place in the presence of Jehovah, at the north side of the altar.  In the case of the sin and trespass offering the third act is dropped entirely, and accordingly the whole significance of the rite attaches to the slaughtering, which of course also takes place before the altar, and to the sprinkling of the blood, which has become peculiarly developed here.  It is obvious how the metamorphosis of the gift and the meal into a bloody atonement advances and reaches its acme in this last sacrificial act.

This ritual seems to betray its novelty even within the Priestly Code itself by a certain vacillation.  In the older corpus of law (Leviticus xvii.-xxvi.) which has been taken into that document, all sacrifices are still embraced under one or other of the two heads ZBX and (LH (xvii. 8, xxii. 18, 21); there are no others.  The asham indeed occurs in xix. 21 seq., but, as is recognised, only in a later addition; on the other hand,it is not demanded 1 in xxii.14,

************************************ 1.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the asham here, in the case of property unlawfully held, is simply the impost of a fifth part of the value, and not the sacrifice of a ram, which in Leviticus v. is required in addition.  In Numbers v. also, precisely this fifth part is called asham. *************************************

where it must have been according to Leviticus v. and Numbers v.  And even apart from Leviticus xvii.-xxvi there is on this point no sort of agreement between the kernel of the Priestly Code and the later additions, or “novels,” so to speak.  For one thing, there is a difference as to the ritual of the most solemn sin-offering between Exodus xxix., Leviticus ix. on the one hand, and Leviticus iv. on the other; and what is still more serious, the trespass-offering never occurs in the primary but only in the secondary passages, Leviticus iv.-vii., xiv.; Numbers v.7, 8, vi. 1, xviii. 9.  In the latter, moreover, the distinction between asham and hattath is not very clear, but only the intention to make it, perhaps because in the old praxis there actually was a distinction between KSP XT)WT and KSP )#M, and in Ezekiel between X+)T and )#M. 2

*************************************** 2.  The three sections, Leviticus iv. 1-35 (hattath), v.1-13 (hattath-asham), and v. 14-26 (asham), are essentially not co-ordinate parts of one whole, but independent pieces proceeding from the same school.  For v. 1-13 is no continuation of or appendix to iv. 27-35, but a quite independent treatment of the same material, with important differences of form.  The place of the systematic generality of chap. iv. is here taken by the definite individual case, and what is analogous to it; the ritual is given with less minuteness, and the hierarchical subordination of ranks has no influence on the classification of offences.  In this section also asham and hattath