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

Introduction: The Climax of Israel's Worship

If there was one day in the entire year when the weight of sin — and the wonder of God's mercy — pressed down upon the people of Israel with overwhelming force, it was Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement, described in Leviticus 16, stood at the very summit of Old Testament worship. It was the day when the high priest, and the high priest alone, entered the innermost chamber of God's dwelling — the Holy of Holies — to make atonement for the sins of the entire nation. Everything else in the Levitical sacrificial system pointed toward this day. The daily offerings, the sin offerings, the guilt offerings — all of these were, in a sense, preparation for this annual climax, when God dealt with sin comprehensively and the whole community was cleansed and restored.

I want to walk through this remarkable ritual carefully in this chapter, because I believe the Day of Atonement provides one of the most powerful pictures in all of Scripture of what Christ would accomplish on the cross. The dual ritual at the heart of Yom Kippur — one goat sacrificed and its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat, a second goat loaded with the people's sins and sent into the wilderness — paints a vivid, two-sided portrait of atonement. Sin is dealt with through blood. And sin is removed, carried away, banished from God's people. When we see these two actions together, we get a remarkably complete preview of what Jesus would do for us at Calvary.

The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: The Day of Atonement represents the climax and summit of the Old Testament sacrificial system, and 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. To put it more simply, Yom Kippur teaches us that atonement requires both purification and removal. Sin must be cleansed, and sin must be carried away. Jesus accomplished both.

As we explored in Chapter 4, the Levitical sacrificial system established the framework of sacrifice, substitution, and blood as the God-ordained means of dealing with sin. Now we turn to the day when all of that comes to its highest expression. We will walk through the Leviticus 16 ritual step by step, examine the meaning of each element, engage with the scholarly debates surrounding the scapegoat and the mysterious "Azazel," and then trace the lines that connect Yom Kippur forward to the cross of Christ.

The Day of Atonement: Walking Through the Ritual

Let us begin by reading the key text. Leviticus 16 opens with a solemn warning that sets the tone for everything that follows:

"The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before the LORD and died, and the LORD said 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.'" (Leviticus 16:1–2, ESV)

Notice the gravity here. The chapter begins by recalling the deaths of Nadab and Abihu — Aaron's sons who had offered "unauthorized fire" before the Lord and were struck dead (Leviticus 10:1–2). The message is unmistakable: God's holiness is not something to be approached casually. Even the high priest cannot simply walk into God's presence whenever he pleases. There are conditions. There are procedures. There is danger. The holiness of God is real, and sinful human beings need protection when they come near it.¹

This might sound harsh to modern ears. But the point is not that God is hostile or unreachable. The point is that God is taking sin — and its remedy — with utmost seriousness. The very existence of the Day of Atonement is an act of grace: God Himself is providing the way for His people to be cleansed and to stand in His presence. He is not telling Israel, "Stay away." He is saying, "Come — but come in the way I have prescribed, because I love you too much to let sin destroy you."

Step 1: The High Priest's Preparation

The ritual begins with the high priest's personal preparation. Leviticus 16:3–4 tells us:

"But in this way Aaron shall come into the Holy Place: with a bull from the herd for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He shall put on the holy linen coat and shall have the linen undergarment on his body, and he shall tie the linen sash around his waist, and wear the linen turban; these are the holy garments. He shall bathe his body in water and then put them on." (Leviticus 16:3–4, ESV)

On any other day of the year, the high priest wore elaborate, ornate garments — the golden ephod, the breastplate studded with twelve precious stones, the robe of blue with its golden bells. These were garments "for glory and for beauty" (Exodus 28:2). But on Yom Kippur, he set all of that aside. He stripped down to simple white linen. No gold. No jewels. No bells. Just plain, humble cloth.²

The symbolism is striking. The high priest is coming before God not in his official splendor but as a humble supplicant. He is approaching the Most Holy God on behalf of a sinful people, and the occasion calls for humility, not pageantry. Some commentators have seen in this a foreshadowing of the incarnation — the Son of God stripping Himself of heavenly glory to take on humble human flesh (Philippians 2:6–8).³

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

Before the high priest could do anything for the people, he had to deal with his own sin first. He slaughtered a bull as a sin offering for himself and his household (Leviticus 16:6, 11). He then took a censer full of burning coals from the altar and two handfuls of incense, brought them 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 16:13). Even the high priest needed atonement. Even the mediator between God and the people was himself a sinner who required the covering of blood.

