1. Sin is a religious conception. It does not signify a breach of law or morality, or of popular custom and sacred usage, but an offense against God, provoking His punishment. As long as the deity is merely dreaded as an external power, not adored as a moral power ruling life from within for a holy purpose, sin, too, is considered a purely formal offense. The deity demands to be worshiped by certain rites and may be propitiated by other formal acts.(732) For Judaism, however, sin is a straying from the path of God, an offense against the divine order of holiness. Thus it signifies an abuse of the freedom granted man as his most precious boon. Therefore sin has a twofold character; formally it is an offense against the majesty of God, whose laws are broken; essentially it is a severance of the soul’s inner relations to God, an estrangement from Him. 2. Scripture has three different terms for sin, which do not differ greatly in point of language, but indicate three stages of thought. First is _het_ or _hataah_, which connotes any straying from the right path, whether caused by levity, carelessness, or design, and may even include wrongs committed unwittingly, _shegagah_. Second is _avon_, a crookedness or perversion of the straight order of the law. Third is _pesha_, a wicked act committed presumptuously in defiance of God and His law. As a matter of course, the conception of sin was deepened by degrees, as the prophets, psalmists and moralists grew to think of God as the pattern of the highest moral perfection, as the Holy One before whom an evil act or thought cannot abide. The rabbis usually employed the term _aberah_, that is, a transgression of a divine commandment. In contrast to this they used _mitzwah_, a divine command, which denotes also the whole range of duty, including the desire and intention of the human soul. From this point of view every evil design or impulse, every thought and act contrary to God’s law, becomes a sin.