an offence offering. The
present case is a strategic instance of why it is misleading to render the
Hebrew ḥata’t, as
almost all English versions do, as “sin offering.” Surely the childbearing
woman has done nothing that can be called a sin. The state of ritual impurity,
however, imposed on her by biological circumstances makes her a potential
source of violation of the sancta, which would be an offense to the cult and to
its divine object, and so she is enjoined to present an offense offering that
will mark the completion of her period of purification. (Robert Alter, The
Hebrew Bible, 3 vols. [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019], 1:406)