This is a crucial detail, because it highlights a fundamental limitation of the old covenant system. The mediator himself was compromised. The one who brought the blood before God was himself guilty and in need of cleansing. The author of Hebrews will later make precisely this point: unlike the Levitical priests who had to offer sacrifices first for their own sins and then for the people's, Jesus "has no need, like those high priests, 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 7:27). Christ is the sinless high priest who needs no atonement for Himself — and that is precisely what makes His sacrifice final and sufficient (see Chapter 10 for the full exegesis of Hebrews).⁴

Step 3: The Two Goats and the Casting of Lots

Now comes the central action of the day. Leviticus 16:5–10 describes it:

"And he shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering, and one ram for a burnt offering. Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the LORD at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the LORD and use it as a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the LORD to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel." (Leviticus 16:5–10, ESV)

Two goats were brought forward, and lots were cast to determine which goat would serve which purpose. One goat was designated "for the LORD" — it would be sacrificed as a sin offering. The other was designated "for Azazel" — it would become what later tradition called the "scapegoat," the goat that carried the people's sins into the wilderness. The casting of lots underscored that this was God's decision, not the priest's. The choice was placed in God's hands.⁵

Step 4: The Sacrificed Goat and the Blood on the Mercy Seat

The goat designated "for the LORD" was slaughtered as a sin offering for the people. The high priest then brought its blood inside the veil — into the Holy of Holies itself — and sprinkled it on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat:

"Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the bull's blood, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat. Thus he shall make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins." (Leviticus 16:15–16, ESV)

Several elements deserve our careful attention here. First, notice the location: the blood is brought into the very presence of God. The mercy seat — kapporet (כַּפֹּרֶת) in Hebrew — was the golden cover of the Ark of the Covenant, the place where God's presence dwelt between the cherubim. This was the holiest spot on earth, the place where heaven and earth met. The blood was applied directly to the place of God's presence.⁷

Second, notice the purpose: to make atonement "because of the uncleannesses of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions, all their sins." The blood deals with sin's defilement. It purifies the sanctuary, which had been polluted by the accumulated sins of the people over the past year. Think of it this way: sin is not just a legal problem (breaking God's law) but also a pollution problem (defiling God's dwelling place). The blood addresses both dimensions. It satisfies the requirements of God's justice and it cleanses the contamination that sin has caused.⁸

Third — and this is theologically crucial — notice the word used for the mercy seat: kapporet (כַּפֹּרֶת). This word comes from the same root as kipper (כָּפַר), the Hebrew verb for "to atone" or "to make atonement." The mercy seat is, literally, the "place of atonement." And when the Greek-speaking Jews translated the Old Testament into Greek (the Septuagint, or LXX), they translated kapporet with the Greek word hilastērion (ἱλαστήριον) — the very same word that Paul uses in Romans 3:25 to describe what God made Christ to be. As we will see in Chapter 8's detailed exegesis of Romans 3:21–26, many scholars believe that when Paul calls Christ a hilastērion, he is deliberately identifying Jesus as the true mercy seat — the place where God's justice and God's mercy finally and fully meet.⁹

Step 5: The Scapegoat Ritual

After the blood of the first goat had been sprinkled on the mercy seat and the sanctuary had been cleansed, the high priest came out to the second goat — the one designated "for Azazel." Here the ritual takes a remarkable turn:

"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)

The visual power of this ritual must have been staggering. The high priest — in full view of the assembled people — placed both of his hands on the live goat's head and verbally confessed every sin, every transgression, every act of rebellion committed by the entire nation. The laying on of both hands (the Hebrew term is semikah, סְמִיכָה) represented a deliberate, forceful act of identification and transfer. The sins were, in a deeply symbolic sense, lifted from the people and placed on the goat. Then the goat was led away into the wilderness — into a desolate, uninhabited place — carrying those sins far from God's people and God's dwelling.¹⁰

