THE SCAPEGOAT
To support the penal substitution
view of sacrifice, specifically that the blood of the animal is shed in place
of the blood of the offerer, advocates refer to the ceremony of the scapegoat
on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:8-10, 20-22). The penal substitution
interpretation assumes that in the regular sin offering the sins of the
offerer are symbolically placed on the sacrificial animal by the laying on of
hands in the same manner as with the scapegoat. But there are differences
between the scapegoat and the sin offering. The Scapegoat is not killed and its
blood is not shed. IT is sent into the desert. The sin offering, however, is
pure and is offered to God. The scapegoat is impure, and anyone who touches it
is also considered impure. Therefore, the priest who carried out the ceremony
and the one appointed to release the scapegoat in the wilderness both had to
purify themselves afterward (Lev 16:26). In addition, both hands of the priest
are laid on the scapegoat whereas only one is placed on the sin offerings and
the other sacrifices in which there is no thought of removing sin (such as the
burnt offering and the peace offering). Most revealing is the fact that not
once in the NT, when the author speaks of the sacrifice of Christ, is the
ceremony of the scapegoat mentioned.
The scapegoat, then, is not a
type of Christ, for in the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement the two ideas of
a sacrificial victim and sin-bearing are mutually exclusive. An animal could be
sacrificed or offered to God only because it was thought not to be
contaminated with the sins of the people. This clearly presents a contradiction
for juridical theories of the Atonement. The use of the blood signified the
expiation or washing away of sin by a sinless life that had been offered to and
accepted by God. On the Day of Atonement one goat symbolized the means of
atonement and the other the effect of atonement: bearing away the sins
of the people to the land of forgetfulness. The ritual contains no idea of
punishment.
It was during the Reformation
that the exegesis of the rite changed to reflect the newly developed penal
substitution theory. The scapegoat provided a ready illustration of a theory of
the Atonement founded on the alleged imputation of sins to Christ. However,
there is no scriptural evidence for interpreting the scapegoat as a type of
Christ. Attempts to create such comparisons are mere exercise in typology
unfounded in Scripture. A change in the Christian understanding of redemption
is what allowed the association of Christ with the scapegoat. (Vee Chandler, Victorious
Substitution: Exploring the Nature of Salvation and Christ’s Atoning Work [Eugene,
Oreg.: Wipf & Stock, 2025], 107-8, italics in original)
