An offence (sometimes habitual sinfulness), and its penalty , occasion , sacrifice , or expiation ; also (concretely) an offender
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חַטָּאָה can name sin or offense and, in sacrificial contexts, the purification offering associated with sin. The local Old Testament index currently counts about 299 occurrences, so the word appears across narrative, law, poetry, and prophecy.
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Full entry for חַטָּאָה (H2403) · Open the biblical lexicon
חַטָּאָה can name sin or offense and, in sacrificial contexts, the purification offering associated with sin. The local Old Testament index currently counts about 299 occurrences, so the word appears across narrative, law, poetry, and prophecy.
The BSB source-word alignment has 295 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include as a sin offering (32), for a sin offering (22), the sin (13), the sins (12), of the sin offering (11).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 4:7. Its strongest book concentrations include Leviticus (82), Numbers (43), Ezekiel (24), 1 Kings (18).
This entry includes 3 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
חַטָּאָה can name sin or offense and, in sacrificial contexts, the purification offering associated with sin. The local Old Testament index currently counts about 299 occurrences, so the word appears across narrative, law, poetry, and prophecy. Context must decide whether a passage concerns wrongdoing, liability, an entrenched pattern of sin, or the prescribed offering. The related verb חָטָא (H2398) describes sinning, going wrong, or failing in an obligation, but a simple English picture such as “missing the mark” does not exhaust either word.
Genesis 4:7 personifies חַטָּאָה as sin crouching at Cain’s door. Leviticus 4 repeatedly uses the noun for the purification offering required when sin has brought guilt, while Psalm 51 uses it for David’s acknowledged sin. Those contexts place moral offense and God’s appointed sacrificial provision within the same lexical field without making them identical in every occurrence. The offering sense belongs to the cultic context; it should not be imported automatically wherever the noun appears.
For teaching, חַטָּאָה helps a congregation name sin as objective guilt before God and attend to the remedy God appoints in the covenant. The Levitical pattern contributes to the wider canonical background for Christ’s atoning work, but the Hebrew noun itself does not directly predict a particular New Testament formula. Teachers should trace the connection through the sacrificial texts and the New Testament’s own claims rather than treating a lexical range as a complete doctrine of atonement.
חַטָּאָה is used in three major registers across the OT: (1) the general noun for sin as offense and moral failure (most common), (2) the specific term for the sin offering in Levitical law (Leviticus, Numbers), and (3) a description of habitual or corporate sinfulness that has become characteristic of a people or individual. Its frequency and range make it the central sin-vocabulary term in the Hebrew Bible.
If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you refuse to do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires you, but you must master it.”
The first occurrence of חַטָּאָה in the narrative literature. God personifies sin as a crouching predator waiting at Cain's door — an image of danger, proximity, and readiness. The word's first appearance in Genesis establishes it as something outside the person that nevertheless has a directional pull toward domination. 'Its desire is for you' echoes the language of Genesis 3:16, linking Cain's temptation to the post-Fall disorder.
The pastoral note: sin is described here as something that can be 'ruled over,' which establishes agency and accountability from the beginning of the OT narrative.
If the anointed priest sins, bringing guilt on the people, he must bring to the Lord a young bull without blemish as a sin offering for the sin he has committed.
Leviticus 4 uses חַטָּאָה both for the sin committed and for the sin offering prescribed — 'for his sin (חַטָּאתוֹ) which he has sinned (חָטָא), a sin offering (חַטָּאת).' The triple occurrence in one verse demonstrates the word's semantic compression: offense and sacrifice share the same root. The anointed priest whose sin brings guilt on the people must bring the highest grade of offering — the sin of leadership has corporate weight.
This is the formal establishment of חַטָּאָה as the liturgical term for the remedy category.
For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
David's penitential psalm uses חַטָּאָה alongside two other sin terms (פֶּשַׁע transgression, עָוֹן iniquity) — the three major OT sin categories appear in the opening verses of Psalm 51. חַטָּאָה here names the sin that stands persistently in the psalmist's awareness: 'my sin is ever before me.' This is the word for the specific act and its felt weight. The psalm's movement from naming sin to requesting purification (ἁγνίζω vocabulary in the LXX) establishes the link between חַטָּאָה and the purification verbs — what this word names is what the purification acts address.
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush Him and to cause Him to suffer; and when His soul is made a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand.
Isaiah 53:10 uses אָשָׁם (H817), the guilt-offering term, not חַטָּאָה (H2403). The verse therefore belongs to the wider sacrificial and sin-vocabulary background rather than serving as a direct occurrence of this noun. Its contribution should be traced canonically while the distinct Levitical offering terms remain distinct.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Hebrew word. Sin encompasses both the transgression and its consequences—the act, guilt, offering, and expiation form an inseparable semantic whole
Sin encompasses both the transgression and its consequences—the act, guilt, offering, and expiation form an inseparable semantic whole
an offence (sometimes habitual sinfulness), and its penalty, occasion, sacrifice, or expiation; also (concretely) an offender BDB: sinful thing Usage: punishment (of sin), purifying(-fication for sin), sin(-ner, offering).
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 299 lexical occurrence verses.
חַטָּאָה is built from this root:
The proverb warns that wicked gain often feeds further wrongdoing. Hosea 4:4-10
Priests exploited sacrificial system for gain. Proverbs 10:16
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
חַטָּאָה can refer to sin and, in sacrificial settings, to the purification offering prescribed because of sin. That lexical range lets teachers hold guilt and God’s appointed covenant remedy together while still allowing each passage to govern the active sense. Genesis 4:7, Leviticus 4, and Psalm 51 show different uses: threatening sin, cultic provision, and confessed guilt. The word should therefore deepen careful exposition, not become a shortcut that collapses every kind of sin or every offering into one category.
The Levitical use supplies part of the Old Testament background for New Testament teaching about Christ bearing and dealing with sin. Second Corinthians 5:21 uses the Greek noun ἁμαρτία and has often been discussed alongside sin-offering language, but the verse’s central certainty is that the sinless Christ was made sin for us so that believers might become God’s righteousness in him. Teachers may explain the sacrificial resonance as a canonical connection; they should not claim that Paul simply called Christ חַטָּאָה or that the Hebrew lexeme by itself proves the interpretation.
Pastorally, the word resists reducing sin to a vague weakness. It names culpable disorder before God, and its Levitical use directs attention to God’s own provision for cleansing and restored fellowship. This movement from text to doctrine should preserve the distinctions among חַטָּאָה, פֶּשַׁע, עָוֹן, and אָשָׁם rather than treating the Old Testament’s sin vocabulary as interchangeable.
Lev.4.3
חַטָּאָה belongs to the חטא word family and can denote sin, sinful condition, liability, or a purification offering depending on context. The related verb H2398 covers sinning, going wrong, and failing in an obligation. The common English shorthand “missing the mark” can illustrate part of the field but should not be presented as an exhaustive definition or a complete etymology.
In cultic contexts the Septuagint commonly uses περὶ ἁμαρτίας language for the offering, while ordinary sin contexts use ἁμαρτία. That distinction helps readers see why context, not the Strong’s number alone, determines the sense.
The New Testament receives Israel’s sin and sacrifice vocabulary through the Greek Scriptures and the canonical pattern of atonement. Romans 8:3 uses περὶ ἁμαρτίας in language that can carry the sense “for sin” or “as a sin offering,” and 2 Corinthians 5:21 declares that the sinless Christ was made sin for us. These texts resonate with the Levitical provision for sin, but they do not turn every occurrence of חַטָּאָה into a direct prediction of Christ.
The responsible line is canonical: the law identifies guilt and gives God-appointed sacrifices; the prophets deepen the hope of redemptive suffering; the New Testament identifies Jesus’ once-for-all work as the fulfillment to which the sacrificial system pointed.
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