The laying on of hands deserves special attention, because it is one of the most debated elements of the sacrificial system. What exactly did this action signify? Scholars have proposed several possibilities. Some argue that the laying on of hands was simply a gesture of identification — the offerer was identifying the animal as his own, designating it as his personal offering. Others argue it signified the transfer of sin or guilt from the offerer to the animal — that the animal was being loaded with the offerer's sin before being killed. Still others see it as a gesture of representation — the animal represents the offerer before God, and the laying on of hands establishes this representative relationship.⁴⁵

In the ordinary sin and burnt offerings described in Leviticus 1 and 4, the offerer lays one hand on the animal's head (as discussed in Chapter 4). But on Yom Kippur, the high priest lays both hands on the scapegoat's head. This is different. The doubled gesture, combined with the verbal confession of sins, strongly suggests more than mere identification or designation. The high priest is deliberately, forcefully, publicly placing the nation's sins on this animal. The text is explicit: he confesses "all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins" and puts them "on the head of the goat" (Leviticus 16:21). The combination of the two-handed gesture plus the verbal transfer of sins makes the scapegoat ritual the clearest and most emphatic act of sin-transfer in the entire Levitical system. I believe the best reading is that the laying on of hands establishes a substitutionary identification — the goat becomes, symbolically, the sin-bearer for the people. It carries what they should have carried.⁴⁶

Notice, too, the comprehensiveness of what is confessed: "all the iniquities... all their transgressions, all their sins." Three different Hebrew words for wrongdoing are used. Avonot (עֲוֹנֹת, "iniquities") refers to moral crookedness or perversity. Peshaim (פְּשָׁעִים, "transgressions") denotes willful rebellion — deliberate defiance of God. Chattot (חַטֹּאת, "sins") means "missing the mark" — falling short of God's standard. Together, these three terms cover the entire spectrum of human sinfulness: our perversity, our rebellion, and our failure. Nothing is left out. Every kind of sin the nation committed is placed on this goat. The Day of Atonement was comprehensive in scope.⁴⁷

I find this image deeply moving, and I think the original Israelites did too. Imagine standing there, watching the goat walk farther and farther from the camp, growing smaller against the barren landscape, until finally it disappeared from view. Your sins — the ones you had been carrying all year, the ones that kept you awake at night, the ones that made you feel unworthy to stand in God's presence — were on that goat. And now the goat was gone. The sins were gone. Carried away into the emptiness, never to return.

The later Jewish tradition developed the Yom Kippur observance further. According to the Mishnah (Yoma 6:6), a crimson thread was tied to the scapegoat, and there was a tradition that the thread would turn white if God had accepted the atonement — an echo of Isaiah 1:18: "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." The Mishnah also reports that the scapegoat was eventually pushed off a cliff to ensure it did not wander back into inhabited territory, symbolizing the permanent and irrevocable removal of sin. While these later developments go beyond the Leviticus 16 text, they illuminate how deeply the Jewish community felt the need for assurance that sin had been truly and permanently removed.⁴⁸

David Allen captures the significance of this ritual well: 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. Allen emphasizes that when Leviticus 16:22 says the goat "shall bear all their iniquities on itself," the Hebrew phrase depends partially on the subject of the verb. When God is the subject, "bearing sin" can mean "to forgive sin" (as in Numbers 14:18). But when the goat is the subject, it means to carry the consequences — the goat bears what the people deserved to bear.¹¹

Step 6: Cleansing the Altar and Final Actions

The Yom Kippur ritual did not end with the scapegoat. The high priest also made atonement for the altar of burnt offering (Leviticus 16:18–19), cleansing it with blood. Then the remains of the bull and the sacrificed goat — their skin, flesh, and dung — were carried outside the camp and burned (Leviticus 16:27). The man who led the scapegoat away and the man who burned the remains both had to wash their clothes and bathe before re-entering the camp (Leviticus 16:26, 28). The whole process was one of purification from beginning to end.¹²

Finally, Leviticus 16:29–34 establishes Yom Kippur as a permanent statute — to be observed every year, on the tenth day of the seventh month. On that day, the people were to "afflict themselves" (likely through fasting and abstaining from work) as a sign of genuine repentance. This was not magic. The ritual was not automatic. It called for the people's hearts to be engaged, for genuine sorrow over sin and genuine dependence on God's provision of atonement.

