Sunday, August 29, 2021

Stephen De Young (EO) on the Scapegoat Ritual

  

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)