NOTE: As more and more COG members read this blog it has become the "go-to" place for news and information. Occasionally people contact me with articles. These certainly do not always end up being something I agree with, but will occasionally post them for an added discussion, which is something that most COG members never get the opportunity to do. If these kinds of topics bore you, them pass it by till the next posting.
Azazel or azazel and the Disposal of Sin
In discussions about the Day of Atonement, Satan figures prominently, perhaps too prominently.
Lev 16:33 And he shall make an atonement for the holy sanctuary, and he shall make an atonement for the tabernacle of the congregation, and for the altar, and he shall make an atonement for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation.
Lev 16:34 And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year. And he did as the LORD commanded Moses.
Perhaps, a focus on Satan lessens the real focus of the Day.
Lev 16:33a and make atonement for the Most Holy Place, for the Tent of Meeting and the altar…
Eze 45:20b so you are to make atonement for the temple. (NIV).
The atonement of the Tabernacle/Temple and the people is the focus of the ritual whether Satan is the god of this world or when Jesus Christ becomes the God of this world.
Under the present god of this world there is one day of atonement on the tenth day of the seventh month. Under the hopefully soon coming return of Jesus Christ, at least ten years away(?), there will be two days of atonement in preparation for Passover, on the first and seventh days of the first month (Eze 45:18-20). The function of the Passover will also change from an apotropaic one to a purgative one with a public sacrifice of a bull as a sin/purification offering.
Azazel maybe Satan as suggested by Holy Day typology. The Day of Alarm-blasts appears to picture the return of Jesus Christ to complete the last half-year of his prophetic week. The First Day of the Feast of Tabernacles appears to picture the Millennium.
Eze 43:7a And he said unto me, Son of man, the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever...
(The picture above captures the intent of Eze 43:7a).
Lev 26:11 And I will set my tabernacle among you: and my soul shall not abhor you.
Lev 26:12 And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people.
At the start of the Kingdom Age, after the completion of the second half week, Christ takes up His earthly residence in the Millennial Temple, cp. the start of the Church Age in Acts 2:1-3, while still in heaven (cp. 1 Kgs 8:11-13 & 8:30). Residence in the Millennial Temple will be the same as in the Mosaic Tabernacle.
Atonement occurs before the First of Sukkot, which may therefore picture Satan and Demons being cast out of the ‘heavenlies’ and being replaced by Jesus Christ and the Saints (cp. Eph 6:12; Eph 2:6, a prolepsis; and Rev 3:21).
In Leviticus 26:11-12 there is the three-part Covenant formula - God will be God of his people; Israel will be His people; and God will dwell among them.
Eze 8:6 He said furthermore unto me, Son of man, seest thou what they do? even the great abominations that the house of Israel committeth here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? but turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations.
The Day of Atonement in the OC was, and the Days of Atonement in the NC will be, required to maintain Jesus Christ’s presence (Shekinah), in the Most Holy Place. Sin generates impurities that attaches to various sanctum, depending on the grade of sin; serious ritual impurity only attaches to the outer altar. Too much accumulation of sin-generated pollution in the Temple drives Christ away.
Therefore, the Millennial Temple will have to be annually atoned for to maintain the NC.
What follows looks briefly at Azazel or azazel and the role of disposal of sin in the atonement ritual provided by the sin/purification offering during the year and in the annual “sin offering of atonements” (Num 29:11) on the Day of Atonement, and its implication for the Millennium.
To achieve the goal of cleansing of the tabernacle and people under the OC, two goats were essential.
Lev 16:8a And shall cast Aaron for two the goats lots
Lev 16:8ba lot one for Yahweh (layahweh)
Lev 16:8bb and lot one for ‘azazel (la‘azazel)
(The lamed, transliterated “l”, is one of three prepositions, that is prefixed to nouns; (i.e., inseparable).
“Archaeologists have found many objects, especially seals, with the inscribed names of their owners preceded by the lamed of ownership (Levine, Leviticus, 102)” (Roy Gane, Cult and Character, p.249).
Ex 12:24 And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance [lehaq] to thee and to thy sons [lebaneka] for ever.
“Unless, therefore, ‘azazel be a proper name (which has to be proved, not assumed) the preposition need not and ought not to be translated by "for" but by "to be." The word le is used with great latitude, and often in a different sense in the same sentence; e.g.; Exo 12:24...” (H.D.M. Spence & Joseph S. Exell Leviticus, Pulpit Commentary).
Lev 16:5 And he shall take of the congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering.
“The goats, though used in different ways, constituted only one offering. They were both presented before the Lord, and the disposal of them determined by lot...” (Robert Jamieson, Levitcus, JFB).
Lev 16:8 And Aaron shall east lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and one lot for a remover of sins (H.D.M. Spence & Joseph S. Exell).
“However, one chooses to translate ‘azazel the emphasis must remain upon what the goat was meant to accomplish. The common strand in each interpretation is that the goat carried away the sins of the people into the remote wilderness, never to return and never to be seen again...
“It is probably best not to make too sharp a distinction between the two goats, since the two together are described as "a sin offering" in the singular in verse Lev 16:5. It seems best to hold that the two goats represented a different aspect of the same sacrifice...
“Possibly, David was reflecting upon the ritual of the scapegoat when he wrote the stanza of the song:
“As far as the east is from the west, So far has he removed our transgressions from us - Psa 103:12” (Gary W. Demarest, Leviticus, The Preachers’ Commentary).
Disposal Parallels
(hatta’t/hattat is the transliteration of the Hebrew word translated “sin offering” in the KJV. Purification offering is a better translation but no one word captures its full meaning in English; sin offerings (KJV) are also required to cleanse from serious ritual impurity. For the sin/purification offering I transliterate the silent aleph).
Outer altar sin offering
Lev 10:17 Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy, and God hath given it you to bear [nasa] the iniquity [awon] of the congregation, to make atonement [kapper] for them [’alehem] before the LORD?
Outer-Sanctum sin offering
Lev 4:20 ... and the priest shall make an atonement [kipper] for them [’alehem], and it shall be forgiven them.
Lev 4:21 And he shall carry forth the bullock without the camp, and burn him ... it is a sin offering [hatta’t] for the congregation.
Sin offering of atonements
Lev 16:22 And the goat shall bear [nasa] upon him all their iniquities [awon] unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.
“... if in the special hattat ritual the Azazel goat was necessary to remove the sins of the Israelites, [then] in the ordinary hattatritual ... a certain agent had to remove the sin of the offerer, rather than the sin is removed just through confession or remorse” (Gung Yul Kim, The hattat ritual and the Day of Atonement in the Book of Leviticus, pp.313-14).
“As for the phrase “bear iniquity” in the hattat context, in one place it is a priestly action performed by priest(s) as an agent of God to remove the iniquity of the Israelites (Lev 10:17) and in [an]other place it is an activity done by the Azazel goat (Lev 16:22)” (Gung Yul Kim, The hattat ritual and the Day of Atonement in the Book of Leviticus, p.16).
Lev 16:21 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:
“... in the ordinary
hattat ritual, the same thing occurred in a different manner; the offerer’s sin is transferred to the victim through his confession and hand imposition; his sin is conveyed to the victim’s flesh and the impurity of the sancta is absorbed into the flesh through the blood,
par pro toto for the victim; and the flesh is eaten by the priests or burned outside the camp to remove the sin and the impurity” (Gung Yul Kim,
The hattat ritual and the Day of Atonement in the Book of Leviticus, p.314).
Lev 14:49 And he shall take to cleanse the house two birds...
Lev 14:50 And he shall kill the one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water:
Lev 14:52 And he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird...
Lev 14:53a But he shall let go the living bird out of the city into the open fields,
Lev 14:53b and make an atonement [kipper] for the house: and it shall be clean [taher].
Lev 14:20b and the priest shall make an atonement [kipper] for him, and he shall be clean [taher].
Lev 16:30 For on that day shall the priest make an atonement [kapper] for you, to cleanse [taher] you, that ye may be clean [tehar] from all your sins before the LORD.
“If the same syntax of the two verses [14:20, 53] is acknowledged as having the same meaning, it is presumed that the same mechanism of the hattat offering is working even in the ritual for the leprous house... The legislator of this rule would have considered this ritual as having a function corresponding to the hattat ritual, although the bird is not called a hattat and [not] slaughtered at the sanctuary” (Gung Yul Kim, The hattat, p.305).
Lev 17:11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement [kapper] for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul.
