Step 9: Forgiveness and Amends in Leviticus

The biblical Hebrew verb סלח /salach/ in Leviticus is a problem for translation and interpretation. Many translators and exegetes have glossed it as “forgive” without much further inquiry. In fact, lexicographer J. Stamm (of HALOT) has stated that it “is in the Old Testament the only real term for forgiving”. Theologians have built systems of soteriology influenced by how “forgiveness” operates in priestly material like Leviticus. However, J. Milgrom writes in his Leviticus commentary that translating סלח as “forgive” is inaccurate. Milgrom also concedes that because he cannot think of an accurate one-word gloss, he surrenders to the English tradition of rendering the verb as “forgive”. This paper will 1) briefly survey lexicographic and exegetical literature on the verb סלח in biblical Hebrew, 2) present a usage-based semantic model of what the verb really symbolizes, and 3) apply this semantic model in test cases for translation in a few languages. It will be demonstrated that while a one-word target-language gloss might not be attainable (at least not in English), the verb can be contextually understood by phrases like “accept an amends”.