Lev 16:33-34 in the LXX reads:
καὶ ἐξιλάσεται τὸ ἅγιον
τοῦ ἁγίου καὶ τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ μαρτυρίου καὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον ἐξιλάσεται καὶ περὶ
τῶν ἱερέων καὶ περὶ πάσης συναγωγῆς ἐξιλάσεται καὶ ἔσται τοῦτο ὑμῖν νόμιμον αἰώνιον
ἐξιλάσκεσθαι περὶ τῶν υἱῶν Ισραηλ ἀπὸ πασῶν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν ἅπαξ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ
ποιηθήσεται καθάπερ συνέταξεν κύριος τῷ Μωυσῇ
The NETS translate the following as:
And he shall make the
holy of the holy ritually acceptable, and he shall make ritually acceptable the
tent of meeting and the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and
for the entire congregation. And this shall be a perpetual precept for you, to
make atonement for the sons of Israel for all their sins. It shall be done once
a year as the Lord instructed Moyses.
On the verb εξιλασκομαι and it meaning
"propitiation," not expiration merely in this passage, R.B. Jamieson noted:
Given that εξιλασκομαι occurs both with sancta as direct object and with prepositions governing persons and sins, it seems best to view the translator as using the verb as a translation equivalent for Piel כפר, to convey both “purging” (the sancta) and “making atonement for” (persons and sins). This fits Büchner’s observation, cited earlier, that the Leviticus LXX translator’s lexical choices are more often governed by a desire to match Hebrew forms one-to-one than to produce perfectly sensible Greek. Büchner himself persuasively argues that, in Hellenistic Greek up to the time of the LXX, εξιλασκομαι has no attested uses meaning “expiate” or “purge.” Based on this and on exceptional instances where the LXX renders Piel כפר with other verbs such as καθαριζω, Büchner argues that in Lev 16:16, rather than being a cipher for the Hebrew, εξιλασεται has the more intelligible Greek sense of “reverence” (Büchner, Dirk. “Some Reflections on Writing a Commentary on the Septuagint of Leviticus.” In “Translation is Required”: The Septuagint in Retrospect and Prospect, ed. Robert J.V. Hiebert, 107-17. SCS 56. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature). Nevertheless, in both this instance and others, this seems an overly complicated explanation, and gives insufficient weight to the translator’s decision to render the עַל clause in the accusative. Thus, similar to Büchner’s conclusion that αμαρτια takes on a hitherto unattested cultic sense in the LXX (Büchner, Dirk. “A Cultic Term (αμαρτια) in the Septuagint: Its Meaning and Use from the Third Century B.C.E. until the New Testament.” BIOSCS 42:1-17), I would argue that, as a translation equivalent for Piel כפר, εξιλασκομαι means both “render propitious” (Gen 32:21) and “purge” (R.B. Jamieson, Jesus’ Death and Heavenly Offering in Hebrews [Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 172; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019], 46 n. 48)
