Kommentar zu Wajikra 5:24

בראשו — This means the principal — the capital (ראש) money.

ביום אשמתו, when he confessed and promised not to sin again in respect to any or several of the above mentioned offences, i.e. denial of things given to him in trust, open robbery, abusing his position of authority unfairly, or appropriating things lost by another Jew when he was aware of the owner of the item in question.

לאשר הוא לו יתננו, “he shall give it to its owner.” This means that the party who had first been guilty of denial has to give both principal and premium to the injured party. Restitution is not effected through the good offices of the court but directly by the guilty party to the injured party. It is also possible that the words לאשר הוא לו mean that the money is to be returned to the party entitled to it, i.e. the heirs of the person from whom it has been taken against his will, if that person had died in the interval.

The principal. Meaning: The principal is called the head because it is the head of the money, since it is the main source and the root of all profit that results from it, just as the head of a living creature which is the main source and root of all its limbs.

ישבע עליו לשקר ושלם, “about which he has sworn falsely,” the Torah here tells us of the penalty for this sin, but where did the warning not to commit this sin which we expect, appear? Answer: compare Leviticus 19,11: לא תשקרו, “do not lie!”

וחמשתיו [AND HE SHALL ADD] THE FIFTH PART [MORE THERETO) — By using the plural וחמשתיו the Torah includes in this law of restitution the many additional fifths possible in respect to one principal — that if he denies the fifth (i. e. he asserts that he has repaid both capital and fifth, but has not really paid the latter, for which a claim is now made against him) and takes an oath that he has paid it, but afterwards admits the claim, then he must now bring (pay) a fifth in addition to this fifth (a fifth of the original fifth which now has become the קרן in addition to it), and so he keeps on adding a fifth to the original fifth until the principal about which he takes an oath becomes less in value than a P’rutah (Sifra, Vayikra Dibbura d'Chovah, Section 13 12; Bava Kamma 103a).

The money belongs. To exclude someone who is the relative or friend of [the one to] whom the money belongs. This is the same as: “Everyone’s holy things shall belong to him” (Bamidbar 5:10), upon which the Sages derived that it is his prerogative to give them to whichever kohein he wants, because the pleasure of giving to whom he chooses is the right of the owners. See later in Parshas Naso (ibid.).

ושלם אותו בראשו, “he shall repay the victim in full;” he does not have to pay twice the full amount, as in the case of a thief who has stolen tangible chattels. Neither does he have to repay the victim four or five times the value as in the case of a thief who has destroyed the evidence by selling the stolen goods or consuming them. An alternate explanation of this verse: “he has to repay the stolen object, and in the event that the stolen goods have already passed to other hands so that we cannot determine its value, his sin offering would not be acceptable.

לאשר הוא לו [AND HE SHALL ADD THE FIFTH PART MORE THERETO AND GIVE IT] UNTO HIM TO WHOM IT APPERTAINETH — i. e. to him whose is the money (Sifra, Vayikra Dibbura d'Chovah, Section 13 12; Bava Kamma 108; also Bava Kamma 103a).

וחמשיתיו, “plus twice an additional 25%, i.e. 20% when counted after adding the full amount of the fine, if he had only owned up to his sin after witnesses have testified to his being guiltyIf he admitted his guilt without our having independent proof of it, it suffices if he adds 25% to the value of the goods in question.י

יתננו ביום אשמתו, “the robber has to make restitution on the day when he had been declared guilty, in order for his guilt offering to become acceptable to the Lord.

או מכל אשר ישבע עליו לשקר, “or from anything concerning which he had sworn falsely;” this additional detail is meant to include תשומת יד, intangibles, such as pledges or loans which no longer can be collected from the sinner. It also includes false oaths as witness, or intangible damage caused by a non priest entering sacred precincts, which did not cause measurable damage to the Temple. In some of these examples the sinner did not enjoy a tangible or even intangible profit from having committed this sin. In such instances the Torah took this fact into consideration when assessing the penalty to be applied. This is why financially hard up people, guilty of either of these sins may attain atonement by low cost offerings, depending on how hard up they are. The reason the sages have tagged these sacrifices with the expression: עולה ויורד, “ascending or descending,” is that if a poor man delayed bringing the inexpensive offering he was entitled to due to his economic status, and he became wealthy in the interval, he cannot plead poverty as a reason for offering the low priced offering. On the other hand, if the sinner before having a chance to offer the higher priced offering became impoverished, G-d will accept the offering of a pair of birds instead of a sheep or goat, or in extreme cases even a meal offering. If someone ate (inadvertently, of course) forbidden fat from a sacrifice, or he ate any kind of blood, or he ate on the Day of Atonement, or he performed biblically prohibited kind of work on the Sabbath, or he indulged in sexual intercourse forbidden under the heading of “incest,” all sins from which he derived physical pleasure, he must bring the standard type of sacrifice prescribed by the Torah. Someone who ate from sacrificial meat that he was not entitled to eat from has actually enjoyed a dual benefit from his sin, so that he must bring a sin offering worth two shekels. Similarly, if he swore falsely not to have stolen what he has been accused of. If he is guilty of what is called: “a guilt offering valid while we are in doubt if he had committed a sin,” he first has to offer a sacrifice worth two shekels, and if it is eventually determined that he had indeed been guilty of having committed that sin, he offers an additional sacrifice worth one shekel. Although at first glance we may be puzzled by this, the reason is that the only reason why he had not known that he had indeed committed the sin in question, is because he chose to give himself the benefit of the doubt. Next time, hopefully, he will be more careful not to develop such a doubt.