Chapter 5
The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) and Its Christological Significance

Introduction: The Climax of Old Testament Worship

If the Old Testament sacrificial system is a symphony — and we explored its many movements in Chapter 4 — then the Day of Atonement is its grand finale. Everything in Leviticus builds toward this moment. Every daily sacrifice, every sin offering, every guilt offering finds its culmination here, on this one extraordinary day each year when the high priest of Israel would enter the most sacred space on earth: the holy of holies, the very dwelling place of God's presence among His people. No other day in Israel's calendar carried this kind of weight. No other ritual gathered up so many theological themes into a single, breathtaking act of worship.

The Hebrew name for this day is Yom Kippur (יוֹם כִּפּוּר) — literally, "the Day of Covering" or "the Day of Atonement." It is described in detail in Leviticus 16, and it stands as what scholars have rightly called the "keystone" of the entire book of Leviticus.¹ Everything before it in Leviticus leads up to it; everything after it flows from it. The instructions for the individual sacrifices in Leviticus 1–7, the ordination of the priesthood in chapters 8–10, and the purity laws in chapters 11–15 all find their focal point in this single chapter.

I believe this chapter of Leviticus is among the most important in the entire Old Testament for understanding the cross of Jesus Christ. The reason is simple: the Day of Atonement gives us a picture — a divinely designed picture — of what God would one day accomplish through His Son. Its dual ritual of the sacrificed goat and the scapegoat provides a comprehensive picture of atonement that includes expiation through blood, the removal of sin through substitutionary bearing, and the restoration of a broken relationship between a holy God and a sinful people. And as we will see, the New Testament authors understood it exactly this way. They looked at what Jesus did on the cross and said, in effect, "This is what Yom Kippur was always pointing toward."

The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: the Day of Atonement, described in Leviticus 16, represents the climax and summit of the Old Testament sacrificial system. Its dual ritual of the sacrificed goat and the scapegoat provides a comprehensive picture of atonement — expiation through blood and the removal of sin through substitutionary bearing — that finds its ultimate fulfillment in Christ. When we understand Yom Kippur rightly, the penal and substitutionary dimensions of the atonement become unmistakable.

Let me walk us through the Day of Atonement step by step, and then we will explore what it means for how we understand the cross.

The Context: Why Leviticus 16 Matters Where It Stands

Before we dive into the details of the ritual itself, it helps to notice where Leviticus 16 sits in the larger story. The chapter opens with a sober reminder: "The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they approached the LORD" (Leviticus 16:1, ESV). This is not a throwaway detail. It points us back to the shocking events of Leviticus 10, where Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu offered "unauthorized fire before the LORD" and were consumed by fire from God's presence (Leviticus 10:1–2).

Why does the text bring this up? Because the deaths of Nadab and Abihu were a vivid and terrifying demonstration of the fundamental problem the Day of Atonement was designed to solve. A holy God dwells among a sinful people. That is both a great privilege and a terrible danger. God's holiness is not passive or decorative — it is a consuming fire. When sinful people approach God on their own terms, the result is catastrophic. As Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach point out, the allusion to Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 16:1 is not an irrelevant detail but a deliberate contrast: it shows us what happens when God's wrath is provoked by improper approach, and then sets the Day of Atonement ceremonies as the God-given solution to that very problem.²

Moses warned Aaron after the deaths of his sons: "Do not let your hair become unkempt, and do not tear your clothes, or you will die and the LORD will be angry with the whole community" (Leviticus 10:6). God's anger — His wrath — is not a hypothetical problem. It is the real and present danger that the Day of Atonement exists to address. The very placement of Leviticus 16 after the account of Nadab and Abihu tells us this: if sinful people are going to live in the presence of a holy God, something must be done about sin. The Day of Atonement is that something.

Walking Through the Ritual: Leviticus 16 Step by Step

The Day of Atonement was observed once each year, on the tenth day of the seventh month (Leviticus 16:29). It was a day of complete rest and self-denial — the people were to "afflict" themselves, which later tradition understood as fasting (Leviticus 16:29, 31). The entire nation stopped what it was doing. This was not a minor feast; it was the most solemn day on the calendar.

Let us walk through the ritual carefully, because the details matter enormously. Every step tells us something about the nature of atonement.

Step 1: The High Priest's Preparation

The ceremony began with the high priest. On any other day, the high priest wore his magnificent garments — the breastplate with its twelve stones, the blue robe with golden bells, the turban with the gold plate inscribed "Holy to the LORD." These were garments of beauty and glory. But on the Day of Atonement, he set all of that aside. He bathed his body in water and dressed himself in simple, plain white linen garments (Leviticus 16:4). The contrast is striking. As the great scholar Charles Feinberg described it, these white garments were "a symbol of repentance" — the high priest, stripped of his official splendor, entered God's presence in humility and purity.³

This was not a moment for human pomp. The man who represented the entire nation before God had to come as a humble supplicant, not as a dignitary. He was about to enter the most dangerous space on earth — the place where God's glory dwelt between the cherubim — and his only protection was the blood he would carry with him.