"... inadvertent sin and major impurity both require sacrifice for atonement. Since both inadvertent sin and major impurity endanger (requiring ransom) and pollute (requiring purgation), sacrificial atonement must both ransom and cleanse. The verb used to describe this dual event is the verb kipper and the power of the kipper-rite to accomplish both is due to the lifeblood of the animal" (Jay Sklar, Sin Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement - The Priestly Conceptions, p.187).
“... ransom and cleansing” are “required; one bird is sacrificed (ransom) and its blood is sprinkled (cleansing); the other bird takes away the removed impurity (disposal of impurity); thus kipper is made (ransom + purgation)” (Gung Yul Kim, The hattat ritual and the Day of Atonement in the Book of Leviticus, p.305).
Lev 20:3b he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name
In the ordinary hatta’t the sin of the offerer is transferred to the animal flesh and has to be eliminated either by eating or burning. When blood is applied to the sancta, the pollution of the sancta is also transferred to the flesh of the animal, through ritual dynamics, cp. Lev 20:3, and/or pars pro toto.
“… hand imposition in the [ordinary] hattat ritual signifies ‘identification = sin-transference” (Gung Yul Kim, The hattat ritual and the Day of Atonement in the Book of Leviticus, p.296).
It would appear, it is the animal that has the hand/hands laid on it, who absorbs the sin/sins and that animal is ‘dealt’ with to eliminate the sin/sins.
On the Day of Atonement while the blood of the bull and goat purification offerings is applied to the sancta the sins are not transferred to the flesh of the slaughtered offerings along with the impurity generated by sins, even though the flesh is burned without the camp; the high-priest transfers the sins to the live goat who is then sent into the wilderness.
In regard to sin and the impurity generated by sin compare the analogy of adultery. There is the act of adultery by one spouse, and when the sin is revealed, there is the hurt and betrayal of the other spouse. There is a two-fold need - forgiveness and healing to restore the relationship.
So when a person sins there is a transgression of the law, and the impurity, generated by that transgression, defiles the sanctuary and therefore profanes God’s holy name, i.e., God. Therefore, forgiveness and elimination/healing are also required to make full atonement - ransom and purgation - to restore the sinner to a right standing before God.
Lev 16:16 And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness [tum’ot] of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins: and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness.
Lev 16:19 And he shall sprinkle of the blood upon it [the outer altar] with his finger seven times, and cleanse it, and hallow it from the uncleanness [tum’ot] of the children of Israel.
Lev 16:21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities [‘awonot] of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins...
Lev 16:22 And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities [‘awonot] unto a land not inhabited...
Inequities, the operative word in 16:21,22 are transgressions; and uncleanness, the operative word in 16:16, 19 is the consequence of the transgressions.
Sin and impurity, in the ordinary hatta’t, are absorbed by one animal. But in the special hatta’t there are two, actually three, animals involved. The iniquities of the children (lit., “sons”) of Israel are transferred to the live goat 16:21-22, not the carcasses of the sacrificed bull and goat.
Presumably, when the blood is applied to the sancta the uncleanness is absorbed into the sin offering of atonements - the priest’s bull and the congregation’s goat - and eliminated through burning of the flesh outside the camp (Lev 16:17).
Lev 4:27 And if any one of the common people sin
Lev 4:28b then he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats, a female without blemish, for his sin which he hath sinned.
Lev 4:29 And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the sin offering...
Lev 16:21 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...
In the ordinary hatta’t the man’s sin that he has committed is transferred to the goat. How then did the sins of the sons of Israel come to be “on” Aaron so that he can transfer them to the live goat?
Gung Yul Kim does not mention it, but Roy Gane argues in one place:
“Confession plus double hand-leaning appears to be the means by which the sins of the entire nation are transformed from abstraction, as if out of the air, into a concentrated, quasi-spatially containable form, gathered to the high priest, and channeled through his hands to the goat” (Roy Gane, Cult and Character, pp.245-46).
Lev 10:17 Wherefore have ye not eaten the sin offering in the holy place, seeing it is most holy, and God hath given it you to bear [nasa] the iniquity [‘avon] of the congregation, to make atonement [kapper] for them [’alehem] before [lipne] the LORD?
