Devar/5771/Vayikra
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< Devar | 5771
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Thus shall he do with the bullock; as he did with the bullock of the sin-offering, so shall he do with this; and the priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven (Lev 4:20)
Here it is referring to a mistake by the people: And if the whole congregation of Israel shall err, the thing being hid from the eyes of the assembly, and do any of the things which the LORD hath commanded not to be done, and are guilty (ibid 13). The Oral Torah clarifies that the "public mistake" means that the Sanhedrin erred: a High Court which erred, and ruled to uproot one of the main bodies of the Torah, and the people obeyed them -- the court is exempt, and each individual who obeyed them must bring a fixed sin offering: as the verse states, "the thing being hid", and not the entire body. The court is never held accountable until such time as they rule to uproot a portion and leave a portion, in those matters which are not explicitly stated in the Torah; but if they did, the court would be liable for an offering, and those who obeyed them exempt. (Laws of Errors 14:1).
The segment prior to our verse speaks about an error made by the High Priest: if the anointed priest shall sin so as to bring guilt on the people… (Lev 4:3). But there, in contrast to our segment, the Torah does not say "he shall be forgiven", nor any words regarding atonement. Why? After all all Jews have a portion in the World to come, even if they sinned (Laws of Repentance 3:13)!
The High Priest brings atonement to all Israel by means of the Yom Kippur service: the "sent goat" -- since it provides atonement for all Israel, the High Priest confesses over it in the name of all Israel (Laws of Repentance 1:5). And because he is God's emissary, who brings atonement to Israel, the Torah does not need to spell out that he will receive atonement. Or perhaps the Torah wishes to hint that the greater the person, the more he must be careful -- and therefore it refrained from stating "he shall be forgiven", since he must direct his own actions with much more care.
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