Step 2: The Bull Sacrifice for the Priest's Own Sin

Before the high priest could do anything for the people, he first had to deal with his own sin. He took a bull and offered it as a sin offering "for himself and for his house" (Leviticus 16:6, 11). The priest himself was a sinner. He could not atone for others until atonement had been made for him. He slaughtered the bull, collected its blood, and carried it behind the curtain into the holy of holies. There, with a censer of burning coals and incense — the cloud of incense covering the mercy seat so he would not die (Leviticus 16:12–13) — he sprinkled the blood on and before the mercy seat (kapporet, כַּפֹּרֶת).

We will say more about the mercy seat shortly, but notice: the priest could not even enter God's presence without blood. The incense cloud shielded him from God's glory; the blood covered his sin. Without these provisions, entering the holy of holies meant death.

Step 3: The Two Goats and the Casting of Lots

After dealing with his own sin, the high priest turned to the sin of the people. He took two male goats and presented them at the entrance of the tabernacle. Then he cast lots over them — "one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel" (Leviticus 16:8). The casting of lots was not a game of chance. In Israel's understanding, God controlled the outcome of the lots (Proverbs 16:33). God Himself determined which goat would be sacrificed and which would be sent away.

These two goats are at the heart of the Day of Atonement, and understanding their complementary roles is essential for grasping the full picture of what atonement means.

Step 4: The First Goat — Sacrificed as a Sin Offering

The goat on which the lot fell "for the LORD" was slaughtered as a sin offering for the people (Leviticus 16:9, 15). The high priest killed it and carried its blood behind the curtain into the holy of holies, just as he had done with the bull's blood. He sprinkled it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat (Leviticus 16:15). This blood purified the sanctuary — the holy of holies, the tent of meeting, and the altar — from the defilement caused by the people's sins (Leviticus 16:16–19). The logic is remarkable: because a sinful people live in the midst of a holy God, even the sacred spaces themselves become contaminated by that sinfulness. The blood of the sacrificial goat cleanses and purifies those spaces.

But the blood also makes atonement for the people themselves. As Leviticus 16:30 states: "For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the LORD from all your sins." The sacrificed goat deals with what theologians call the expiation of sin — the cleansing, purging, and removal of sin's defilement through the shedding of blood. As we discussed in Chapter 4, the life-for-life principle of Leviticus 17:11 applies: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life."

Step 5: The Second Goat — The Scapegoat Ritual

After the blood rituals were complete, the high priest turned to the live goat — the one designated for Azazel. What happened next is one of the most dramatic and theologically rich moments in the entire Old Testament:

And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. And 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 by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:20–22, ESV)

Take in the weight of these words. The high priest laid both hands on the goat's head — not one hand, as in the regular offerings, but both. He confessed "all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins." The threefold description — iniquities, transgressions, sins — echoes the comprehensive language of Exodus 34:7 and covers every category of wrongdoing. Nothing is left out. Then, the text says, he "put them on the head of the goat." The sins of the entire nation were symbolically transferred to the animal. And the goat was sent away, bearing "all their iniquities" into a "remote area" — literally, a "land of cutting off."⁴

This goat did what the people could not do for themselves: it carried their sin away. It bore what belonged to them. It went into the place of exile and death so they did not have to.

Step 6: The Completion

After the scapegoat was sent away, the high priest returned to the tabernacle, removed his linen garments, bathed again, and put on his regular priestly garments. He then offered burnt offerings for himself and for the people (Leviticus 16:23–24). The man who had led the scapegoat into the wilderness also had to wash his clothes and bathe before returning to the camp (Leviticus 16:26). Everything about this ritual emphasized the seriousness of what had taken place. Sin is not trivial. Atonement is not casual. But when the ritual was complete, the people could know with confidence: "You shall be clean before the LORD from all your sins" (Leviticus 16:30).

The Two Goats: Complementary Aspects of One Sacrifice

One of the most important points to grasp about the Day of Atonement is that the two goats are not two separate rituals. They are two complementary aspects of a single act of atonement. As the text itself indicates, the high priest was instructed to take "two male goats for a sin offering" — singular (Leviticus 16:5). Both goats together constitute one sin offering.⁵

William Lane Craig draws attention to an illuminating parallel. In Leviticus 14:2–7, the purification ritual for a person healed of leprosy also involves two birds. One bird is slaughtered, and the other is released alive into the open field. The blood of the slain bird purifies the person, while the release of the living bird symbolizes the removal of impurity. The two birds form a unit — two complementary actions accomplishing a single purpose. The case of the two goats on Yom Kippur is analogous: the one goat is sacrificed and the other released, symbolically carrying away the people's sins.⁶

