Or HaChaim on Leviticus 4:3/אור החיים על ויקרא ד׳:ג׳

1 אם הכהן המשיח יחטא, If the anointed priest shall sin, etc. The Torah begins its list with the sin of an individual, although the Torah writes לאשמת העם, that this individual thereby brings guilt on the entire people. This is to tell us that an inadvertent sin committed by the High Priest is equivalent to an inadvertent sin by the whole community. If so, why did the Torah not begin the list of people who have to bring sin-offerings with 4,13 where the sin of the community is described, and wait with mentioning a sin by the High Priest until after verse 21 when inadvertent sins by individuals are listed? Perhaps the Torah meant to tell us that in the event of the High Priest and the community having committed an inadvertent sin, the sin-offering of the High Priest takes precedence over that of the community as a whole. The same rule would apply if both the King and the people had committed a sin. The reason given in Horiot 13 is that the High Priest is active in securing atonement whereas the community achieves its atonement passively. I have found in Torat Kohanim on verse 13 (item 240) in our chapter that when both a high Priest and the community have to offer bullocks as sin offerings, the bullock of the High Priest has to be offered first. This ruling is based on the word ואם in verse 13 meaning that what is listed here is only secondary to what has been listed before, i.e. the bullock of the High Priest.

2This raises the question why our sages could not have deduced this rule simply from the fact that the Torah has written about the bullock to be offered by the High Priest before it wrote about the bullock to be offered by the community in the event the latter committed an error? Perhaps the sages reasoned that if there were no other hint that the High Priest's bullock takes precedence except the fact that the paragraph about the High Priest sinning was mentioned first, we would have misunderstood the words לאשמת העם as a reference to the error the people had committed which is described in verse 13. That verse deals with the people having acted on the basis of an erroneous decision of the High Court. I would have thought that the reason the Torah described the High Priest's error as "the sin of the people" was because he had concurrred with the erroneous decision of the High Court, or had even been part of the Court which handed down the erroneous decision. Such an interpretation would be wrong. If the High Priest had been part of the High Court which handed down an erroneous decision, his atonement is part of the atonement of the whole people, i.e. he does not have to bring a bullock as an individual sin-offering (Horiot 7). The Torah commenced the sin-offering legislation with the High Priest in order that we should not arrive at an erroneous conclusion. In view of this I would not have been able to use the fact that the first paragraph deals with the sin-offering of the High Priest as proof that his sin-offering takes precedence even over the communal sin-offering. We are still faced with the problem why two separate exegetical comments were necessary to teach us this, a) the word ואם in verse 13, and b) the words כאשר שרף, in verse 21 (compare Torat Kohanim 255 on that verse). I believe that the reason there are two such exegetical openings is simply that if I had only had one, I would have reasoned that the High Priest's offering may be offered first, but does not have to be offered first. Seeing that the Torah provided us with two exegetical openings it is clear that the Torah considers the High Priest's offering taking precedence as mandatory. I have seen a comment by Korban Aharon who claims that unless I had both these expressions available for exegetical use I would have assumed that the High Priest's offering would take only partial precedence but that before he completed his offering one would start with the offering of the community. I do not see any merit in such reasoning. If the author of Korban Aharon were correct the Torah should not have written כאשר שרף את הפר הראשון, "the first bullock" in verse 21, but should have written את הפר האחד, "the one bullock." This would have indicated that the procedure of offering the bullock of the High Priest had not been completed as yet at that stage.

3לאשמת העם, so as to bring guilt on the people; we may understand this statement as parallel to what we are taught in Avot 5,18: that if someone is engaged in conferring merits on others he himself will not commit a sin. When the High Priest himself commits a sin, this is proof that the people did not enjoy sufficient merits by reason of his activities that it should have protected him against committing a sin himself. This is the meaning of לאשמת העם.

4Torat Kohanim interprets the words אשמת העם as providing us with a clue as to the nature of the sin on account of which the High Priest has to atone with the bullock as a sin-offering. The sin is described as העלם דבר, lack of knowledge of the correct religious ruling which resulted in the people violating a negative commandment involving an activity, as mentioned in verse 13. If all the High Priest had been guilty of was an erroneous activity, some hold that he would be required to bring the same kind of sin-offering as an ordinary individual, whereas others hold that he would not be culpable at all. We learned in Horiot 11 that the words מעם הארץ in verse 27 are proof that if the High Priest had been guilty of a personal sin consisting of a sinful act that he would be free of the obligation to offer a sin-offering altogether. According to Horiot 7 if the High Priest does not happen to be an outstanding scholar he is not required to offer a sin-offering of either kind, not for having committed a sinful act inadvertently nor for having handed down an erroneous ruling upon which the people acted. We need to understand the reason for such an halachah. Perhaps the reason is that if an erroneous ruling is handed down by a High Priest who also happens to be an outstanding scholar and upon whom the people place a great deal of reliance, such an error makes a deep impression on his soul, creating a distance between his soul and its holy roots so that the merits of the Israelites which he has been instrumental in securing for them is insufficient to protect him against harmful effects on his own soul. Such an effect would not occur when the High Priest only erred in personally committing an inadvertent sinful act, or even if a High Priest who was not presumed to be a scholar handed down an erroneous ruling. Such sins would not create the kind of distance between his soul and its holy roots that he would need to bring an additional sacrifice in order to re-establish the bonds with his soul's holy roots. The merits a High Priest confers on the multitude by means of his daily activities are enough to protect the soul of such a High Priest from major harm. G'd would not despise him on account of the error he committed. Furthermore, seeing that the High Priest's error did not involve the people, it does not leave such a deep impression on his soul.