Yom Kippur, Leopold Pilichowski, 1906. Wikimedia
Confessing Sins You Didn’t Commit
The few examples of confessions in the Bible use only generic language about sin. In contrast, the post-biblical Yom Kippur liturgical confessions, written as long alphabetical lists, include detailed admissions about specific sins, many of which the petitioner likely never committed. This kind of confession goes back to the second millennium B.C.E. ancient Near Eastern texts for people suffering from illness.
Published: September 15, 2021
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
This is part of a ritual that transfers the people’s sins to the animal. For a discussion of this ritual in its ancient Near Eastern context, see Noga Ayali-Darshan, “The Scapegoat Ritual and Its Ancient Near Eastern Parallels,” TheTorah (2020).
Whether this offering, known in rabbinic parlance as a קרבן עולה ויורד, a variable offering, is a חטאת “sin offering,” אשׁם “guilt offering,” or some kind of hybrid, is debated.
In response, Solomon promises that God will hear their pleas and grant them forgiveness:
מלכים א ח:נ וְסָלַחְתָּ לְעַמְּךָ אֲשֶׁר חָטְאוּ לָךְ וּלְכָל פִּשְׁעֵיהֶם אֲשֶׁר פָּשְׁעוּ בָךְ...
1 Kgs 8:50 And You shall pardon Your people who have sinned against You for all the transgressions that they have committed against You.
Here again the phrasing uses synonymous terms.
For example, the root ח.ט.א means to “miss” the mark, and the root ע.ו.י means “twist” or “pervert.” For discussions of the etymological approach and its weaknesses, see Joseph Lam, Patterns of Sin in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 2–4. See also n. 11 below.
Leviticus 16 only mentions a confession over the goal sent to Azazel, but the rabbis assume that the high priest offers confessions over other Yom Kippur offerings as well. My thanks to Zev Farber for helping to fill out the biblical and especially rabbinic material.
The Tosefta attributes this position to Rabbi Meir.
These self-accusations lead up to a comprehensive list of possible corporal punishments and forms of the death penalty (stoning, burning, etc.) that the petitioner may have deserved.
The Hebrew alphabet, of course, is only 22 letters. Ashamnu has 24 sins because the tav is given three sins (i.e., its own plus two more); Al Chet is 44 since it includes two sins for each letter.
For “hidden sins” (נסתרות) in the Bible, see Deut 29:28; Ps 19:13; 90:8 עֲלֻמֵנו)).
See W.G. Lambert, “DINGIR.ŠÀ.DIB.BA Incantations,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 33 (1974), 280–281, lines 121–2. Incidentally, although some Mesopotamian prayers and compositions did employ acrostics (based on cuneiform), the incantations in question do not seem to use them.
Regarding the Mesopotamian prayers, Takayoshi Oshima analyzes the various terms for sin and concludes that these texts treat the various terms as synonyms (God's Punishing Hands: The Interdependence of the Divine Will and Human Ethics in Cuneiform Literature, forthcoming, ch.1). See also my “Terms for Taboo: What is the Moral Basis of the Sexual Prohibitions?” TheTorah (2020).
Erica Reiner, Šurpu. A Collection of Sumerian and Akkadian Incantations (AoF Beiheft 11, Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1958), 13–14. For second-millennium BCE parallels to Shurpu (discussed below), see Stefan Jakob, RItualbeschreibungen und Gebet III (WVDOG 154; Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2018), 88–91.
See Takayoshi Oshima, “Morality and the Minds of Gods: Divine Knowledge and Human Ignorance in Mesopotamian Prayers and Didactic Literature,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 6.4 (2017): 386-430.
See Gary Anderson, Sin: A History (New Haven, CT; Yale University Press, 2009); Lam, Patterns of Sin; Joseph Lam, “Sin Is a Debt that Must Be Repaid,” TheTorah (2021).
See my, “A Sin Offering for Birth Anxiety,” TheTorah (2016). Similarly, Yael Landman, in her “Asham of False Oaths: Why Does the Offender Confess” (TheTorah 2020), argues that in the case of the person who confesses to have sworn a false oath, the reason he or she does so is because they are suffering, which they understand as a sign that God has found them out.
See discussion in Zev Farber, “Punishing Children for the Sins of Their Parents,” TheTorah (2015).
Lambert, “DINGIR.ŠÀ.DIB.BA Incantations,” 280–281. The Hittites held a similar attitude, as is evident in the following prayer of the king Hattusili III: “If before the gods there is some sin of my father and my mother…disregard that sin.” See Itamar Singer, Hittite Prayers (WAW 11; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 100.
See Deut 23:22–23; Eccl 5:4.
See in particular Tablet II, lines 82–86 (ed. Reiner, pp. 14–15). See also Margaret Jaques, Mon dieu qu’ai-je fait? Les diĝir-ša-dab(5)-ba et la piete privee en Mesopotamie, OBO 273 (Fribourg: Academic Press, 2015), 330–332, who notes the relevance of this evidence for Kol Nidrei.
See Leviticus 16:31; 23:27, 32; Numbers 29:7.
It is this communal orientation of Leviticus 16 which explains the tension between this text, which seems to promise expiation to the community even for flagrant sins (vv. 16, 21, 30), as compared with Numbers 15:30–31, which warns that the deliberate sinner has no hope. In other words, while the sinner will indeed perish as stated in Num 15, Lev 16 clears the community of collective responsibility for the transgressors committed in its midst. For a different perspective, see David Frankel (forthcoming).