Craig makes a further observation that is quite penetrating. If sin could be dealt with simply by laying it on a goat and driving the animal into the desert, then the entire sacrificial system — all the blood, all the slaughter, all the altar rituals — would become pointless. Why bother with blood sacrifices at all if sin can simply be "sent away"? The answer, as Leviticus 17:11 makes clear, is that blood sacrifice is essential. Life must be given for life. The scapegoat does not replace the sacrificial goat; it complements it. The blood sacrifice provides the basis for atonement, while the scapegoat dramatizes its effect — the actual removal of sin from the people.⁷

Thomas Crawford captured this beautifully when he suggested that each goat embodies a different aspect of the same sacrifice: "the one exhibiting the means, and the other the results, of the atonement."⁸ The sacrificed goat shows how atonement happens — through the shedding of blood. The scapegoat shows what atonement accomplishes — the removal of sin. Together they present a comprehensive theology of atonement in ritual form.

The Azazel Debate

One of the most debated questions in the study of Leviticus 16 is the meaning of the Hebrew term Azazel (עֲזָאזֵל). The ESV translates the phrase in Leviticus 16:8 as "one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel," leaving the term untranslated. Other translations render it as "scapegoat" (KJV), "the goat of removal" (HCSB), or "a goat for removal" (NET). What does Azazel actually mean?

There are three main scholarly proposals, and it is worth knowing them because they appear frequently in atonement discussions.⁹

The first proposal is that Azazel refers to a place — specifically, a rocky precipice or desolate area in the wilderness. On this reading, the goat is sent "to Azazel" meaning "to a remote, uninhabited place." This view has the advantage of simplicity and avoids the theological complications of the other proposals.

The second proposal is that Azazel means "complete destruction" or "removal." The word may be derived from the Hebrew roots 'ez (goat) and 'azal (to go away), yielding something like "the goat that goes away." This is essentially the meaning behind the traditional English rendering "scapegoat" — the goat that escapes, bearing sin away to a place of no return.

The third proposal is that Azazel is the name of a desert demon or evil spiritual being. In later Jewish literature, especially in the book of 1 Enoch, Azazel appears as a fallen angelic being associated with the wilderness and with evil. On this reading, the goat is sent "to Azazel" in the sense of returning sin to the demonic realm from which it originated. Hess, writing from a Christus Victor perspective, finds this view attractive because it fits his broader argument that the sacrificial system is about spiritual warfare — casting sin back into the realm of evil rather than satisfying divine justice.¹⁰

Which view is correct? I think it is honestly difficult to be certain, and we should hold our conclusions with appropriate humility. Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach note that the demonic interpretation seems unlikely given that offerings to "goat demons" are explicitly forbidden in the very next chapter (Leviticus 17:7).¹¹ It would be strange for Leviticus to institute a ritual that sends a goat to a demon while simultaneously prohibiting offerings to demons. That said, sending a sin-laden goat to the realm where sin belongs is not the same thing as making an offering to a demon, and some scholars have maintained a distinction here.

For our purposes, however, the Azazel debate does not significantly affect the theological meaning of the ritual. Whether the goat is sent to a desolate place, to complete destruction, or to the realm of evil, the point is the same: sin is removed from the people and sent away to a place of no return. A terrible fate is in view either way — exile, cutting off, and death. As Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach rightly argue, it is hard to decide between the first two alternatives, "but for the purpose of our discussion it matters little. A terrible fate is in view in either case, entailing both exclusion and the certain expectation of death."¹²

The Mercy Seat: Where God and His People Meet

At the center of the Day of Atonement ritual stands a piece of sacred furniture that is easy to overlook but profoundly important: the kapporet (כַּפֹּרֶת), usually translated as "mercy seat" or "atonement cover." This was the gold lid that sat atop the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies. It was flanked by two golden cherubim whose wings stretched over it (Exodus 25:17–22). The mercy seat was the most sacred object in Israel's worship, because it was there — between the cherubim — that God said, "I will meet with you" (Exodus 25:22).

It was upon this mercy seat that the high priest sprinkled the blood of the sacrificed bull and goat on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:14–15). As David Allen notes, the mercy seat was the place where the blood of sacrifice met the presence of God — where the price of atonement was presented before the divine glory.¹³

The Hebrew word kapporet is derived from the same root as kipper (כָּפַר, "to atone" or "to cover"), and its Greek equivalent in the Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament) is hilastērion (ἱλαστήριον). This is the same word that Paul uses in Romans 3:25 when he writes that God "put forward" Christ as a hilastērion "by his blood." Many scholars believe that Paul is making a direct allusion to the mercy seat — that he is saying, in effect, that Christ is the true mercy seat, the place where God's justice and mercy meet in the shedding of blood. We will explore this connection in much greater depth in Chapter 8's exegesis of Romans 3:21–26, but the connection between the mercy seat and Christ's atoning work begins right here, in the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement.¹⁴

The Meaning of Kipper in Leviticus 16

The Hebrew verb kipper (כָּפַר), meaning "to make atonement," occurs an extraordinary sixteen times in Leviticus 16 alone.¹⁵ This concentration of the word makes the chapter a kind of ground zero for understanding what "atonement" means in the Old Testament. We examined the range of meaning for kipper more broadly in Chapter 4 (and readers may want to review that discussion), but it is worth briefly noting how each of its meanings is present in the Day of Atonement ritual.

