Charles Ellicott Commentary Leviticus 5:6

"and he shall bring his trespass-offering unto Jehovah for his sin which he hath sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat, for a sin-offering; and the priest shall make atonement for him as concerning his sin." — Leviticus 5:6 (ASV)

And he shall bring his trespass offering ... a lamb or a kid of the goats. —Better, a sheep, or a shaggy she-goat (Leviticus 4:32). The first thing to be noticed is that the sacrifice is here called (âshâm) “trespass offering,” which is the right rendering of the word, and is so translated in thirty-five out of the thirty-six passages in which it is used for a sacrifice.

In the verse before us, and in the rest of this section, namely, Leviticus 5:7–13, which discuss this sacrifice, no distinction is made between the ranks of the offenders. There is no special legislation for the high priest, the whole congregation, or the prince, as is the case with the (châtâth) sin offering, which is described in the previous chapter. The spiritual officer and temporal sovereign are here on a level with the ordinary layman.

There is no scale in the sacrifices corresponding to the position of the sinner. They are all alike to bring the same victim, either sheep or she-goat. Although nothing is said here about the sacrificial rites to be performed with the victim, it is implied in this case that, apart from the minor deviations specified here, they were to be the same as those for the sin offering.

The rule that prevailed during the Second Temple was as follows: the trespass offerings were killed, and their blood sprinkled, as was previously described in Numbers 4:0; they were then flayed, the fat and the internal organs taken out and salted, and strewn on the fire upon the altar. The remainder of this flesh was eaten by the priests in the court, like the sin offerings.