Leviticus 16

Today’s Passage: Leviticus 16

This is the mountaintop of Leviticus, the Day of Atonement (כָּפַר) kāphar, pronounced kah-FAR. Strong's H3722, to cover, atone, make atonement. The word means to cover, and so to make atonement, to wipe clean, to ransom. It is the drumbeat of this whole chapter and of the book. Sin is not ignored on this day; it is covered by a price. A life stands over the guilt so that the guilty may live, and the LORD Himself is the one who provides the covering and names it enough. . Once a year, and only once, the high priest may pass behind the veil into the Most Holy Place, and he may not come as he pleases. He comes low, bathed, dressed in plain linen, and he comes only with blood. Two goats are set before the LORD, and the lot falls: one is killed as a sin offering, and its blood is carried inside and sprinkled on the mercy seat to cleanse the sanctuary and the people; the other is kept alive, confessed over, and sent away into the wilderness bearing all their iniquities. When the day is finished, the whole assembly stands clean before the LORD. Here the book that has been teaching Israel how to draw near reaches its center, and every reader who has followed the blood this far is shown the shadow that the cross would one day fill.

As you read, hold this: On one day the whole people is made clean by blood, and their sin is carried far away.

Leviticus 16:1–4 (BSB)

¹ Now the LORD spoke to Moses after the death of two of Aaron’s sons when they approached the presence of the LORD. ² And the LORD said to Moses: “Tell your brother Aaron not to enter freely into the Most Holy Place behind the veil in front of the mercy seat on the ark, or else he will die, because I appear in the cloud above the mercy seat.

³ This is how Aaron is to enter the Holy Place: with a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. ⁴ He is to wear the sacred linen tunic, with linen undergarments. He must tie a linen sash around him and put on the linen turban. These are holy garments, and he must bathe himself with water before he wears them.

The first word is a warning, not a welcome. Aaron may not enter freely, and the reason is not that God is unkind but that God is holy and near. So the high priest lays aside the gold and the color of his ordinary robes and puts on plain white linen, the clothing of a servant, after he has washed. He does not stride in as a great man; he comes bathed, humbled, and carrying the animals whose blood will answer for him. Before the day does anything else, it strips its greatest priest down to a bathed servant in linen.

Leviticus 16:7–10 (BSB)

⁷ Then he shall take the two goats and present them before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. ⁸ After Aaron casts lots for the two goats, one for the LORD and the other for the scapegoat, ⁹ he shall present the goat chosen by lot for the LORD and sacrifice it as a sin offering. ¹⁰ But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the LORD to make atonement by sending it into the wilderness as the scapegoat.

Two goats stand side by side, and only the lot tells them apart. One will die; its blood will be carried inside. The other will live and be driven out. They are not two separate lessons but two halves of one truth, for sin must be both paid for and taken away. The blood answers the guilt, and the living goat carries the guilt off where it will never be found. Hold both goats in your mind at once, because Israel needed both, and so does every reader.

Leviticus 16:15–16 (BSB)

¹⁵ Aaron shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and bring its blood behind the veil, and with its blood he must do as he did with the bull’s blood: He is to sprinkle it against the mercy seat and in front of it. ¹⁶ So he shall make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the impurities and rebellious acts of the Israelites in regard to all their sins. He is to do the same for the Tent of Meeting which abides among them in the midst of their impurities.

Now the blood goes where no ordinary Israelite could go, all the way in, against the mercy seat itself. The very place where God appears is cleansed, because the people’s sin had defiled even the holy things among which God chose to dwell. Notice the tenderness folded into the holiness: the LORD keeps His tent in the midst of an unclean people, and rather than leaving He provides the blood that makes it possible to stay. The mercy seat, sprinkled, becomes exactly what its name says.

Leviticus 16:20–22 (BSB)

²⁰ When Aaron has finished purifying the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting, and the altar, he is to bring forward the live goat. ²¹ Then he is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and rebellious acts of the Israelites in regard to all their sins. He is to put them on the goat’s head and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man appointed for the task. ²² The goat will carry on itself all their iniquities into a solitary place, and the man will release it into the wilderness.

Here is the picture that has moved God’s people for three thousand years. The priest lays both hands on the living goat and speaks the nation’s sins out loud over its head, and the sins settle onto the goat as surely as weight settles under a leaning hand. Then the scapegoat (עֲזָאזֵל) ʿăzāʾzēl, pronounced ah-zah-ZALE. Strong's H5799, the goat of removal, scapegoat. The name is used only in this chapter, and readers have long understood it as “the goat that goes away,” the goat of removal. Whatever else the word held for Israel, its work is plain in the text: this goat bears all their iniquities into a place from which it does not return. The two goats together preach one gospel. One dies to answer sin; the other departs to carry it away, so that the people are both forgiven and freed of what they carried. is led away, past the last tents, out to a solitary place from which it will not wander back. The people watch their guilt walk over the horizon and disappear. Their sin is not merely covered; it is carried off, out of sight, gone.

Leviticus 16:29–30 (BSB)

²⁹ This is to be a permanent statute for you: On the tenth day of the seventh month, you shall humble yourselves and not do any work—whether the native or the foreigner who resides among you— ³⁰ because on this day atonement will be made for you to cleanse you, and you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD.

The day is fixed on the calendar forever, the tenth day of the seventh month, and its posture is humility and rest. No one works, because no one earns this. The native and the foreigner stand together under the same blood and the same mercy. And the promise is total: clean from all your sins before the LORD. Not most of them, not the ones already regretted, but all of them, on this one day, by this one appointed way.

Leviticus 16:34 (BSB)

³⁴ This is to be a permanent statute for you, to make atonement once a year for the Israelites because of all their sins.” And all this was done as the LORD had commanded Moses.

The word that closes the chapter is once a year. That is the mercy of it and the ache of it together. Every year the blood cleansed the people, and every year the day came around again, because the same sins returned and the same covering had to be renewed. Israel was truly made clean, and Israel still had to wait, year after year, for a cleansing that would finally hold.