Chata #58

Chata is the most common Hebrew verb for sinning. Its basic meaning is “to miss,” and one passage uses it in exactly that ordinary sense, in the account of the left-handed Benjamite slingers who could throw stones at a hair’s breadth “and not miss” (Judges 20:16). The moral use, to sin, builds on this picture of a person who fails to hit the target that God has set.

Biblical Usage

Joseph uses the verb when he refuses Potiphar’s wife, asking how he could do such wickedness and “sin against God” (Genesis 39:9). David uses it in his confession after his sin with Bathsheba, saying to God, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Psalm 51:4). The verb covers wrongs against people and offenses against God, and Exodus 20:20 says the fear of God is given so that the people will not sin.

It is also central to the sacrificial system. Leviticus 4 opens with the case of someone who sins “through ignorance” against the commandments (Leviticus 4:2), showing that unintentional sin still counted. The noun chattat, from the same root, names both sin and the sin offering, so the word for the problem and the word for its ritual remedy are the same. A different stem of the verb means the reverse: to remove sin, or “purify,” as in David’s prayer “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean” (Psalm 51:7).

Theological Significance

The picture of missing a mark is close to that of the Greek hamartia, and the Septuagint regularly translates chata with the Greek verb of the same family, which is one reason the two words are commonly discussed together. The Hebrew Bible also uses it for a spread of offenses, so the same root can describe a slip and a deliberate rebellion, and other terms such as avon and pesha are used to mark differences of degree. In Christian and Jewish teaching alike the word points to a standard outside the person, since sin is measured against what God has said, and it underlies both confession and the idea of a sacrifice that answers sin.