It is not uncommon,
for example, for people, even scholars, to shorthand sacrificial practice by
saying that before killing an animal, the priest would place the sins of the offerer,
or the people as a whole, on that animal and then kill it. Unfortunately, this
is something that occurs nowhere in the sacrificial system as outlined in the
Torah, nor anywhere in the pagan sacrificial rituals of the ancient world, for
that matter.
The one ritual in which
such a thing occurs is within the ritual of the Day of Atonement (as first
described in Leviticus 16). Within this ritual, two goats are set apart, and
lots are cast (vv. 7-8). One of these goats is then taken, and the high priest
pronounces the sins of the people over it (vv. 20-22). This goat is not the goat
“for Yahweh.” This goat is not sacrificed. In fact, this goat cannot be
sacrificed, because, bearing the sins of the people on it, it is now unclean
and unfit to be presented as an offering. The goat is so unclean, in fact, that
the one who leads it out into the wilderness is himself made unclean by contact
with it (v. 26).
The goat is sent into
the wilderness, the region still controlled by evil spiritual powers as
embodied in Azazel, such that sin is returned to the evil spiritual powers who were
responsible for its production. This represents the primary enactment of the
principle of expiation in Israel’s ritual life, though the principle is found
throughout the Hebrew Scriptures (see. Ps. 103/102:12). The New Testament
authors see this element of atonement fulfilled in Christ as He bears the sins
of the people and is driven outside of the city to die the death of an accursed
criminal (as in Matt. 27:27-44; Rom. 8:3-4; Heb. 13:12-13). (Stephen De Young, The
Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century [Chesterton,
Ind.: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2021], 179-80)
