The Day of Atonement

Leviticus 16 is the liturgical heart of the Torah, the chapter that describes the one day in the year when access to the innermost sanctuary of YHWH's presence is granted, under strict conditions, to one man: the High Priest.

The chapter opens with the death of Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu (referenced from Leviticus 10:1-3) as the backdrop: unauthorized access to the divine presence means death. YHWH says to Moses: "Tell Aaron your brother not to come at any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die, for I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat" (16:2). The veil is the boundary between the possible and the fatal; the High Priest enters only under the prescribed conditions and only on the appointed day.

The preparatory sequence: the High Priest bathes and dresses in white linen, the ordinary garments of holiness, not the ornate high-priestly vestments (16:4). He brings a bull for his own sin offering and a ram for his own burnt offering (16:3). Then two goats are brought from the congregation and a lot is cast (16:7-8): one lot "for the LORD" (YHWH) and one lot "for Azazel" (la-azazel, for the escape-goat, the sent-away one).

The LORD's goat is slaughtered as a sin offering for the people. Its blood is taken by the High Priest into the Holy of Holies, the only moment in the year when a human enters that space, and sprinkled seven times on the mercy seat (kapporeth, 16:14-15). The same blood is used to cleanse the altar of incense and the outer court (16:16-19). Sin is literally removed from the sanctuary by the blood that covers (kaphar) every surface.

The two-goat ritual is one of the most theologically rich images in the Old Testament. Both goats together accomplish what neither could accomplish alone:

(1) The LORD's goat, propitiation: the blood of the LORD's goat is presented before the mercy seat. The word kapporeth (mercy seat, atonement cover) is from the same root as kaphar (to cover, to atone). The blood propitious the sin, it satisfies the just requirement and covers the offense. The mercy seat becomes the place where wrath is satisfied and mercy is granted. Romans 3:25 identifies Christ as the hilasterion (propitiation / mercy seat), the one whose blood satisfies the divine requirement and turns away wrath.

(2) The scapegoat (sa-ir la-azazel, the goat for Azazel, the escape goat, the sent-away one), expiation: "Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness" (16:21). The sins are symbolically transferred to the live goat by the laying on of hands, and the goat carries them away into the wilderness, "to a remote area" (16:22).

The two goats together say: the sin was covered (by the blood of the LORD's goat) AND the sin was removed (by the scapegoat). Propitiation (satisfying YHWH's righteous requirements) and expiation (removing the guilt from the people) are two dimensions of the same atonement reality. Christ fulfills both: his blood is the hilasterion (Romans 3:25, propitiation) and he "takes away" the sin of the world (John 1:29, expiation/removal).

"And he shall take a censer full of coals of fire from the altar before the LORD, and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small, and he shall bring it inside the veil and put the incense on the fire before the LORD, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is over the testimony, so that he does not die" (Leviticus 16:12-13). The High Priest's entrance into the Holy of Holies is surrounded by elaborate protective measures: he enters behind a cloud of incense that veils the direct vision of the mercy seat (to see the mercy seat directly, unmediated, means death), and he brings the blood that is the ground of his access.

The High Priest enters alone (16:17, "no one may be in the tent of meeting from the time he enters to make atonement in the Holy Place until he comes out"), he enters only once a year, and he enters in weakness (he must first atone for his own sins before atoning for the people's, 16:11). This is the contrast Hebrews 7:27 draws with Christ: "Unlike those high priests, he has no need to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself."

Hebrews 9:7: "but into the second tent (the Holy of Holies) only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people." The "but once a year" and the necessity of blood is the very structure that Hebrews 9-10 uses to argue for Christ's superiority: he entered "once for all" (9:12, ephapax), not annually; he entered by his own blood, not animal blood; he entered the true Holy of Holies in the heavens (9:24), not the earthly copy.

Hebrews 9-10 is the sustained argument that Yom Kippur was a shadow (skia) of the one true Day of Atonement accomplished by Christ.

Hebrews 9:11-14: "But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God."

Hebrews 10:1-4: "For the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near... For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." The Levitical Yom Kippur was repeated every year, its repetition was its self-diagnosis of incompleteness. Christ's one offering is sufficient for all time: "by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (10:14). The veil of the temple torn at the cross (Matthew 27:51) is the declaration that the barrier to the Holy of Holies has been permanently removed, the one true Yom Kippur has been accomplished, and the way into the presence of YHWH is open.

The Sanctum reads Yom Kippur as the annual enacted anticipation of the cross, the most solemn ritual of the Torah pointing to the one moment in history that makes all atoning rituals unnecessary. The two goats say what the cross does: sin is covered (propitiation) and sin is removed (expiation), by blood that does not need to be repeated, offered by a High Priest who enters the heavenly sanctuary once for all and sits down.