While such examples could be
multiplied, two others will suffice. In Numbers 16, in response to Israel’s
mutiny against Moses and Aaron, Yahweh’s wrath was again kindled against the
people (16:45) in the form of a plague that killed 14,700 people (16:48–49).
Moses describes this as wrath קצֶף) ) having gone forth from the Lord, and his
instinctive response ( כִּי ) is to instruct Aaron to make atonement ( כָּ פַר
) for them by an offering of incense (16:46). When Aaron had done this, the
plague was checked (16:47–48); the Lord’s wrath had indeed been turned away by
atonement.
A final example illustrates
the same concept. In Numbers 25, the camp of Israel is found in a similar
tangle of idolatry, because the people had been fornicating with the Moabites
and worshiping their gods as a result (Num 25:1–3). The response from God, once
again, is wrath: “And Yahweh was angry [ אַף ] against Israel” (25:3). His
wrath was expressed in the form of a plague that consumed twenty-four thousand
lives in Israel (25:8–9), and he ordered the execution of the guilty that his
wrath might be turned away (25:4). In the midst of that judgment, however, an
Israelite brazenly intended to commit the same sin in the sight of the whole
assembly (25:6). Then one of the priests, Phinehas, arose and slew both the man
and the woman (25:7–8). The text notes that in that moment the plague, which
had been the manifestation of God’s anger, was checked (25:8). Yahweh then
announced that Phinehas’s zeal for the Lord’s righteousness had “turned away My
wrath [ ה שִׁ יב אֶת־ חֲ מָ תִ י ] from the sons of Israel . . . so that I did
not destroy the sons of Israel in My jealousy” (25:11). God then identifies
this turning away of his wrath as כָּ פַר : “he was jealous for his God and
made atonement [ כָּ פַר ] for the sons of Israel” (25:13).
These texts substantiate
that the biblical concept of propitiation—the efficacious satisfaction of or
turning away of divine wrath—is synonymous with making atonement. In each
scenario, when atonement was made, the wrath that had been expressed in the form
of a plague was stopped. This propitiation was not provisional; the Israelites
were not required to subjectively appropriate Phinehas’s execution or Aaron’s
incense offering by the addition of any work of their own. Rather, the act of
atonement itself was sufficient to turn away wrath. (Michael Riccardi, To
Save Sinners: A Critical Evaluation of the Multiple Intentions View of the
Atonement [Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2023], 103-4)
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