The Two Goats: Complementary Aspects of One Atonement

One of the most important interpretive principles for understanding Yom Kippur is recognizing that the two goats represent two complementary dimensions of one unified act of atonement — not two separate and disconnected rituals. This is clear from the text itself: in Leviticus 16:5, both goats together are described as "a sin offering" (singular). They are two halves of a single whole.¹³

What does each goat accomplish? Let me summarize:

The first goat — the one sacrificed and its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat — deals primarily with expiation. That term simply means the cleansing or purging of sin and its defilement. Through the shedding of blood, the sanctuary is purified, the contamination of sin is removed from God's dwelling place, and the way is opened for God to continue dwelling among His people. The blood is the God-given means of dealing with sin's pollution.

The second goat — the scapegoat sent into the wilderness — deals primarily with the removal of sin and guilt. The sins of the people are confessed over this goat, symbolically placed on its head, and then carried away into a desolate place. This goat makes visible what the first goat's blood accomplishes invisibly inside the Holy of Holies. It dramatizes the result of atonement: sin is gone, removed, taken far away from God's people.

Stott makes the same point. He warns against "driving a wedge between the two goats, the sacrificed goat and the scapegoat, overlooking the fact that the two together are described as 'a sin offering' in the singular." Stott approvingly quotes Thomas Crawford's suggestion that each goat embodied a different dimension of the same sacrifice — one showing the means of atonement, the other its results. In this reading, "the public proclamation of the Day of Atonement was plain, namely that reconciliation was possible only through substitutionary sin-bearing."¹⁵

This point matters immensely. Some scholars, particularly those who reject substitutionary atonement, try to separate the two goats and argue that the scapegoat ritual has nothing to do with punishment or substitution. We will engage that argument shortly. But the text itself resists this separation. The two goats form a unity, and that unity proclaims a single, powerful message: atonement requires both the shedding of blood (the means) and the removal of sin (the result), and both happen through an innocent animal standing in the place of guilty people.

The Azazel Debate

One of the most intriguing and debated questions in Old Testament scholarship centers on the meaning of the Hebrew word Azazel (עֲזָאזֵל). In Leviticus 16:8, lots are cast over the two goats — one "for the LORD" and the other "for Azazel." But what does "Azazel" mean? Scholars have proposed three main interpretations.

View 1: A Place Name — "A Remote Place" or "Precipice"

Some scholars understand Azazel as a geographical reference — the name of the desolate place to which the goat was sent. The Mishnah (Yoma 6:6) describes the scapegoat being led to a rocky cliff and pushed off. In this reading, "for Azazel" simply means "for the wilderness" or "for the remote, rugged place." This view has the advantage of simplicity and avoids the theological complications of the other two views.¹⁶

View 2: An Abstract Meaning — "Removal" or "Complete Sending Away"

A second proposal sees Azazel as a compound Hebrew word derived from ʿez (עֵז, "goat") and ʾazal (אָזַל, "to go away"). On this reading, "Azazel" essentially means "the goat that goes away" — the "escape goat" — and the word is descriptive of the goat's function rather than its destination. This is the origin of the English word "scapegoat," which comes from William Tyndale's translation. The King James Version followed this interpretation with its rendering "scapegoat."¹⁷

View 3: A Demonic Being — The Name of a Desert Demon

The third and increasingly popular view identifies Azazel as a personal, spiritual being — a demonic entity associated with the wilderness. This interpretation draws support from Second Temple Jewish literature, particularly 1 Enoch 8:1–2 and 10:4–8, where Azazel appears as a fallen angelic figure who corrupted humanity. In this view, the parallelism of Leviticus 16:8 ("one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel") suggests that Azazel is a personal being placed in deliberate contrast with the LORD. The sins of Israel are being symbolically sent back to the demonic source from which they came.¹⁸

