an unwitting fault: a wrong a person strays into without noticing, so that even the one who commits it cannot name it
This word turns up only once in the whole Bible, in Psalm 19:12, where the singer asks, "Who can discern his errors?" With no second appearance to compare, its meaning is built from the verb behind it, "to go astray" (שָׁגָה), and from its close relative in the law of Moses, the fixed term for a wrong done without meaning to (שְׁגָגָה).
That family of words pictures failure as losing your footing or your way rather than choosing to rebel:
- sheep that scatter and stray with no shepherd to hold them together
- a person who drifts away from commands he sincerely meant to keep
- the unsteady walk of someone who has had too much wine
Carried into the language of prayer, the noun names the wrongs a person wanders into, not the ones he sets out to commit.
In the psalm it stands next to a phrase for what is hidden, and the striking part is who these faults are hidden from: the person praying. He is not asking about failings his neighbors have missed but about failings he has missed in himself, which is why he asks God, rather than his own conscience, to clear him of them. The next line turns to the opposite kind of wrong, the bold and defiant sort, and that pairing matches the distinction the law of Moses draws between an offense committed by accident and one committed "with a high hand."
Disputed
Whether שְׁגִיאוֹת in Psalm 19:12 denotes particular hidden offenses the psalmist has already committed, or the human propensity to go astray as such.
- majorityThe noun denotes actual faults the worshiper has committed but cannot detect in himself, hidden from the sinner rather than merely from onlookers, which is why he asks God to acquit him of them; the parallel with the "hidden things" of the same verse and the contrast with the presumptuous sins of the next verse reproduce the Levitical polarity of inadvertent sin versus sin with a high hand.; Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50, Word Biblical Commentary 19 (Word, 1983); J. Ross Wagner, "From the Heavens to the Heart: The Dynamics of Psalm 19 as Prayer," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 61 (1999); Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 1-59: A Commentary (Augsburg, 1988); BDB, s.v. שְׁגִיאָה
- minorityThe verse laments the capacity to stray rather than cataloguing specific hidden offenses, and the following plea is not a request for the cleansing of existing wrongdoing but for acquittal and for strength to obey, so the noun is better rendered "wanderings" or "straying from the path."; John Goldingay, Psalms, vol. 1: Psalms 1-41, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Baker Academic, 2006), 295; Lee Roy Martin, "Science, Scripture, and Self: Epistemological Implications of Psalm 19," Pharos Journal of Theology 103 (2022)
Whether inadvertence in this word family means the agent is wholly unaware of the deed, or is aware of the deed while failing to grasp its wrongness and consequences.
- majorityThe noun שְׁגָגָה, and with it this cognate, derives from שׁגה "to stray, stagger" rather than from a root meaning "to make a mistake," so inadvertence implies consciousness of the act though not of its implications; the sinner knows what he did but not what it amounts to.; Jacob Milgrom, Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance, Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 18 (Brill, 1976); Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, Anchor Bible 3 (Doubleday, 1991)
- minorityThe derivational argument and its consequences for the sacrificial system are less secure than that account allows, and the terminology is better left at the plainer sense of a fault committed without intent.; Kyle C. Dunham, "The Sin Offering and the Guilt Offering of the Levitical Cult" (Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary)