When a man or woman has committed any sins toward a fellow human being, to commit treachery towards Hashem, and that soul shall bear their guilt, they shall confess the sins that they have done. They shall make restitution in the principal amount and add one-fifth to it, giving it to the one who was wronged. (Bamidbar 5:6-7)

According to the Rambam, this line is the source for the Jewish form of repentance, teshuvah. Literally meaning “to return,” teshuvah is all about returning to the person you truly are. The most essential step of this process is confessing the wrong (a process known as viduy), not minimizing or making excuses, but owning up to it. However, the verse from the Torah seems to be talking specifically about theft. And to make the restitution the thief must pay an additional 20% (known as chomesh) of what they stole. If Rambam says that confession is required for all sins, does this one-fifth penalty of chomesh apply to all sins as well?

Short answer no. Chomesh only applies to monetary transgressions and when a false oath is taken (i.e. when the thief is confronted and they swear they’re innocent.) So if you break Shabbos you don’t have to keep the next Shabbos for an extra 6 hours. Rambam makes the teshuvah process very clear in his Mishneh Torah (Hilchos Teshuvah) “…if a man violates any one of [the mitzvahs], either presumptuously or erroneously, when he will repent himself and turn away from his sinful way, he is obliged to confess before God, blessed is He!” Three clear stages: regret (Charatah), stopping the sinful behavior (Azivat HaCheit), and confession (Viduy). That’s it. No mention of the chomesh penalty.  

However, if we continue to read the parsha, we have two rather strange mitzvahs; Sotah and Nazir. Sotah is a bizarre ritual that a married couple can do if the man suspects his wife has been unfaithful to him after she has disobeyed him and done some suspicious behavior. The woman can choose to go through a ritual to prove her innocence. It’s not just an apology, it’s invoking a miracle to return peace to the marriage. The Nazirite, on the other hand, is someone who takes a vow that restricts them from drinking wine and cutting their hair. They completely dedicate themselves to holiness for some length of time. It’s the ultimate course correct. Why don’t the Sotah and the Nazirite just do the teshuvah process? Clearly, there does seem to be a need to do more than just teshuvah to fully rectify matters. 

The Chidushei HaRim wonders why Rambam uses the verse above for his source for teshuvah when there are other verses in the Torah that talk about repentance. As I said before, the verse is specifically about stealing and breaking an oath. When a person steals, we act like the object is ours. We may even come to believe it. We do with it what we will with complete disregard for the real owner’s intent. But then the verse says, “that soul shall bear their guilt.” Meaning that inevitably our conscience will provoke us with that guilty weight. When we finally listen to that voice and admit we were wrong, it isn’t enough just to return the stolen item. The only way to make it right isn’t just to return it, but to contribute to it, add value to it. So when we give it back, we’ve at least given some redeeming quality for the wrong we did. 

On a deeper level, the Chidushei HaRim says that this mitzvah is also talking about the holiest level of our souls, the neshama. When Hashem blew the neshama into us, He imparted a fraction of his Essence (so to speak). But it was on loan and to be returned to Him when we leave this world. We are here for a purpose, most simply put to represent His Name and sanctify it. But when we forget this loan and believe that our life is 100% ours, that we can act however we want, to do selfish things, waste our life, and go against what we know is right, it is as if we’ve stolen our neshamas. When it comes time to give back our neshama, we don’t want to stand before our Creator with nothing to show for the time we were given. We want to say we fulfilled some purpose, left the world better than we found it, and ultimately improved our neshamas. This is the chomesh of all teshuvah. 

We are not meant to be angels. Making mistakes is part of life. We’re supposed to engage in trial and error and battle our yetzer haras (evil inclinations). That’s why teshuvah exists. It is only through our mistakes that we grow and ultimately make ourselves better than if we had never done the sin in the first place. In fact, that’s really what life is all about. If, when it comes to repairing our relationships, we’re only trying to return to the status quo, we’ve missed the point. We don’t just want our relationships to be stagnant, we want them to become deeper, closer, we want them to transcend. Doing teshuvah after a mistake can accomplish that. When it does, we become more than what we were. 

This blog post was heavily inspired by Rebbetzin Esther Wein’s class Naso: A Step by Step Guide to Success. For more depth and details on what I wrote about, please check it out.