Hess, in his treatment of the scapegoat, favors this third view. He emphasizes the connection between Azazel and ancient Jewish traditions associating the wilderness with evil spiritual forces: "Azazel in ancient literature is associated with evil. When reviewing ancient Jewish literature, Azazel is often seen as a personal and evil spiritual being." Hess argues that the ritual is fundamentally about sending sin back to the realm of evil where it belongs — away from God's people and God's sanctuary — rather than about punishing a substitute.¹⁹

I find the third view compelling in many respects, though I want to be careful not to overstate the case. The parallel structure of "for the LORD" and "for Azazel" does seem to suggest a personal entity. And the broader biblical witness consistently associates the wilderness with demonic powers and spiritual desolation (consider Jesus' temptation in the wilderness in Matthew 4:1–11). However — and this is important — even if Azazel is a demonic figure, this does not eliminate the substitutionary dimension of the scapegoat ritual. The goat still bears the people's sins. The sins are still placed on its head by the laying on of hands. It still carries those sins away in the people's place. The identification of Azazel as a demonic being adds a Christus Victor dimension to the ritual (sin is sent back to its demonic origin and defeated), but it does not erase the substitutionary element.²⁰

In fact, this is a beautiful example of how the substitutionary and Christus Victor motifs work together rather than against each other (a theme we will develop at length in Chapters 21 and 24). The scapegoat simultaneously pictures substitutionary sin-bearing (the goat carries the people's sins in their place) and victory over evil powers (the sins are dispatched to the demonic realm, symbolizing their defeat and removal). These are not competing interpretations; they are complementary dimensions of a single, richly layered ritual.

The Theology of Blood and Atonement

The Day of Atonement ritual brings into sharp focus a question that has occupied scholars for generations: What exactly does the blood accomplish? We explored this briefly in Chapter 4, but it deserves further attention here because of the central role blood plays on Yom Kippur.

The foundational text is Leviticus 17:11:

"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." (Leviticus 17:11, ESV)

This verse is remarkably dense with meaning. Several things stand out. First, God says, "I have given it for you." The blood is not something human beings dreamed up. It is God's own provision. Atonement is God's initiative, God's gift, God's solution. Second, the blood makes atonement "for your souls" — that is, for your very lives. The blood of the animal stands in place of the life of the human being. Third, the mechanism is explained: "it is the blood that makes atonement by the life." Life given in death serves as the means of atonement.²¹

A long-running scholarly debate has centered on whether the blood symbolizes life released in death (the "life" interpretation) or life poured out through death (the "death" interpretation). The British scholar B. F. Westcott, in the nineteenth century, argued that blood represents life set free — that the important thing is not the death of the animal but the liberation of its life-essence through the shedding of blood, which then becomes available as a purifying, consecrating power. On this reading, the emphasis falls on the positive offering of life rather than on the negative reality of death.²²

The great Scottish theologian James Denney challenged Westcott's interpretation vigorously. Denney insisted that separating the blood from the death was artificial and misleading. Blood shed is blood of death. You cannot pour out blood without killing the creature. The shedding of blood means death — violent, sacrificial death — and it is precisely the death that makes atonement. As Rutledge summarizes the dispute: the insistence on detaching life from death means "we cannot speak of representation, substitution, propitiation, vicarious suffering, or even exchange happening on the cross because the whole idea of God coming under God's own judgment is eliminated." The blood, she argues, represents both life and death in an inseparable unity — the life given through the death, not instead of it.²³

I believe Denney and Rutledge have the better of this argument. The blood of the sacrificial goat on Yom Kippur is not merely a symbol of life set free. It is the evidence of a death that has occurred — a death that occurred in the place of the people, a death that satisfies the requirements of God's justice and purifies what sin has defiled. When the high priest carried that blood into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it on the mercy seat, he was bringing the evidence of a substitutionary death into the very presence of God. And that blood — that death — made atonement.