As both Allen and Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach explain, kipper carries at least four possible meanings, none of which necessarily excludes the others.¹⁶ First, it can mean to forgive — and forgiveness is prominently in view in Leviticus 16:30 ("you shall be clean before the LORD from all your sins"). Second, it can mean to cleanse or purify — and the blood rituals are explicitly described as cleansing the sanctuary and the people from sin's defilement (Leviticus 16:16, 19, 30). Third, it can mean to ransom — and the life of the sacrificial animal is given in place of human lives, as Leviticus 17:11 makes clear. Fourth, and crucially, it can mean to avert God's wrath — and as we have seen, the context of Leviticus 16, with its allusion to the deaths of Nadab and Abihu, places divine wrath in the background of the entire ceremony.

This fourth meaning — the averting of God's wrath — is precisely where the debate over the Day of Atonement becomes heated. Some scholars, such as John Goldingay, have argued that wrath language has little place in Leviticus and that sacrifice does not directly relate to God's anger.¹⁷ But as Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach respond with a memorable analogy, this is like observing that our drinking water is usually safe and concluding that contamination could never be a problem. The water is safe precisely because the purification system is working. We see God's wrath rarely in the sacrificial texts not because it is absent, but because the sacrifices are successfully dealing with it. When the system is abused — as in the case of Nadab and Abihu — God's wrath is seen plainly.¹⁸

Allen summarizes the full range of meaning concisely: "The sacrificial offering (the shedding of blood) propitiates the wrath of God, expiates the guilt of sin, and effects reconciliation. The word kipper includes the notions of propitiation, expiation, purification, and reconciliation."¹⁹ The Day of Atonement is not merely about one of these things. It is about all of them, working together in a single, comprehensive act of divine grace.

Substitution and Sin-Bearing in the Scapegoat Ritual

We now come to what I believe is the most theologically significant aspect of the Day of Atonement for understanding the atonement of Christ: the question of whether the scapegoat ritual involves genuine substitution and sin-bearing. This is where the debate between penal substitutionary atonement and its critics becomes most intense in relation to the Old Testament sacrificial system.

The key phrase is found in Leviticus 16:22: the goat shall "bear all their iniquities on itself" to a remote area. The Hebrew behind this is nāśā' 'āwōn (נָשָׂא עָוֺן) — "to bear iniquity." As both Allen and Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach point out, the meaning of this phrase depends in part on the subject of the verb.²⁰ When God is the subject, it means "to forgive sin" (as in Numbers 14:18). When a sinful person is the subject, it usually means bearing one's own guilt (as in Leviticus 7:18). But when an innocent animal is the subject — as in Leviticus 16:22 — and the iniquities of others are transferred to it, the natural reading is that the animal bears the sin and guilt of the people in their place, so that they are released from that burden.

Garry Williams has strengthened this argument by demonstrating that the phrase nāśā' 'āwōn and its related expressions (sābal ḥēṭ' and various combinations) refer in many Old Testament texts not merely to bearing guilt but to bearing punishment. He cites Genesis 4:13, Leviticus 5:17, Leviticus 24:14–16, Numbers 5:31, Numbers 14:34, and Lamentations 5:7 as examples where the "bearing" of iniquity includes enduring its judicial consequences.²¹ Given that divine wrath forms the backdrop of Leviticus 16 (as we saw from the Nadab and Abihu connection), and given that the "land of cutting off" to which the scapegoat is sent is a place of death and judgment, the scapegoat does not merely carry sin in some abstract sense. It bears the penalty.

Fr. Joshua Schooping, writing from within the Eastern Orthodox tradition, makes an even bolder claim. He argues that the scapegoat ritual provides the central scriptural image for forensic imputation — the legal transfer of guilt from one party to another. As Schooping observes, the key Hebrew term nāśā' means "to lift, bear up, carry, take." According to the divine and legal logic of the sacrifice, the goat is made to take up, bear, and carry away the iniquities of the people. This is imputation: laying the responsibility for something on someone else. The goat is without blemish — it must be for the sacrifice to be effective — and the sin is laid on it in a legal, forensic transfer commanded by God Himself.²²

Schooping then demonstrates that the logic of the Levitical scapegoat is not confined to Leviticus 16. It also drives the prophecy of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, where the same Hebrew vocabulary of sin-bearing reappears — nāśā' (to bear), sābal (to carry), and 'āwōn (iniquity) — applied now not to a goat but to a person who willingly bears the sins of others (see Chapter 6 for the full exegesis of Isaiah 53).²³ There is, in other words, a direct line running from the scapegoat in Leviticus 16 to the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53 to Jesus Christ on the cross.

