offering.”12 Depending on the context, the atonement for sin is predominant in some texts; in others the emphasis is on the purification aspect of the offering. In a 2003 monograph, Nobuyoshi Kiuchi has argued that the verb ḥāṭāʾ means to “hide oneself (to God)” in a spiritual sense, describing the overall situation of a human being who turns from the Lord.13 Therefore, “the noun ḥaṭṭāʾt describes the state of hiding oneself.”14 This is a novel interpretation, but it has found little echo in the