Shabbos Parashas Vayikra - 5774
Shabbos Parashas Vayikra - 5774
Rabbi Hal Miller
If a soul will sin unintentionally from among all the commandments of Hashem
that may not be done, and he commits one of them. [Vayikra 4:2]
Our pasuk strikes us immediately with questions. There is a grammatical issue:
why does it give us only a dependent clause, rather than a complete sentence?
It doesn't discuss a person sinning, but a soul. It specifies "one of them"
as though committing multiple sins would get one out of whatever consequence
the 'rest' of this verse would have specified. What is the Torah showing us
here?
Chapter four begins, "Hashem spoke to Moshe saying, speak to the children of
Israel saying," followed by our quoted pasuk. It is definitely an incomplete
sentence. The following pasuk is similar in construct, but it has a follow-on
clause to make it complete within itself: "If the anointed Kohen will sin,
bringing guilt upon the people, for the sin that he committed he shall offer
a young bull, unblemished, to G-d as a sin-offering." Our pasuk fits between
two complete sentences, and is not directly connected to either.
Sforno notes the difference between the verses discussing 'regular' people
and national leadership. Some verses begin with 'im' or 'ki', the word 'if'.
The verse for leaders begins with 'asher', which is generally translated as
'when'. He tells us that it is assumed that leaders will commit transgressions
because of the influence of power, but that for the rest of us, sin is not a
foregone conclusion.
Rabbi Nachshoni tells us that it is a hierarchy. For the Kohen and Sanhedrin,
it says 'im'. For an individual it says 'ki'. For the king or prince it says
'asher'. He says this is because of the levels of likelihood of the person
committing a sin, that it is very unlikely for the Kohen or court members,
increasingly likely for regular folk, and almost a given for the leader. But
while interesting, this does not quite answer our question about the sentence
fragment. He continues, "the word 'asher' before a noun has the same meaning
as if it had been written after a noun, thus instead of "if a nasi will sin",
it means 'a nasi who sins'." While this word-reversal does not help us
directly in our pasuk, it opens possibilities.
Our pasuk uses the word 'ki', which has numerous translations depending on
context. It can be 'if', 'that', 'because', 'for', 'then', etc. Perhaps we
could read our pasuk as, "Because the soul commits unintentionally of the
sins, so he (the person) commits one", in other words, the individual is
charged with the sin that his soul commits, regardless of whether the body
follows along. It might seem a bit strained, but not only is a complete
thought, it follows from Nachshoni's idea of hierarchy. This also gives us
something to work with on our other two questions, about 'soul' and 'one'.
Regardless of how many of the "from among all the commandments" the soul
might violate, the overall person is responsible for one here, perhaps for
negligently failing to control his soul.
Rav Hirsch says "the soul is the real essence of a human personality. It
manifests itself as mind and will." Ramban answers our 'soul' versus 'person'
question when he writes, "Since thought is in the soul, and it is the soul
that has committed the unintentional sin, the verse mentions here 'soul'." At
this point, we might justifiably be confused by the definition of 'soul'. Rav
Hirsch and others go to great length to show that the body is subservient to
the soul, which is subservient to G-d. It is the soul which must absolve
itself from sin in order to regain the nearness to G-d that will allow for
eternal reward. But then our parsha divides unintentional sins down by classes
of people, indicating that there is more to this than merely a division
between body and soul.
It seems that there is a "whole entity" involved here, consisting of body and
soul, tied together perhaps by some other concept, say "identity". Depending
on the identity, how the unintentional sins of the soul are handled varies.
So, depending on who you are (your "identity") you are more or less likely to
commit an unintentional sin. That kind of sin is defined as being a lapse in
self-control. The soul thinks, or the body acts, without the self-discipline
expected of us. Our pasuk concentrates on the thoughts as the more important
area. Our lesson is that not only are we required to prevent inappropriate
acts by our physical selves, but also to rein in even our thinking process, to
ensure we are always pursuing Torah truth, not wasting time with "free
thinking" outside of Torah rules.