Lexicon

H2403 - chattath

Strong's: H2403 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: khat-tawth' Part of speech: feminine noun (from the verbal root H2398 chataʾ, "to miss the mark / sin") Frequency: ~290 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible, heavily concentrated in Leviticus, Numbers, the priestly material, the prophets, and Psalms. LXX equivalents: ἁμαρτία (hamartia), direct correspondent. See G0266 - hamartia. Triad companions: H6588 - pesha (transgression / rebellion) and H5771 - avon (iniquity / guilt). Together these three are the principal Hebrew sin-vocabulary.

Semantic range (Brown-Driver-Briggs)

Sin / sinful act, the primary lexical sense; from the verbal root chataʾ meaning "to miss the mark / fall short / fail to attain a target." This metaphor underlies the whole word: sin as missing, a target the agent should have hit.
Sin-offering, the technical-cultic sense; the sacrificial offering provided by the Levitical system specifically to deal with chattath-type sin. Lev 4:1-5:13; Lev 6:24-30; Num 15:22-29.
Penalty / consequence of sin, by metonymy, the punishment that attends the sin-act. Lev 24:15.
Guilt / standing-condition of having sinned, the condition rather than the act.

Theological force, sin as failure-to-attain, plus the sacrifice-of-the-same-name

Chattath is the most-frequent of the three principal Hebrew sin-words and the most general. Its distinctive contributions to the OT hamartiology:

The "missing the mark" metaphor. The verbal root chataʾ means "to miss", used non-religiously of slingers in Judges 20:16 ("seven hundred chosen men, left-handed, every one of whom could sling a stone at a hair and not miss, yachatiʾ"). The metaphor is precise: every moral life has targets (the standards God has set), and chattath names the act of not hitting them. Whether through ignorance, weakness, distraction, or deliberation, the act-or-state of not attaining the standard is chattath.

The sin-triad, distinct contributions. The three principal Hebrew sin-words emphasize different aspects:

Word	Metaphor	Emphasis
H6588 - pesha (rebellion)	Political-treason	Willful breach of relationship
H5771 - avon (iniquity)	Twisted-crookedness	Perverted state of moral faculties
H2403 chattath (sin)	Missing the mark	Failure to attain the standard

The triad covers the full range of moral failure: deliberate-rebellion (pesha), distorted-character (avon), and missed-standard (chattath). All three appear in the Day of Atonement liturgy (Lev 16:21) where the high priest confesses "all the avonot of the sons of Israel and all their peshaʿim in regard to all their chattaʾoth", the threefold confession aiming to leave no sin-category unaddressed.

The technical sin-offering. Uniquely among the sin-vocabulary, chattath is also the technical name of the Levitical sacrifice provided to deal with sin, the sin-offering (Lev 4:1-5:13). The same Hebrew word names both the sin and the offering that addresses it, capturing the substitutionary logic: the offering becomes the sin (cf. 2 Cor 5:21, "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf", Paul's use of hamartia for both Christ's status and the substitutionary outcome).

The chattath-sacrifice protocol (Lev 4):

The offerer lays his hand on the head of the offering, identifying with it.
The animal is slaughtered; its blood is applied to the altar.
The blood makes atonement (kipper, see H3722 - kaphar).
The offerer is forgiven.

The pattern grounds the NT's atonement-theology: Christ's death is the once-for-all chattath-offering (Heb 9-10; cf. Rom 8:3, "God... sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin (peri hamartias) condemned sin in the flesh"; Greek peri hamartias in LXX is the technical sin-offering term).

Notable verses

The verbal root and missing-the-mark

Genesis 4:7, "if you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? But if you do not do well, chattath crouches at the door"
Judges 20:16, slingers "would not miss (yachatiʾ)"
Proverbs 19:2, "he who hurries his steps errs / misses (choteʾ)"

The Levitical sin-offering

Leviticus 4:1-5:13, the chattath-offering protocol; for sins of inadvertence
Leviticus 5:6, 7, 9, 11, 12, chattath designating both the sin and the offering
Leviticus 6:25-30, special priestly provisions for the chattath
Leviticus 16:1-34, Day of Atonement; the goat-as-chattath
Numbers 15:22-31, distinction between sins of inadvertence (covered by chattath) and high-handed peshaʿ (not covered)

The mercy-formula and triad

Exodus 34:6-7, "forgiving avon and peshaʿ and chattath"
Numbers 14:18, formula repeated
Leviticus 16:21, Day of Atonement threefold confession
Daniel 9:24, "to make an end of chattath and to atone for avon", eschatological resolution

Sin's destructive power (esp. Cain narrative)

Genesis 4:7, "chattath crouches at the door; its desire is for you, but you must rule over it"

Prophetic use

Isaiah 53:10, "His soul makes a guilt-offering (asham)... He will see His seed... bear their avonot" (the Servant's substitutionary work; chattath-system context)
Isaiah 53:12, "He poured out Himself to death... bore the sin (chetʾ) of many"
Jeremiah 31:34, "I will forgive their avon, and their chattath I will remember no more", New Covenant promise
Ezekiel 18, distributed responsibility for chattath

Psalms, confession

Psalms 32.5, "I acknowledged my chattaʾah to You, and my avon I did not hide"
Psalms 51:2-5, "wash me thoroughly from my avon, and cleanse me from my chattath"

NT activation via hamartia

Romans 8:3, "God... sending His own Son... and peri hamartias (as an offering for sin) condemned sin in the flesh", the LXX chattath-offering language applied to Christ
2 Corinthians 5.21, "He made Him who knew no sin (hamartia) to be sin (hamartia) on our behalf", the dual-meaning of chattath (sin / sin-offering) carried into Greek
Hebrews 9:28; Hebrews 10:12, Christ's once-for-all sin-offering
Hebrews 13:11, "the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place... are burned outside the camp", direct chattath-protocol reference (Lev 16:27)

Patristic / scholarly note

The Levitical chattath-system has been the central interpretive frame for understanding NT atonement-theology in patristic and Reformation traditions. Augustine (Contra Faustum 22.17, "the death of Christ is the chattath of sinners"), develops the Pauline peri hamartias into a full theology of substitutionary sin-offering. Anselm (Cur Deus Homo), the satisfaction-theology builds on the chattath-system as the framework against which Christ's death is the consummating reality.

In modern scholarship, Jacob Milgrom (Leviticus 1-16 AB, 1991; Leviticus 17-22; Leviticus 23-27) is the magisterial Jewish-Hebraist treatment of the chattath system; he argues the offering primarily purges impurity from the sanctuary rather than forgiving the sinner, a cult-system purpose more than an individual-forgiveness purpose. Christian engagement (Gordon Wenham, The Book of Leviticus NICOT, 1979; Roy Gane, Cult and Character, 2005) develops Milgrom's insights while maintaining the connection to NT atonement-theology.

The dual-meaning of chattath (sin / sin-offering) is the crucial linguistic-conceptual bridge from OT to NT atonement. Paul's apparent paradox in 2 Cor 5:21, "He made Him to be hamartia", dissolves once the OT chattath dual-sense is understood: Christ is made hamartia in the technical-Levitical sense, the sin-offering. The translation "He made Him to be a sin-offering on our behalf" is a defensible rendering preserving the OT-Hebrew background.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here. Anchors: Genesis 4:7 (the first occurrence; chattath personified as a crouching predator), Leviticus 16 (Day of Atonement), Exodus 34.6-7 (mercy formula), Daniel 9.24 (eschatological resolution), 2 Corinthians 5.21 (NT activation), Romans 8:3 (the peri hamartias technical term).