Today, the Gemara continues its conversation about sacrifices made to atone for sins that were committed without a person’s awareness. The mishnah on the first daf of this tractate noted that the ritual sacrifice of goats on Rosh Chodesh (the new moon) atones for some of these:
For the defiling of the Temple or its sacrificial foods in which one did not have awareness, neither at the beginning nor at the end, the goats brought as sin-offerings as part of the additional offerings of the festivals and the goats brought as sin-offerings as part of the additional offerings of the new moons atone. — This is the statement of Rabbi Yehuda.
Rav Yehuda says that Shmuel says: What is the reasoning of Rabbi Yehuda? The verse states with regard to additional offerings of the new moons: “And one goat for a sin-offering to the Lord.” (Numbers 28:15) The final phrase alludes to the fact that this goat atones for a sin of which only the Lord is aware.
A person might not be aware that they sinned, but God, who sees everything, surely knows. The goat sin-offering on Rosh Chodesh covers these types of sins. Why, though, does the Torah need the additional words “to the Lord” in the verse describing such sacrifices? Aren’t all sacrifices offered to God?
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Reish Lakish offers a remarkable answer:
This phrase is necessary … What is different about the goat brought as a sin-offering of the new moon that it is stated with regard to it: “To the Lord,” a term not written with regard to other sin-offerings? The Holy One, Blessed be He, says, as it were: This goat shall be an atonement for the fact that I diminished the size of the moon.
The sin offering, it turns out, also atones for God — fittingly, given the day it is made, for God’s decision to diminish the size of the moon. Just over a year from now in the Daf Yomi cycle, we will encounter a famous midrash on Chullin 60 that explains:
When God first created the sun and the moon, they were equally bright. Then, the moon said before the Holy One, Blessed be He: “Master of the Universe, is it possible for two kings to serve with one crown? One of us must be subservient to the other.” God therefore said to her: “If so, go and diminish yourself.” She said before Him: “Master of the Universe, since I said a correct observation before You, must I diminish myself?”
In the Torah’s description of the fourth day of Creation, there is an apparent discrepancy between Genesis 1:14–15 where two luminaries are mentioned without an explicit description of their relative sizes, and Genesis 1:16, where the Torah states that one is larger. This midrash imagines how it happened: The moon thought having two luminaries was an unstable power configuration (“two kings with one crown”) and so, to correct that issue, God tells the moon to make herself smaller. This feels grossly unfair to the moon, so God now comes up with several different solutions to the problem, including noting that the moon shines both during the day and at night, whereas the sun shines only during the day, and that the Jewish people use the moon to count the days and months.
Unfortunately, none of these answers satisfy. The sun still shines brighter, and the Jewish people still count seasons by the sun as well as the moon. Seeing that the moon remains despondent, God agrees that she has been wronged. And so, in an incredible move, God atones for having hurt her:
God saw that the moon was not comforted. The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: “Bring atonement for me, since I diminished the moon.”
Back on our own daf, we now have the solution to two issues: Both the inclusion of the seemingly superfluous words “for the Lord” in the description of the Rosh Chodesh offering, and the timing of that sacrifice on the new moon.
I find this explanation to be both astonishing and profound. Astonishing, because according to this story, God, who sees and knows all, still has the capacity to make mistakes and the humility to rectify them. Profound, because as humans created in God’s image, surely we can, too.
Read all of Shevuot 9 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on May 10, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
