Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
chatta't
Sin, and also the offering that deals with it. One word for both.
Leviticus 4:3, in every translation this tool compares.
Imagine one word meaning both the debt and the payment. You would never have to explain the relationship between them.
Because the same noun names the offence and the sacrifice, which is a connection Hebrew makes automatically and English cannot make at all.
Versions read sin, sin offering, or purification offering according to context.
חַטָּאת chatta't · H2403
Chatta't is the commonest Hebrew word for sin and is also the technical term for the offering prescribed in Leviticus. The verb behind it carries the sense of missing or failing.
Every time, English has to choose between sin and sin offering, and the choice hides that they are one word.
When one word names both a problem and its remedy, the language has built the solution into the vocabulary.
Sin and sin offering are both majority renderings in their own contexts; purification offering is a minority modern rendering.
- chatta't as offering: Leviticus 4:3, 8, 20
- chatta't as sin: Genesis 4:7; Psalm 51:2
- 2 Corinthians 5:21 plays on the same double sense in Greek