Engaging the Objection: Hess and the Anti-Penal Reading of the Scapegoat

Not everyone reads the scapegoat ritual this way, of course. One of the most detailed recent arguments against a penal and substitutionary interpretation comes from William Hess in his book Crushing the Great Serpent. Hess devotes his Chapter 9, "The Scapegoat," to arguing that the Day of Atonement ritual does not support penal substitutionary atonement. His arguments are thoughtful and deserve a careful response.

Hess makes several key points. First, he argues that the scapegoat does not take the "punishment" for Israel's wrongdoing. Instead, Israel's sins are "metaphorically placed" on the goat and it is sent to the wilderness to "take away sin." The ritual is about purgation and purification, not penalty.²⁴ Second, he emphasizes that in ancient Jewish literature, Azazel is associated with evil — a demonic being or evil-possessed wilderness. The goat carries sins back to the realm of evil where they belong, not to a place of punishment.²⁵ Third, and most pointedly, he observes that the Azazel goat is not killed. It is sent away alive. If PSA were true, Hess argues, "one would expect the sins of Israel to be transferred to the goat ontologically (not just confessed over it) and then slaughtered in their place. On the contrary, the goat is only expelled from the presence of Israel."²⁶

This last point — that the scapegoat is not killed — is Hess's strongest argument, and it deserves serious engagement. Let me offer several responses.

First, the two goats are one sacrifice. As we have already seen, Leviticus 16:5 describes both goats together as "a sin offering" in the singular. The sacrificed goat is killed; its blood provides the basis for atonement. The scapegoat dramatizes the effect of that blood sacrifice — the removal and bearing away of sin. To separate the two goats and say "the scapegoat isn't killed, therefore there's no penal element" is to miss the point of the ritual's unified design. One goat dies so that sin can be purged; the other goat carries sin away into the place of judgment. Both together constitute one act of atonement. The death is there — it is in the first goat's blood sprinkled on the mercy seat. The sin-bearing is there — it is in the scapegoat's journey into the land of cutting off.²⁷

Second, the scapegoat's fate is not merely "freedom." Hess describes the scapegoat as being "left alive" and "merely sent out from among the people." But the text says the goat was sent to a "remote area" — literally, a "land of cutting off" ('erets gezērah, אֶרֶץ גְּזֵרָה). Throughout Leviticus, to be "cut off" from the camp of Israel is the language of divine punishment for sin (Leviticus 7:20–27; 17:4, 9–14; 18:29; 19:8; 20:3, 5–6, 17–18; 22:3; 23:29). A goat sent into the wilderness with all the sins of the nation on its head, into a "land of cutting off," would be expected to die. The scapegoat's fate was not life and freedom — it was exile, desolation, and death. As Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach conclude, "the scapegoat bears the punishment due to the people on account of their sin."²⁸

Third, the fact that sins are "confessed over" the goat does not make the transfer merely metaphorical. Hess insists that the sins are only "metaphorically" placed on the goat, not literally transferred. But the text itself uses language of putting and bearing. The high priest "shall put them on the head of the goat" (nāthan, נָתַן — "to give, to place") and the goat "shall bear all their iniquities" (nāśā' 'āwōn). As Schooping points out, the word nāthan indicates a genuine giving or placing, and nāśā' indicates a genuine bearing or carrying.²⁹ Of course the transfer is symbolic in the sense that a goat does not literally become guilty in a moral sense — but the judicial consequences of the people's sin are genuinely transferred to the animal. That is the whole point. If the transfer is merely metaphorical with no real consequence, then the ritual accomplishes nothing.

Fourth, Hess's argument proves too much. If the scapegoat ritual teaches nothing about substitutionary sin-bearing because the goat is "only" sent away rather than killed, then what does the ritual teach? If the goat merely "represents" sin being cast out of Israel with no real bearing of consequences, then the vivid language of confession, transference, and bearing iniquity becomes ornamental — a bit of theater with no substance. But the text treats this ritual with the utmost seriousness. It is the climax of the most solemn day in Israel's calendar. The threefold confession — iniquities, transgressions, sins — is comprehensive and deliberate. The two-handed imposition is emphatic. The language of bearing is the same language that Isaiah will later apply to the Suffering Servant. To reduce all of this to a mere metaphor of "casting out sin" without genuine substitutionary bearing is to flatten the text.

I should note that Hess raises a legitimate concern when he warns against crude versions of PSA that depict God as an angry deity who literally transfers human sin to Jesus in some ontological sense and then punishes His Son out of rage. I agree that such formulations distort the gospel (see Chapter 20 for our full treatment of the Trinitarian dimension of the atonement). But the solution to bad formulations of PSA is not to abandon the penal and substitutionary dimensions of the atonement — it is to articulate them properly within a Trinitarian framework. The scapegoat ritual, when read as part of the unified two-goat sacrifice, provides genuine support for the idea that sin's consequences are transferred to an innocent substitute, who bears them in place of the guilty. That is substitution. And when that bearing results in exile, cutting off, and death, that is penalty.

