Era 4 · Covenant and WildernessLeviticus
The Day of Atonement
"One lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat"
After the death of Aaron's two sons, God says: "Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place within the vail before the mercy seat… that he die not: for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat."
Once a year Aaron bathes and puts on plain linen, not his garments of glory. He offers a bull as a purification offering for himself and his house. He takes a censer of coals from the altar and two handfuls of incense behind the veil, "that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat… that he die not." He sprinkles the bull's blood on and before the mercy seat seven times.
Two goats are brought before the LORD. "And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat." The goat for the LORD is killed as a purification offering for the people, and its blood is carried behind the veil too. So Aaron cleanses the holy place, the tent and the altar "because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins."
"And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited."
Every year, on the tenth day of the seventh month, "ye shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all… For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD."
Two goats, two movements
The ritual moves in two directions. Blood is carried inward, into the most holy place, to cleanse the sanctuary. Sins are carried outward, on the living goat, away from the camp. One goat deals with the pollution sin causes in God's house; the other removes the guilt from the people.
Who or what is Azazel?
- "The goat that departs": the Greek Septuagint (apopompaios, "the one sent away"), the Latin Vulgate (caper emissarius) and William Tyndale, who coined the English word "scapegoat" in 1530.
- A place: a rugged cliff or "land cut off" (16:22); the rabbis understood a precipice where the goat was pushed off (Mishnah Yoma 6:6).
- Complete removal: an abstract term meaning "for entire removal."
- A being: a wilderness demon or fallen angel to whom the sins are sent back, not as an offering but as a return of evil to its source. In 1 Enoch, Azazel is the leader of the Watchers who taught humanity weapons and sorcery, bound by Raphael in the desert.
Follow the passage to see how each tradition translated the word, and the investigation for the evidence on each view.
Ancient elimination rites
Sending evil away on an animal was known in Israel's world. Texts from Ebla in Syria (24th century BC) describe a goat with a silver bracelet driven to the steppe of Alini to purify the palace before a royal wedding. Hittite rituals (14th–13th century BC) sent a decorated ram or donkey toward enemy territory to carry away plague. Mesopotamian rites transferred illness onto a goat or figurine. The idea of removal by an animal was familiar; Leviticus makes it a yearly confession of the whole people's sins before the one God.
The Case for the Biblical Account
Scripture's account
The high priest cleanses the sanctuary with blood and incense; one goat bears the people's sins into the wilderness (Leviticus 16).
What evidence would we expect?
Ancient rites of purification and removal; a continuing annual observance; detailed memories of Temple practice.
The discoveries
Eblaite, Hittite and Mesopotamian elimination rituals; Second Temple sources (Ben Sira 50; Philo; Qumran's Temple Scroll and calendar disputes); the Mishnah's tractate Yoma; Jewish observance of Yom Kippur to this day.
Testing the discoveries
The parallels show the ritual's ideas are ancient, the Eblaite text by more than a millennium before Moses. They do not establish the Sinai origin of Israel's rite. The Mishnah records Temple practice two centuries after its destruction.
The strongest reconstruction
Leviticus 16 joins two ancient ritual forms, sanctuary purification and elimination by animal, into a single annual rite of national atonement, which became Judaism's holiest day.
What remains possible
That the rite was revealed as one ceremony; that older rites were combined; and what Azazel originally meant.
Then and Later
The Day of Atonement, then and later
- SinaiLeviticus 16. The high priest enters the most holy place once a year.
- c. 190 BCSimon the high priest. Ben Sira describes the high priest coming out of the sanctuary "like the morning star among the clouds."
- 1st c. BCQumran. The Dead Sea community kept Yom Kippur by its own calendar; the Wicked Priest attacked their Teacher on that day (1QpHab 11).The Dead Sea Scrolls →
- 1st centuryHebrews. Christ, the high priest, enters "heaven itself" with His own blood, "once for all."Hebrews 9:7–12, 24–28
- c. AD 200Mishnah Yoma. Remembers the Temple ritual in detail: the high priest's vigil, the three confessions, the goat led to a cliff, the scarlet thread said to turn white.
- MedievalSynagogue liturgy. Kol Nidre and the Avodah service, which retells the high priest's ritual, become central to the day.
- TodayYom Kippur. Jews worldwide fast for 25 hours, confess, and pray; it is the holiest day of the Jewish year.
What the evidence shows
- An Eblaite ritual (24th century BC) sent a goat to the steppe to purify the palace.Source: I. Zatelli, "The Origin of the Biblical Scapegoat Ritual: The Evidence of Two Eblaite Texts," Vetus Testamentum 48 (1998)
- Hittite and Mesopotamian rites removed evil by sending away an animal.Source: D. P. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (1987)
- Mishnah Yoma preserves memories of Second Temple Yom Kippur practice.Source: Mishnah Yoma (c. AD 200), esp. chapters 4–6; tr. H. Danby, The Mishnah (1933)
- Azazel was originally the name of a wilderness demon.Source: NET Bible, note on Leviticus 16:8 ("Azazel"); 1 Enoch 8:1; 9:6; 10:4–8; tr. G. W. E. Nickelsburg and J. C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (2012)
- "That ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD."
Continue the journey
Journey of a PassageLeviticus 16:8: For Azazel, or for the scapegoat?Every Hebrew witness we have checked (the Masoretic Text and the Samaritan Pentateuch) reads the same word: la'aza'zel, "for Azazel." Translators have disagreed for over two thousand years about what it means.More from this lesson
Investigations
Optional deep dives: the ancient sources, the physical evidence, and every interpretation side by side, including unconventional ones, each labeled for what it is.
Azazel: The Goat, the Cliff, or the Fallen Angel?Word: the same in the Hebrew witnesses checked (Masoretic, Samaritan) · Meaning: disputed
Who or what is the "Azazel" to whom the second goat is sent on the Day of Atonement?
Azazel appears only in Leviticus 16, and nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Ancient translators made it "the goat sent away," rabbis a rugged cliff, and the Book of Enoch a fallen angel, leader of the Watchers, bound in the desert with all sin ascribed to him. Each reading has real support. The question touches both Leviticus and the Watchers tradition of Genesis 6.
Open the full investigation →Echoes Across Civilizations
Optional: how other ancient peoples told similar stories. Open one to compare, then come back to the lesson.
Sending evil awayEbla · Hittite · Babylonian · Greek
Did other ancient peoples remove sin, plague or impurity by sending an animal away?
- Ebla: The purification of the royal mausoleum (ARET 11) Shared literary world
- Hittite: Rituals of Ashella, Pulisa and Uhhamuwa Possible historical contact
- Babylonian: The New Year (Akitu) purification Possible historical contact
- Greek: The pharmakos Resemblance only
Why this matters to the rest of Scripture
- The high priest's yearly entry and Christ's once-for-all.
- "It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins."
- "The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."
- "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions."
- Christ set forth as a "propitiation" (hilasterion, the Greek word for the mercy seat).
- "The fast was now already past": Yom Kippur in Paul's voyage.
- "Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea."