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The purpose of this article is to study the meaning of ‘kipper’ in the hattat, excluding live-hattat (scapegoat), offering. Generally, the word ‘kipper’ has been translated as ‘to make atonement for.’ For a few last decades, however, many scholars have thought that in many cases ‘kipper’ does not simply mean ‘to make atonement for.’ Especially, J. Milgrom, a leading scholar for the study of this word, argued that in the context of the hattat offering ‘kipper’ means ‘to purify (non-human objects),’ based on the fact that the blood of the hattat animal is never used on a person and that the verb 'kipper' never has a human being as direct object.
In many cases, of course, ‘kipper’ means ‘to purify’ non-human objects such as sanctuary, altar and so on. Even though a person is never governed by ‘kipper’ directly, the meaning of the word becomes limited when one argues that a person is not purified in the hattat offering. First of all, in the context of Lev 8 - 16 hattat is offered in order to distinguish between the holy and the secular, and between the clean and the unclean (Lev 10: 10). This means that the hattat offering is to complete purification and sanctification. Then, what or who is purified and/or sanctified by the hattat offering? According to the priestly tradition, not only the sanctuary but also the people such as the (high) priests and the Israelites are the objects of cleanness and holiness and such objects should be purified and/or sanctified based on the degree of holiness. On this point, ‘kipper,’ expressed as the ultimate result of the hattat offering, means purification and sanctification.
Moreover, a syntactic study of ‘kipper’ in the text of hattat offering is helpful. Milgrom argues that ‘kipper + לꘞ + non-human’ means ‘on/over sanctum,’ and ‘kipper + לꘞ + human’ means ‘on behalf of person.’ It is not clear why his translations of non-human and human objects are different. Rather, it is the verbs that express the purpose of ‘kipper,’ such as אꖲꖐ, רꖏꖩ, and שׁꕒꙎ that are applied both to person(s) (Lev 12: 7, 8; 16: 30) and sanctum (Ex 29: 33-37; Lev 8: 15; 16: 14-19; Ez 43: 20-26). Furthermore, the meanings of these verbs, used together with ‘kipper,’ are different according to the degree of holiness of both human and non-human objects. For examples, if אꖲꖐ and שׁꕒꙎ are used for the altar (Ex 29: 36; Lev 8: 15), for the woman who bears a child, only רꖏꖩ is used. This means that kipper means not only to purify but also to sanctify sanctuary and human(s). Hence ‘Kipper’ means more than ‘to purify (sanctuary).