The New Testament Fulfillment: Christ and the Day of Atonement

The New Testament authors were steeped in the imagery of Yom Kippur, and they saw in Christ's death the fulfillment of everything the Day of Atonement had promised. This is especially clear in two key texts: the Epistle to the Hebrews and Romans 3:25. We will treat both of these passages in much greater depth in their own chapters (Chapter 10 for Hebrews; Chapter 8 for Romans 3), but it is important here to sketch the connections and show how the Day of Atonement finds its ultimate meaning in Christ.

Hebrews 9–10: The Definitive Day of Atonement

The author of Hebrews builds his entire argument around the claim that Jesus has accomplished what the Levitical system could only foreshadow. His reasoning follows the pattern of Yom Kippur with striking precision. In Hebrews 9:6–7, he describes the old arrangement: "the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second 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." This is the Day of Atonement.

Then comes the contrast. Christ has appeared as "a high priest of the good things that have come," and 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" (Hebrews 9:11–12). Everything the earthly high priest did once a year with animal blood, Christ has done once for all with His own blood. He did not enter an earthly tabernacle but the heavenly sanctuary — the true holy of holies, the very presence of God (Hebrews 9:24).

Hebrews 9:22 states the principle bluntly: "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." And Hebrews 10:4 explains why the Day of Atonement had to be repeated year after year: "it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." The Levitical sacrifices were real but provisional. They were shadows of the good things to come (Hebrews 10:1), not the final reality. Christ's single, unrepeatable sacrifice accomplished what all the accumulated Day of Atonement sacrifices across centuries could not: the permanent and complete removal of sin.

Crucially, the author of Hebrews sees Christ as fulfilling both goats. He is the sacrificial goat whose blood is brought into the true holy of holies (Hebrews 9:12) and He is the scapegoat who carries away sin. As Hebrews 9:28 puts it: "Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him." The language of "bearing the sins of many" (anenegkein hamartias, ἀνενεγκεῖν ἁμαρτίας) echoes both the scapegoat ritual of Leviticus 16 and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53:12. Christ is the true sin-bearer.³⁰

Romans 3:25: Christ as the Mercy Seat

As noted above, Paul's use of hilastērion in Romans 3:25 likely alludes to the mercy seat of the Day of Atonement. If this is correct — and many scholars believe it is — then Paul is making an extraordinary claim: that God has publicly displayed Christ as the true kapporet, the true mercy seat, the place where God's justice and mercy meet through the shedding of blood. On the Day of Atonement, the mercy seat was hidden in the holy of holies, accessible only to the high priest once a year. But in Christ, God has brought the mercy seat out into the open — "put forward" publicly — so that all who have faith may approach.³¹

Craig makes the interesting observation that if we take Romans 3:25 as a mercy seat reference, then we have Jesus represented in the New Testament as a vicarious sacrifice (1 John 2:2; 4:10), a vicarious sacrificer or priest (Hebrews 2:17), and a vicarious place of sacrifice (Romans 3:25) — a remarkable "combination of motifs which bears a great deal of meaning for Christian theology."³² Christ fulfills every element of the Day of Atonement: He is the high priest who enters the heavenly sanctuary, He is the sacrificial goat whose blood is presented before God, He is the scapegoat who bears away our sins, and He is the mercy seat where the blood is applied. We will explore the full exegetical argument for this reading in Chapter 8.

Christ as Both Goats: The Full Picture of the Atonement

When we put all of this together, a remarkable picture emerges. Jesus Christ fulfills both goats of the Day of Atonement simultaneously. He is the goat that was sacrificed — His blood was shed, and through that blood, the defilement of sin is purged and God's justice is satisfied. And He is the scapegoat — the sins of the people were placed upon Him, and He bore them away, carrying them to a place of no return.

John Stott captures this with characteristic clarity. Noting that Leviticus 16:5 describes both goats together as "a sin offering" in the singular, Stott argues that "the public proclamation of the Day of Atonement was plain, namely that reconciliation was possible only through substitutionary sin-bearing." The author of Hebrews, Stott observes, "has no inhibitions about seeing Jesus both as 'a merciful and faithful high priest' (Hebrews 2:17) and as the two victims, the sacrificed goat whose blood was taken into the inner sanctuary (Hebrews 9:7, 12) and the scapegoat that carried away the people's sins (Hebrews 9:28)."³³

This is why the Day of Atonement is so important for understanding the cross. It gives us a divinely designed ritual that combines both the means and the effect of atonement in a single comprehensive picture. The means is blood — the life of an innocent substitute given in place of the guilty. The effect is the removal of sin — carried away, borne by the substitute, sent into the place of judgment so the people go free. When we see Christ on the cross, we see both of these things happening at once. His blood is shed (the sacrificial goat), and our sins are placed upon Him and removed from us (the scapegoat). The cross is the true Day of Atonement.

