theirs.
Facts
Open Questions
Point in DisputeThe three terms stand together in Leviticus 16 and Exodus 34 without any definition attached, and the graded reading by intention is supplied by rabbinic literature centuries afterwards. Whether biblical Hebrew already distinguishes the three roots this way, or the distinction is a rabbinic construction laid over a rhetorical triplet, is unsettled.
No corpus study of every occurrence of the three roots in the Hebrew Bible, read alongside the Northwest Semitic epigraphic material, has tested whether the intention grading holds independently of the rabbinic gloss. Origins
Origin PeriodBiblical in vocabulary; the graded reading by intention is rabbinic, from roughly the second to the sixth century CE. 2 Origin of the NameThe root of chet is used of missing a target; avon carries a sense of bending or twisting; pesha is the verb used of a vassal kingdom in revolt. 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionStandard teaching, not formally defined 1Tradition: Judaism The standard rabbinic reading of the three biblical terms for wrongdoing. Doctrinal CategorySin, Grace and the Human Condition 1 Attestation
Earliest AttestationLeviticus 16:21, the confession spoken over the scapegoat, where all three terms fall in a single sentence. 1 Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe Talmud's tractate on the Day of Atonement glosses the three as inadvertent offences, deliberate ones and rebellions, and records a dispute over the order in which the high priest confessed them. 2 Structure
StructureThree terms: chet, an offence committed in error; avon, a wrong done knowingly out of desire; pesha, an act of rebellion. All three stand together in the scapegoat confession of Leviticus 16 and among the thirteen attributes of Exodus 34. 1 Learn More
Three Words in One Verse
The three terms are not a rabbinic invention. They stand together, in one sentence, in the instruction for the scapegoat: Aaron is to lay both hands on the head of the goat and confess over it the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, in all their sins. They stand together again in the thirteen attributes proclaimed at Sinai, where God is described as bearing iniquity, transgression and sin. Whatever the writers intended, the three were already a set.
What they do not do in the Hebrew Bible is define themselves. The graded reading has to be recovered from how each root behaves elsewhere. Chet is built on a verb meaning to miss, and the book of Judges uses it of Benjaminite slingers who could aim at a hair and not miss; the noun therefore reads naturally as an act that went wide of its mark. Avon carries the sense of a bending or twisting, of something that has been made crooked. Pesha is the harshest of the three, because outside the cultic vocabulary it is a political word: it is what a vassal kingdom does when it breaks with its overlord, and the books of Kings use it exactly that way of Moab against Israel.
The rabbinic literature then fixes the scale. The Babylonian Talmud, in the tractate that treats the Day of Atonement, glosses the trio as inadvertent offences, deliberate ones, and rebellions, and it preserves an argument about the order in which the high priest was to name them. The argument is not pedantry. Confessing upward from the least, or downward from the worst, encodes two different accounts of what a confession is for, and the liturgy that came out of it has had to make a choice on every Day of Atonement since.
What the Liturgy Does With Them
The three terms survive chiefly because the liturgy carries them. On the Day of Atonement the community recites a confession, the vidui, and its two standard forms are both alphabetical: a short one running the letters of the alphabet through a list of failings, and a longer one whose every line opens with the formula for the sin we have sinned before you. The set is repeated through the services of the day, so that a worshipper says the whole alphabet of offences whether or not any particular line is theirs.
Two features of that are worth stating plainly, because they are what most distinguishes this from the Christian arrangement the atlas already describes. The confession is in the plural, spoken by everyone at once, aloud, and it is itemised to nobody. There is no confessor, no absolution pronounced by an official, and no penance assigned. What the day requires instead is the turning treated under Teshuvah, and the season before it, the ten days from the new year to the fast, is conventionally given over to that work with the penitential prayers of Selichot recited through it.
The second feature is a hard limit on what the day can do at all. The Mishnah, closing its tractate on the Day of Atonement, states that the day atones for offences between a person and God, and that for offences between a person and another person it does not atone until the injured party has been appeased. No grading of the offence changes that. A wrong done in error, a wrong done out of appetite and a wrong done in defiance are all, if they were done to a neighbour, outstanding until the neighbour is satisfied, and the fast is not a substitute for going and asking.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Contrasts With
Both grade wrongdoing, and grade it by different things. The Hebrew triad sorts by the state of the will behind the act; the Islamic pair sorts by what it takes to clear it.
The Hebrew triad tracks intention alone. The Catholic distinction requires grave matter, full knowledge and deliberate consent together, so intention is one test of three rather than the whole of it.
Two liturgical confessions that run in opposite directions. The Egyptian text declares innocence of a listed set of offences before the assessors; the Day of Atonement text admits them, in the plural, on behalf of everyone present.
Related To
The cross-tradition treatment of repentance, of which this is the Jewish vocabulary.
The penitential prayers of the season in which the confession is made.
The remedy for all three grades is one movement, the return.
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
Does the rabbinic grading of chet, avon and pesha by intention reflect biblical usage, or read a later distinction back into it?
The three terms stand together in Leviticus 16 and Exodus 34 without any definition attached, and the graded reading is supplied by rabbinic literature centuries afterwards. Whether biblical Hebrew already distinguishes the three roots this way, or whether the distinction is a rabbinic construction laid over a rhetorical triplet, is a question of lexical semantics that this entry did not attempt to settle.
What would resolve this A corpus study of every occurrence of the three roots in the Hebrew Bible, read alongside the Northwest Semitic epigraphic material, testing whether the intention grading holds independently of the rabbinic gloss.
Biblical Hebrew lexicography; Northwest Semitic philologyDivinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition
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