We should also note the broader significance of Leviticus 17:11 for our understanding of the entire sacrificial system. This verse provides what might be called the theological rationale behind all blood sacrifice in Israel. It is not just a description of what happens on the Day of Atonement; it is an explanation of why blood is central to all atonement. The life is in the blood, and God has given it on the altar as the means of atonement. Blood is effective for atonement precisely because it represents a life given in death. Without the shedding of blood — without the giving of life — there can be no forgiveness (see Hebrews 9:22, "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins"). This principle runs like a scarlet thread from Genesis to Revelation, from the animal skins God provided to cover Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21) to the Lamb who was slain "before the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8).⁵¹

Kipper: The Meaning of "Atonement"

The Hebrew verb kipper (כָּפַר) occurs a striking sixteen times in Leviticus 16 alone. This is the key word for "atonement" in the Old Testament, and it sits at the very heart of what Yom Kippur is about. But what exactly does kipper mean? As we noted briefly in Chapter 2's survey of biblical terminology, the word has a range of meanings, and scholars have debated which is primary.²⁴

Allen identifies four possible meanings, none of which necessarily excludes the others. First, when God is the subject, kipper can mean "to forgive." Second, the word can connote "cleansing" or "purification," as in Leviticus 16:30: "For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you." Third, kipper can mean "to ransom," as does its cognate kopher (כֹּפֶר) in Exodus 30:12, where the life of the animal is substituted for human lives. Fourth, the word can refer to the averting of God's wrath — the propitiatory dimension of atonement.²⁵

I believe the evidence supports a multi-dimensional understanding of kipper — one that includes all four of these senses working together. Atonement involves forgiveness (God pardons the sinner), purification (sin's defilement is cleansed), ransom (a substitute is provided), and propitiation (God's justice is satisfied). These are not competing definitions but complementary facets of what atonement accomplishes. When we try to reduce kipper to just one of these meanings — as some scholars do when they argue it means "only" purification with no propitiatory dimension — we end up with a flattened, incomplete picture.²⁶

Hess, however, pushes back against the propitiatory reading of kipper. He argues that the primary meaning in Old Testament sacrificial contexts is "purification" or "purgation" — cleansing sin from the sanctuary and from the people — with no implication that God's wrath needs to be satisfied or turned away. As he writes, the term "carried with it the primary idea of purification, purgation, or expiation of corruption in order to restore relations." Even William Lane Craig, Hess notes, acknowledges that kipper in its Old Testament usage has the primary sense of "to purify, to cleanse."²⁸

I appreciate Hess's careful engagement with the Hebrew, and I agree that purification is indeed a central component of kipper. But I think he draws the circle too narrowly. The purgation/purification dimension is real and important — but it does not exhaust the word's meaning. When we look at texts like Numbers 35:31–33, where kopher (the cognate noun) refers explicitly to a ransom price paid for a life, or Exodus 30:12, where kopher functions as a "ransom" given to the LORD to prevent a plague, the propitiatory and ransom dimensions come clearly into view. Purification and propitiation are not either/or options; they are both/and realities that work together in the concept of atonement.²⁹

Engaging the Objections: Was the Scapegoat Really Substitutionary?

Not everyone reads the Day of Atonement as a picture of substitutionary atonement. Some scholars — particularly those who reject penal substitution — argue that the scapegoat ritual is about ritual purification and the symbolic removal of impurity, not about a substitute bearing punishment in the place of guilty sinners. Hess is one of the most articulate recent voices in this camp, and his arguments deserve a careful and fair hearing.