The Penal and Substitutionary Dimensions: Drawing the Threads Together

Let us now step back and ask the direct question: does the Day of Atonement support penal substitutionary atonement? I believe the answer is clearly yes, for several converging reasons.

First, there is genuine substitution. The scapegoat bears what belongs to the people. Their sins, their transgressions, their iniquities are placed on the goat's head and carried away. As Allen puts it, "The scapegoat bears not only the guilt of the people but also the sin of the people; and it does so via substitution, bearing the guilt and sin in place of the people."³⁴ When a person lives who otherwise would have died, and an animal dies that would otherwise have lived, substitution is necessarily implied.

Second, there is a genuinely penal dimension. The scapegoat is sent to a "land of cutting off" — a phrase that in Leviticus consistently refers to divine punishment. The phrase nāśā' 'āwōn ("to bear iniquity") carries penal connotations in numerous Old Testament texts. And the entire Day of Atonement is set against the backdrop of divine wrath, as the allusion to Nadab and Abihu makes clear. Kipper includes the averting of God's wrath among its range of meanings, and that meaning is active in Leviticus 16.

Third, the New Testament authors interpret Yom Kippur in penal and substitutionary terms. Hebrews speaks of Christ's blood being offered to "purify our conscience from dead works" (9:14), echoing the purification theme, but also speaks of Christ "bearing the sins of many" (9:28), echoing the scapegoat's substitutionary role. Paul presents Christ as the hilastērion — the mercy seat or propitiation — whose blood demonstrates God's righteousness, so that God can be "just and the justifier" of the one who has faith (Romans 3:25–26). The penal dimension is unmistakable in these texts: God's justice must be satisfied, and it is satisfied through the blood of Christ.

Fourth, the multi-faceted nature of kipper supports a multi-faceted atonement with PSA at the center. The Day of Atonement includes forgiveness, cleansing, ransom, and the averting of wrath. It is not only about punishment, and no responsible defender of PSA has ever claimed that it is. But it is also not without punishment, and attempts to strip the penal dimension from the Day of Atonement — as Hess and others have tried to do — require ignoring the wrath backdrop, the "cutting off" language, the sin-bearing vocabulary, and the New Testament's own interpretive conclusions.

As I said at the outset of this book, the atonement is multi-faceted. The Day of Atonement itself demonstrates this beautifully. There is expiation (the cleansing of sin's defilement through blood). There is propitiation (the averting of God's wrath through sacrifice). There is substitution (an innocent victim bearing what the guilty deserve). There is removal (sin carried away to a place of no return). There is reconciliation (the people cleansed and restored to fellowship with God). All of these facets are present in a single ritual. But at the center of it all is the blood of a substitute, shed in place of the guilty, presented before the throne of a holy God. That is penal substitution — and it is the heart of Yom Kippur.

Later Jewish Tradition: The Red Ribbon and the Goat's Fate

It is worth pausing to consider how later Jewish tradition understood the Yom Kippur ritual, because these traditions shed light on how ancient interpreters read Leviticus 16. While later traditions are not Scripture, they help us understand the theological instincts of people who stood much closer to the original context than we do.

According to the Mishnah (Yoma 6:6), a crimson thread or ribbon was tied between the horns of the scapegoat. Tradition held that if the atonement was accepted by God, the red ribbon would turn white — an allusion to Isaiah 1:18, "though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." The visual symbolism is powerful: the sins of the people, visible as crimson on the goat, are turned to white when atonement is accepted. The very existence of this tradition tells us something important. The Jewish interpreters who developed this practice understood the scapegoat as genuinely bearing the sins of the people — not as a vague metaphor, but as a real transfer that demanded a visible sign of divine acceptance.

Even more significantly, later Jewish practice involved pushing the scapegoat off a cliff in the wilderness to ensure its death.³⁵ While this is not prescribed in Leviticus 16 itself, it indicates that ancient Jewish interpreters understood the scapegoat's fate as death and destruction, not merely as release or freedom. The goat was not expected to roam happily in the wilderness. It was sent to die. The later practice of ensuring the goat's death simply made explicit what the original ritual implied. This is quite significant for our discussion, because it directly undercuts Hess's argument that the scapegoat "gets to live." The ancient interpreters closest to the text did not read it that way at all. They understood the "land of cutting off" as a place of death, and they made sure the goat died there.

The Babylonian Talmud (Yoma 67b) also records that the scapegoat was accompanied into the wilderness by a designated man who led it through a series of stations. At each station, people offered the man food and water and said, "Here is food and water for you" — a sign that the journey to the wilderness was arduous and the task was solemn. The entire community participated in this drama of sin-bearing. The scapegoat was not quietly released out a back gate; it was led through the people in a public ritual of confession, transference, and removal. Everyone could see their sins being carried away.

