The Hebrew chet is the noun form of chata (to sin, miss the mark) and denotes the condition of guilt or sin. Numbers 27:3 uses it when Zelophehad's daughters say their father 'did not die for his own sin' โ he was not guilty of the sins of Korah's rebellion. The word captures sin as a forensic status: the state of being at fault before God or others.
The chet and its companion words (chataah, chattath) form the most common sin-vocabulary cluster in the OT. Together they describe sin as missing a target โ an archer's metaphor indicating that sin is not merely moral failure but a directional problem. The sinner is aimed at the wrong goal or has failed to hit the right one. The sacrificial system was designed to address chet through substitution: the animal bearing what the sinner deserved. This anticipates the final sacrifice โ 'God made him who had no sin to be sin (hamartia) for us' (2 Corinthians 5:21).