forgiveness

Distinctions

Selichah (סליחה)

Root ס-ל-ח. Close to fifty Biblical occurrences, most famously Hashem's answer to Moshe after the Meraglim, salachti kidvarecha (Bamidbar 14:20). Its cognates appear many times for the forgiveness a korban brings (Vayikra 4:20-35, 5:10-26).

• Linguists connect selichah to the Akkadian salahu and the Aramaic zelicha, both meaning "sprinkling." This may be a reference to the sprinkling of the blood on the mizbeach, the main component of the korbanos.
• Rabbi Moshe Meth (Matteh Moshe) and Rabbi Yitzchak Eizik of Tirna (Sefer HaMinhagim): selichah pairs with avon (Bamidbar 14:19).
• Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg: selichah may be quantitatively the stronger, since it reaches the whole quantity of the sin, but only by completely deferring its punishment to a later time; the sin itself is left as it was.
• Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer: a reprieve, the sinner is given time to repay slowly.
• Rav Hirsch: the correction of the relationship between the sinner and the one (or One) he wronged.

The word also names the piyyut genre, Selichos, originally said inside the selach lanu berachah of Shemoneh Esrei and nowadays before davening begins or after Shemoneh Esrei.

Mechilah (מחילה)

Root מ-ח-ל, which Ernest Klein's A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language calls of uncertain etymology.

• Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur: absent from Tanach, present in Rabbinic literature and the liturgy; besides forgiveness it means cancelling a debt or forgoing what one deserves.
• Matteh Moshe and Sefer HaMinhagim pair it with pesha, and since no pasuk has mechilah they prove it from mocheh peshaecha (Yeshayahu 43:25), seemingly reading mochel as mocheh, to wipe away; Rabbi Aharon Fuld (glosses to HaBachur) suggests that mochel is mocheh plus al.
• Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Avigdor and Rabbi Yehuda Aszad: kin to yachel (Bamidbar 30:3), which Targum renders cancel, nullify.
• Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim proposes that many three-letter roots opening with mem are really the remaining two letters with the mem flipping the sense to its opposite (chok engrave, machak erase; leitz scorn, meilitz defend; na movement, mana withholding; rad rule, marad rebel, and more). Pappenheim himself does not apply this to mechilah; Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein suggests that perhaps we may: ח-ל is primarily hollowing out, and in many cases profaning something holy by emptying it, and a Jew who sins makes himself a hollow vessel, so מ-ח-ל would be the mechanism by which Hashem fills the hollow and re-infuses the penitent with holiness.
• Mecklenburg: qualitatively the stronger, it can erase part of the sin outright even if not all of it.
• Wertheimer: immediate and complete forgiveness.
• Rabbi Dosa the Greek (to Devarim 9:18): selichah defers the debt, mechilah forgives it at once.
• Rav Hirsch: commuting the punishment the guilty party deserves.
• Rabbi Zev Hoberman (Ze'ev Yitraf, Yom Kippur ch. 55): selichah erases a misdeed and also restores the love that existed before it, while mechilah only erases the misdeed and waives the grievance, leaving the relationship at neutral. Rabbi Eliyahu Menachem Margulies (Emunas Eliezer, Yerach HaEisanim ch. 10) disagrees, since the Yom Kippur liturgy calls Hashem the One who grants mechilah and also selichah, which implies selichah is the greater. Following the Vilna Gaon, he explains selichah as forgiving the infraction itself and mechilah as Hashem forgoing the slight to His honor; so mechilah goes with pesha, deliberate sin, and the relation of servant to king, and selichah with chet, inadvertent sin, and the relation of son to father. He ties mechilah to machol, a circle dance: as a circle surrounds a central point, every Jew, however wicked, holds a point of pure intent, and Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner (Pachad Yitzchak, Yom Kippur 25:2) explains that Hashem forgives by reviving that buried intent, which calls the deliberateness of the sin into question.

Kapparah (כפרה)

Root כ-פ-ר.

• Matteh Moshe and Sefer HaMinhagim pair it with chet (Shemos 32:30); Rabbi Yechezkel Landau: elsewhere it goes with avon (Mishlei 16:6, Yeshayahu 27:9, Tehillim 78:38), but the Chumash pairing with chet governs.
• Malbim records two derivations. From kofer, ransom: kapparah is a price paid for forgiveness, usually a korban (kapparah also gives its name to Yom HaKippurim and to the Erev Yom Kippur kapparos). From kapporet, cover: kapparah covers the sin on the surface so it is no longer visible, but does not completely remove or wipe it away. Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein offers a harmonization of his own, that in English one "covers" a cost by offsetting it, so covering and paying a price can be two facets of one idea. Malbim's own summary is that kapparah recalls the price paid for sin and focuses on the transactional side of atonement.
• Rav Hirsch: the total negation of any negative ramification of the sin.

Mecklenburg and Wertheimer do not place kapparah against the other two.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Forms of Forgiveness," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 21 September 2019.

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Forms of Forgiveness," What's in a Word? Synonyms in the Hebrew Language (book manuscript).

Cited in the essay: Bamidbar 14:19-20; Vayikra 4:20-35 and 5:10-26; Yeshayahu 43:25; Bamidbar 30:3 with Targum; Shemos 32:30; Mishlei 16:6, Yeshayahu 27:9, Tehillim 78:38; Rabbi Moshe Meth, Matteh Moshe, and Rabbi Yitzchak Eizik of Tirna, Sefer HaMinhagim, on the three words for sin; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, with Rabbi Aharon Fuld's glosses; Rabbi Moshe Yitzchak Avigdor; Rabbi Yehuda Aszad; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim, Yerios Shlomo (חלק ג' עמ' כו), and Cheshek Shlomo s.v. עד גבי מעד; Rabbi Yechezkel Landau; Malbim, Sefer HaCarmel s.v. כפר; Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg; Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer, Beiurei Shemos Nirdafim s.v. סלח/מחל; Rav Hirsch; Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language; Rabbi Dosa the Greek to Devarim 9:18; Rabbi Zev Hoberman, Ze'ev Yitraf, Yom Kippur ch. 55; Rabbi Eliyahu Menachem Margulies, Emunas Eliezer, Yerach HaEisanim ch. 10; Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, Pachad Yitzchak, Yom Kippur 25:2.