The early church fathers, too, saw Christological significance in the scapegoat. The Epistle of Barnabas, an early Christian document from the late first or early second century, explicitly interprets the two goats of Yom Kippur as types of Christ. Barnabas describes the scapegoat as being "cursed, and spit upon, and pierced, and scarlet-robed" — language that clearly connects the scapegoat to the suffering and humiliation of Jesus.³⁶ This tells us that from the very earliest period of Christian reflection, believers understood the Day of Atonement as a foreshadowing of the cross. The connection between the scapegoat and Christ was not a later invention of Reformation theology; it was present from the beginning of Christian interpretation.

A Word on What Yom Kippur Could Not Do

For all its profound theology, the Day of Atonement had a built-in limitation that was deeply significant. It had to be repeated every year. As Hebrews 10:1–4 makes clear, this annual repetition was itself a testimony to the insufficiency of animal blood to truly and finally deal with sin:

For since 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. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. (Hebrews 10:1–4, ESV)

Every year, the Day of Atonement came around again. Every year, a new bull and two new goats were required. Every year, the high priest entered the holy of holies with blood that could only temporarily cover what it could not permanently remove. The very repetition was a reminder — as the author of Hebrews says — that the problem of sin had not yet been definitively solved.

This is precisely what makes Christ's sacrifice so extraordinary. He offered Himself "once for all" (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10). His blood does what animal blood could never do: it truly and permanently takes away sin. The Day of Atonement was the shadow; Christ is the reality. Yom Kippur was the promise; the cross is the fulfillment. The annual ritual pointed forward to a day when the true High Priest would enter the true holy of holies with His own blood and accomplish an atonement that would never need to be repeated.

Think about what this means for the individual believer. Under the old covenant, an Israelite who had been cleansed on the Day of Atonement knew that next year, the same ritual would be needed again. The forgiveness was real but temporary. The cleansing was genuine but not permanent. There was always another Day of Atonement on the horizon — always another reminder that sin had not been finally dealt with. But because of Christ, the believer can know with absolute certainty that the atonement is complete. "By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14). There is no more sacrifice for sin. The Day of Atonement has been fulfilled once and for all.

This also helps us understand why the New Testament speaks of believers having confidence to enter the holy of holies. Under the old covenant, only the high priest could enter, and only once a year, and only with blood. But Hebrews 10:19–22 declares: "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith." The curtain that once separated God from His people has been opened. The way into God's presence is no longer restricted to one man on one day. Through Christ's blood, every believer can come boldly before the throne of grace. That is the ultimate Christological significance of the Day of Atonement — and it is what makes the gospel such astonishingly good news.

Conclusion: The Cross at the Heart of Yom Kippur

The Day of Atonement is, I believe, one of the most powerful arguments for penal substitutionary atonement in the entire Old Testament. Not because it teaches PSA in isolation — it does not — but because it provides a divinely designed ritual framework that includes every major dimension of atonement, with substitutionary sin-bearing and the satisfaction of divine justice at its center.

We have seen that the two goats of Leviticus 16 are complementary aspects of one sacrifice. The sacrificed goat provides the blood that purges and cleanses sin (expiation) and averts God's wrath (propitiation). The scapegoat bears the people's sins and carries them away into a land of cutting off (substitution and removal). Together, they provide a complete picture of atonement: sin is both purged and removed, God's holiness is both honored and satisfied, and the people are both cleansed and freed.

We have seen that the mercy seat — the kapporet — is the place where the blood of sacrifice meets the presence of God, and that the New Testament authors present Christ as the true mercy seat, the true hilastērion, publicly displayed so that all may draw near through faith in His blood.

We have engaged with Hess's arguments against the penal interpretation of the scapegoat and found them wanting. The scapegoat is not merely a metaphor for sin being "sent away." It is a substitute that bears the iniquities of the people in their place, sent to a land of cutting off — a land of divine judgment — so that they do not bear those consequences themselves. The same sin-bearing vocabulary that describes the scapegoat in Leviticus 16 describes the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53 and Christ Himself in the New Testament.

And we have seen that the annual repetition of Yom Kippur was itself a pointer to something greater — a once-for-all sacrifice by a true High Priest whose blood could accomplish what the blood of bulls and goats never could.

When we stand at the foot of the cross and ask, "What is happening here?" the Day of Atonement gives us part of the answer. An innocent substitute is bearing the sins of the guilty. Blood is being presented before the throne of God to satisfy divine justice and cleanse sinful people. Sin is being carried away — removed, borne, taken to a place of no return. And the God who designed the Day of Atonement is the same God who, in the fullness of time, sent His own Son to fulfill it. The cross is the true Yom Kippur — the day when atonement was made once for all, for all people, for all time.

As we turn in the next chapter to Isaiah 53, we will see the Suffering Servant who completes this picture — the one who was "pierced for our transgressions" and "crushed for our iniquities," the one on whom the LORD laid "the iniquity of us all." The vocabulary of the Day of Atonement will echo through every verse. And we will see, once again, that the cross of Christ is not an afterthought or an accident. It is the event toward which the entire Old Testament has been pointing.