Hess's Argument

Hess raises several pointed objections to the substitutionary reading of the scapegoat. First, he emphasizes that the scapegoat is not killed. "The very goat that supposedly is carrying the sins of the people is not killed — it gets to live!" If the scapegoat were a penal substitute, Hess argues, one would expect it to be slaughtered — to receive the punishment of death that the people deserved. Instead, it is simply sent away alive. This, Hess claims, is difficult to reconcile with penal substitutionary atonement.³⁰

Second, Hess argues that the scapegoat does not inherit the people's guilt in any ontological sense. The sins are confessed over the goat, not literally transferred into it. The ritual is "symbolic, not literal." The wilderness is not literally an evil place, and the goat is not literally carrying sins and "dumping them in the desert." Rather, the ritual communicates that sin must be cast out from God's people because it does not belong among them.³¹

Third, Hess argues that if the scapegoat represents Jesus in a PSA framework, the typology becomes problematic: Where is Jesus delivering our sin to? To hell? To Satan? The goat is sent to Azazel (associated with evil/the wilderness), which, Hess contends, makes a strange picture if we are supposed to see Jesus in the goat. "Rather, Jesus acts as our high priest and representative," not as the scapegoat.³²

Response to Hess

Hess raises legitimate questions, and I appreciate the careful way he works through the textual details. But I believe his arguments, while thoughtful, ultimately fall short for several reasons.

First, regarding the scapegoat not being killed: this observation is correct, but it proves less than Hess thinks. Remember, the two goats together form a single sin offering. The first goat is killed — its blood is shed and sprinkled on the mercy seat. The death component of the atonement is fully present in the first goat's sacrifice. The scapegoat does not need to die again because the death has already occurred in the first half of the ritual. The scapegoat's role is not to repeat the death but to dramatize the result of the death: sin is carried away. As Allen and Stott both note, the two goats present complementary aspects of a single atonement — the means (blood sacrifice) and the result (removal of sin).³³

Second, regarding the nature of the sin-bearing: Hess is right that the ritual is symbolic in the sense that a literal, metaphysical transfer of sin into an animal is not what is being described. Of course it is symbolic — all ritual acts are symbolic. But the question is: what does the symbol point to? And the answer is clear from the text. The high priest lays both hands on the goat's head, confesses "all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins," and puts them "on the head of the goat" (Leviticus 16:21). The goat then "bears all their iniquities on itself" (16:22). The language of sin-bearing — nasa (נָשָׂא) combined with "iniquities" (avonot) — is consistently used in the Old Testament to describe bearing the consequences and guilt of sin. This is substitutionary language by any reasonable reading. The goat bears what the people should have borne. The fact that it is symbolic does not make it less substitutionary — it makes it more so, because it points forward to a greater reality where a willing substitute would truly bear human sin.³⁴

Third, regarding the destination of the scapegoat: the fact that the goat is sent to Azazel (whether understood as a desolate place or a demonic figure) does not undermine the substitutionary reading. It actually enriches it by adding a Christus Victor dimension. Christ both bore our sins (substitution) and defeated the powers of evil (Christus Victor). He both carried our guilt and triumphed over the demonic forces that held humanity in bondage. The scapegoat ritual, if Azazel is a demonic figure, beautifully anticipates both of these realities: sin is laid on the substitute and sent back to the domain of evil from which it came. Substitution and victory work together.³⁵

Finally, Hess's argument that Jesus functions as the high priest rather than the scapegoat is a false dilemma. The author of Hebrews presents Jesus as both the high priest and the sacrifice. Jesus is simultaneously the one who offers and the one who is offered (Hebrews 7:27; 9:11–14). He is both the priest who enters the Holy of Holies and the victim whose blood is brought before God. He fulfills every role in the Yom Kippur drama — the high priest, the sacrificed goat, and the scapegoat. As Stott observes, the author of Hebrews "has no inhibitions about seeing Jesus both as 'a merciful and faithful high priest' and as the two victims, the sacrificed goat whose blood was taken into the inner sanctuary and the scapegoat that carried away the people's sins."³⁶

From Yom Kippur to Calvary: The Christological Fulfillment

We now arrive at the heart of the matter. How does the Day of Atonement find its fulfillment in Christ? The New Testament draws the connection explicitly and powerfully, especially in the book of Hebrews and in Paul's letter to the Romans.

Hebrews 9–10: Christ as the True High Priest and the True Sacrifice

The author of Hebrews offers the most sustained theological reflection on the relationship between Yom Kippur and Christ's death in the entire New Testament. We will treat Hebrews in full detail in Chapter 10, but here we must note the key connections to the Day of Atonement specifically.