Lev 16:21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities [awonot] of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat,
And in another place: “In eaten purification offerings (excluding a hatta’t sacrifice officiated by a priest at least partly for himself), officiating priests who eat the flesh bear (nasa) the culpability [‘awon] (10:17) in some sense, although they are immune to its effects. They do this as the cultic representatives of YHWH, who bears evils when he extends pardon (“forgiving iniquity [‘awon], transgressions and sins”; Exod 34:7; cf. Num 14:18). On the Day of Atonement all ‘awonot, apparently comprising or at least including the culpabilities born by the priests for the people, are transferred to Azazel’s goat through the high priest’s confession and banished to Azazel in the wilderness (Lev 16:21-22; cf. v.10). The ‘awonot do not need to be purged from the sanctuary because they have affected the priests instead.
“The role of YHWH in bearing moral evils is represented in the cultic system by his sanctuary and priests together: When sinners receive kipper during the year, the sanctuary bears their tum’ot (Lev 16:16) and the priests bear the ‘awonot that have resulted from the tum’ot (Lev 10:17). The priests can bear the ‘awonot because these are consequentially culpabilities and, as such, they can be transferred from one person to another (cf. 2 Sam 14:9;...). The transferability reflects the legal fact that one person can be condemned to punishment for a wrong that another person has committed” (Cult and Character, pp.299-300).
One difficulty in Roy Gane’s argument is that the priests do not bear, at least based on Lev 10:17, all the ‘awonot in outer altar purification offerings: “(excluding a hatta’t sacrifice officiated by a priest at least partly for himself)” and by implication inner sanctum purification offerings.
This interpretation of “bear iniquity” is different to Gung Yul Kim’s, in that the latter sees the priest’s role in “bearing iniquity” by eating the flesh of the purification offering which eliminates/disposes of the iniquity, the parallel to burning in the priest’s hatta’t.
Heb 8:2 A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.
Rev 7:15 Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple...
As an aside, typology therefore suggest that just as the priests have a role in the elimination of sin along with the high priest, the future priests of the Melchisdec priesthood in heaven assist the heavenly high priest in His ministry in the sanctuary.
Ex 28:29 And Aaron shall bear the names of the children of Israel in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when he goeth in unto the holy place, for a memorial before the LORD continually.
Ex 28:38 And it shall be upon Aaron's forehead, that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things, which the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts; and it shall be always upon his forehead, that they may be accepted before the LORD.
Lev 16:30 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.
Somewhat similar to Roy Gane’s second quote, perhaps Aaron, as the cultic representative of God, bears/absorbs those sins that are not atoned for during the year by the ordinary hatta’t when they are committed; such as Molech worship defiles the Most Holy Place when it is committed, which is also borne by the sanctuary until the Day of Atonement.
Then on the day of Atonement the high-priest transfers the sins to the goat through hands leaning, (no blood being is applied to him, just as no blood is applied to a sinner in the atonement ritual for his sin), and the sanctuary is cleansed of the effects of sin through the blood rites, that both have borne during the year. (Forgiveness, or a related word, is not used in Lev 16).
Lev 16:18b and shall take of the blood of the bullock, and of the blood of the goat
Lev 16:15b He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it.
Lev 16:16b put blood on four horns of incense altar and sprinkle blood before the veil 7 times...
Lev 16:18c and put it upon the horns of the [outer] altar round about.
Lev 16:20 ... making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar...
Eze 45:19a The priest is to take some of the blood of the sin offering
Eze 45:19b and put it on the doorposts of the temple
Eze 45:19c on the four corners of the upper ledge of the altar
Eze 45:19d and on the gateposts of the inner court
Eze 45:20b ... so you are to make atonement for the temple
Atonement will be made for the Temple in the Millennium to maintain Christ’s presence in the Most Holy Place, one of the three pillars of the covenant formula - no Christ, no covenant.
In the above reconstruction, to draw the parallels between OC and NC atonement, changes of where blood is applied to kipper, maybe observed. Along with changes in the objects to receive blood there may another method for disposal of sin during the annual atonement cleansing of the Temple. If sin may be eliminated by eating or burning during the year, another way for annual elimination is more than likely. (It is surprising that the blood is not put on the horns of the outer altar in the annual NC atonement ritual seeing that this is the place in the OC. Blood is placed on the horns of the NC altar in its consecration (Eze 43:20)).
Eze 41:12 Now the building that was before the separate place at the end toward the west was seventy cubits broad; and the wall of the building was five cubits thick round about, and the length thereof ninety cubits.
Perhaps the building with the largest ground floor area in the Temple Complex, situated behind the Temple proper, will play a part in the disposal of sin.
Submitted by John
