What about Hand
Laying?
One reason some assume sacrifice is substitutionary death is because
certain sacrifices call for the offerer to lay a single hand on the animal. The
mistaken idea is that this gesture means the animal is substituting for the
offerer who should really be the one to die. But the fact that there is no such
thing as a substitutionary death sacrifice automatically excludes this as a
possibility. Notice that the “well-being” sacrifices (šəlāmîm) (Lev 3),
which have no atoning function (because they have nothing to do with sin), are
one of the sacrifices that require a single-hand-laying gesture (3:2, 8, 13).
This means the single-hand gesture cannot be understood as substitutionary
death or transferring sin or whatever else because “sin” is excluded from view
for these non-atoning well-being sacrifices. . . . what does the hand gesture
mean then? Quite simply, it is a gesture of ownership. The sign-hand gesture is
distinguished from the double-hand gesture, which occurs on the Day of
Atonement, although only upon the goat that is not sacrificed and
remains alive (16:21). (Andrew Remington Rillera, Lamb of the Free:
Recovering the Varied Sacrificial Understanding of Jesus’s Death [Eugene,
Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2024], 13-14)
The scapegoat is not about curse transmission. Covenant curses
are not placed on the goat—the word does not appear in this ritual—but rather
Israel’s ritual contaminations of “iniquities and transgressions” are placed on
the goat (Lev. 16:21-22). The day of Decontamination is a disinfecting ritual for
the sanctuary and its sancta (16:33) that begins in the holy of holies, the
innermost part of the sanctuary. Once the purgation blood disinfects that area,
the high priest then moves to the holy place and decontamination the curtain
and the incense altar, then he proceeds to the outer altar. Once these are all
purged, then he sends the “tote-goat” to the wilderness as it is ritually
loaded with all the guilt, transgression, and sin contamination of the people
that were just removed from each of the preceding sancta (16:21-22).
. . .
. . . talk of “becoming a curse” is used several times in places like
Jeremiah to simply speak about becoming an object of derision, reproach, and
scorn and has nothing to do with curse transmission or anything like “sin
riddance” (cf. Jer 24:9 [katara LXX]; 29:18 [verse not in LXX]; 42:18 [ara
in LXX, 49;18]; 44:8, 12 [katara in LXX 51:8, 12]).
. . .
So how is Paul saying then Jesus “redeemed” us [in Gal 3:13]? First,
Paul says that those “of the works of the Torah are under a curse” and then
quotes the covenant curse from Deut 27:26 (Gal 3:10). Then Paul says that
Christ likewise came under the covenant curse from Deuteronomy by quoting from
Deut 21:23 as proof that he died a paradigmatically cursed death (Gal 3:13).
Thus, Paul is at pains to communicate the simple point, not that sin or curse
was transmitted from others to Jesus at the cross, but that God’s own
Son participated fully in Israel’s cursed condition his entire life.
Since all those “of the works of the Torah are under a curse” (3:10) and God’s
Son was “born under the law” (4:4), then Paul understands all of Jesus’s life
from birth to death (hung upon a tree) as characterized by the curse of the law
that he thinks all Israel is living under. (Paul seems to believe that Israel
has remained under the curse of the law ever since Babylon—i.e., Israel was
“still in exile” when Jesus was born under the law.)
The curse is not transmitted to him as sin is transmitted to a
tote-goat; rather, Jesus is simply “born under the law” during a time in
Israel’s history where the curses promised in Deuteronomy and prophesied about
in places like Jeremiah are the lived reality for all, but also that Jesus’s
death functions as a sort of “poster child” for Israel’s condition, just as
Jesus is the Suffering Servant par excellence. This is not about
substitution, but rather seems to be better conceptualized as “(covenantal) cursed
solidarity.”
If this is the case that Paul is communicating Jesus’s full
participation in the negative conditions of Israel, then, as Hooker has asked,
“[H]ow do the conclusions follow? How are the Jews set free from the curse of
the law, and how does the blessing comes to the Gentiles?” (Hooker, From
Adam to Christ, 15) She goes on to observe that “underlying this there is
an important assumption”; namely, “the resurrection.” (Hooker, From Adam to
Christ, 15, 16 respectively). Even though the resurrection is not mentioned
explicitly in 3:13, it has to be in view, even if it remains implicit (cf.
1:16; 2:20). The resurrection is the only way Paul’s conclusions can
follow. Paul says that “the blessing” (opposite of curse) comes “in Christ
Jesus” (3:14) and this can only be because in Jesus’s resurrection the opposite
of the curse he was living under (and died under) has occurred; the curse has
been overturned in his resurrection. This point about the resurrection is made
explicit in Rom 4:25 where Paul says Jesus was raised for our justification,
the very concern of Gal 3:11 (cf. 2:16-17).
The fact that it is Jesus’s resurrected life that breaks the curse poses
significant problems for any attempts to push the tote-goat image through in
Gal 3. The blessing comes not by forever banishing a once pure victim that has
had a curse unloaded onto it, but rather by the one who overrules and annuls
the curse by being raised up (cf. 1:15-16; 2:20) after living and dying under
the curse (3:13 with 4:4). Put another way, the curse is dealt with by
construing it as a judicial sentence, (hence the dikaioō language
throughout Gal 3:2-3) which is an altogether different metaphorical register
than sacrifice, and then reversing that judicial sentence in Jesus’s
resurrection life. Paul gives no hint that the curse has been carried away by
permanently banishing a living creature, which would be essential if the
predicate “tote-goat” is to be remotely intelligible. By living and dying under
the curse of the covenant, Jesus’s resurrection thus “redeems” all those living
enslaved under the curse since it means that the curse does not have the final
word; rather, the blessing of resurrection does. (Ibid., 254, 255, 256-57; comment in square brackets added for clarification)
