Isaiah 53:4-5 Of all the sacrifices, the Asham (guilt) offering is the most intentional. Leviticus 7:1-7 explains that the Cohen is to slaughter this offering and place it with the burnt offering. The blood is splashed on every side of the altar for the full atonement of the people. Moshe (Moses) states that the Asham offering is “especially holy.” The sages say it was given for those who have willfully and deliberately committed sins. This was so serious that a special prayer of repentance was added to the Yom Kippur liturgy called the Al Het. It is communally read each year:
May it be your will, Lord our God and God of our fathers, to forgive all our sins, to pardon all our iniquities and to cleanse us from all our sins. For the sin we committed against you with hard heartedness. (Fischer, Messianic Services for the festivals and Holy Days 83).
Thus the Asham offering, with t’shuvah (repentance) and acts of restitution, is different from the sin offering and is the only means by which one is made right with ADONAI. Ancient rabbinical sources linked the guilt offering to the Messiah as the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, knowing that through his sacrifice guilt could be removed. As noted by one theologian, “The difference between ‘guilt’ and ‘sin’ is important here. Whereas the words for ‘sin’ focus on its quality as an act or as personal failure, Asham point to the breach in relationships that sin causes” (Elwell 319). Of the Suffering Servant, the prophet Yesha’yahu states, “He was wounded because of our crimes, crushed because of our sins; and the disciplining that makes us whole fell on him, and by his bruises we are healed” (v.5).
As the fulfillment of the Asham offering, Yeshua the Suffering Servant is the vicarious sacrifice, whose substitutionary death provides the final ransom (Heb. 10:10) for those who have been alienated from God because of willful disobedience. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin (Lev. 17:11, Heb. 9:22), but Yeshua – the Asham offering-provides reconciliation with ADONAI.
Stern, D. H. (2016). The Complete Jewish Study Bible (1st ed., p. 581). Hendrickson Publishers Marketing LLC.