Selach Lanu: forgiveness

Built from one verse

Abudarham (a commentary on the prayers, written in Spain around 1340) says both requests come from a single verse. When King Shlomo (Solomon) prayed at the Temple he had built, he asked God to "forgive Your people who sinned against You, and all the rebellions they committed against You" (Melachim I, the first book of Kings, 8:50). Chatanu matches the first half, pashanu the second. A few verses earlier Shlomo says: "there is no person who does not sin."

A map of the Amidah in Hoshea

Abudarham records another proof for the order of the middle blessings, from Hoshea (Hosea) chapter 14, the chapter the Ribon HaOlamim prayer draws on. It goes through the chapter phrase by phrase, one phrase for each blessing in turn. "Take words with you" matches the blessing for understanding. "Return to Hashem" matches the blessing about returning. "Say to Him: forgive all iniquity" (Hoshea 14:3) matches this blessing. The next phrases match the blessings for rescue and for healing, and so on down the list.

A request and a one-word answer

After the spies returned with a frightening report, the people cried that night and wanted to go back to Egypt (Bamidbar 14:1-4). Moshe prayed: "Forgive, please, the sin of this people, according to Your great kindness." God answered: "I have forgiven, as you said." In Hebrew the answer is one word, salachti. It is the same root as selichah, the name of our blessing.

Forgiving is not an angel's job

The Zohar Chadash (a companion collection to the Zohar, the central book of Kabbalah) pictures Moshe refusing to let an angel lead the people. They are guilty and stubborn, he says. Handed over to an angel, and even more to strict judgment, they would have no survivors. The text explains: once people sin, an angel can carry out judgment but no angel is allowed to forgive or pardon. That belongs to God, who is merciful and gracious. Now read "a good and forgiving God" again.

כֵּיוָן שֶׁחוֹטְאִים יֵשׁ בְּיַד הַמַּלְאָךְ לַעֲשׂוֹת דִּין, וְלֹא לַעֲשׂוֹת סְלִיחָה וּמְחִילָה. אֲבָל אַתָּה רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן

Why the line switches from Father to King

Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz (a rabbi and preacher of the 1700s) hears two steps in the first two lines. After a slip or two, you are still a child, so you say "Our Father, we sinned." Do the same wrong again and again and you are called a poshea, a word from the same root as pashanu, he writes, as the Gemara calls a man who forgot the same duty two years running (Beitza 16b). Now you are more like a servant, so you say "Our King, pashanu." This step down is a mercy: a son who keeps defying his father is judged more harshly than a servant.

כי אז אנחנו עדיין בבחינת בן לאב ומחל לנו מלכנו כי פשענו כי אז אנו יורדים ממדרגת בן רק במדרגת עבד

"Abundantly" means the thousandth time

The Tanya (the main book of Chabad Chassidut, first printed in 1796) stops on one word of the closing line: "abundantly." Between people, if you hurt someone, he forgives you, and you do it again, forgiving a second time is hard, and a third or fourth even harder. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Chabad Rebbe, writes that with God there is no difference between one time and a thousand. Forgiveness comes from mercy, and God's mercy has no limit.

אֲבָל בְּמִדַּת הַקָּדוֹשׁ־בָּרוּךְ־הוּא אֵין הֶפְרֵשׁ בֵּין פַּעַם אַחַת לְאֶלֶף פְּעָמִים, כִּי הַמְּחִילָה הִיא מִמִּדַּת הָרַחֲמִים

Five hundred years, or one moment

The Gemara says the walk from the earth up to the sky takes five hundred years (Chagigah 13a). Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Elazar Leiner, a Chassidic rebbe in Poland, uses that number in his book Tiferet Yosef. The Gemara also says that returning to God (teshuvah) reaches all the way to God's throne (Yoma 86a). When a person turns to God and says from the depths of the heart, "Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned," he writes, that person gets there in a single moment. Now read the first line again.

ואומר ממעמקי הלב סלח לנו אבינו כי חטאנו, מגיע ברגע אחת עד כסא הכבוד

Do I hit my chest when I say "we have sinned"?

Some do, at "ki chatanu." The Mishnah Berurah (a central guide to daily Jewish law, around 1900) and the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (a short law guide from the 1860s) describe striking the heart with a fist while naming a sin in confession, as if telling it "you caused me to sin." Ta'amei HaMinhagim (a book on the reasons for customs), quoting an earlier work, says to leave out the strike here on Saturday night, or any time Tachanun (the prayer of pleading) is not said, since then the words are only prayer text.

Can I confess my own mistakes here?

Only in a general way. Seder HaYom writes, giving its own view ("it seems to me"), that a confession in this blessing should be the group one, in the plural. A personal confession, even in the singular and with details, belongs in Shome'a Tefillah ("Who hears prayer"), the last of the middle blessings. The Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary from the early 1900s) reports that Sha'ar HaKavanot, the recorded teachings of the Arizal (the Kabbalist of Tzfat, 1500s), also calls it highly fitting to confess there.

On a public fast day, where do the extra forgiveness prayers go?

The Shulchan Aruch says some add selichot (pleas for forgiveness) inside this blessing, and some wait until the whole Amidah is over. It calls the second way, the old practice in the Land of Israel, "the correct custom," and the Mishnah Berurah says later authorities agreed. If you do add them inside, he says only pleas about forgiveness belong here. If you forgot and already finished the blessing, say them after the Amidah.