Hebrews 9:6–7 sets the scene by recalling the annual Yom Kippur ritual: "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 annual repetition, the author argues, was itself evidence of the system's inadequacy. The very fact that the ritual had to be repeated year after year showed that it never fully dealt with sin (Hebrews 10:1–4).

Then comes the decisive contrast:

"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." (Hebrews 9:11–12, ESV)

The parallels to Yom Kippur are unmistakable. Like the high priest on the Day of Atonement, Christ entered the Holy of Holies. But unlike the earthly high priest, He entered a heavenly sanctuary. And unlike the earthly high priest, who brought the blood of an animal, Christ brought His own blood. And unlike the earthly ritual, which had to be repeated every year, Christ's offering was "once for all" — a single, unrepeatable, eternally effective sacrifice.³⁷

The author of Hebrews also connects Christ's work to the scapegoat dimension of Yom Kippur. Hebrews 9:28 declares that "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 sins" (anapherō, ἀναφέρω + hamartias) echoes both the scapegoat of Leviticus 16 (which "bore all their iniquities") and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53:12 (who "bore the sin of many"). Jesus fulfills both the sacrificed goat and the scapegoat in a single act: His death both cleanses (the blood dimension) and removes sin (the bearing-away dimension).³⁸

Furthermore, Hebrews 13:11–12 draws an explicit parallel between the remains of the Yom Kippur sacrifice burned "outside the camp" and Jesus' crucifixion "outside the gate" of Jerusalem: "For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood." Even the geographical detail of the crucifixion site is connected to the Day of Atonement typology.³⁹

Romans 3:25: Christ as the Mercy Seat

We noted earlier the connection between kapporet (the mercy seat) and hilastērion (the Greek word Paul uses in Romans 3:25). A full exegesis of Romans 3:21–26 belongs to Chapter 8, but the Day of Atonement connection demands mention here. Paul writes that God "put forward" Christ Jesus "as a propitiation [hilastērion] by his blood, to be received by faith" (Romans 3:25, ESV).

Many scholars — including C. E. B. Cranfield, N. T. Wright, and others — have argued that Paul is deliberately invoking the mercy seat imagery of Yom Kippur. If this is correct, then Paul is saying something astonishing: Jesus Himself is the true mercy seat. He is the place where the blood is applied. He is the meeting point of God's justice and God's mercy. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest sprinkled blood on the kapporet and atonement was made. In the gospel, God Himself "set forth" His own Son as the kapporet — the place where atonement happens — and applied the blood of His own self-sacrifice. The entire Yom Kippur ritual was a shadow; Christ is the substance.⁴⁰

The Superiority of Christ's Sacrifice

The New Testament makes clear that Christ's fulfillment of the Day of Atonement is not merely a repetition on a grander scale but a qualitative transformation. The old ritual was good — it was God-ordained, after all — but it was inherently limited. The author of Hebrews identifies several key differences that demonstrate the superiority of Christ's work:

First, the earthly high priest was himself a sinner who needed atonement. Christ is the sinless high priest (Hebrews 4:15; 7:26). Second, the earthly high priest entered a man-made sanctuary. Christ entered heaven itself — "into the presence of God on our behalf" (Hebrews 9:24). Third, the earthly sacrifices used the blood of animals, which could never truly take away sin (Hebrews 10:4). Christ offered His own blood — His own life freely given. Fourth, the earthly ritual had to be repeated annually. Christ's sacrifice was "once for all" (ephapax, ἐφάπαξ) — a word Hebrews uses repeatedly to emphasize the singular, unrepeatable, and permanently effective nature of what Christ accomplished (Hebrews 7:27; 9:12; 10:10).⁴¹

The annual repetition of Yom Kippur was itself a sign that something more was needed. Hebrews 10:1–4 states this with striking clarity: "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." The very repetition was a reminder that the problem had not been finally solved. Every year when Yom Kippur came around again, Israel was confronted with the uncomfortable truth that last year's atonement was not enough. The sins kept coming. The defilement kept accumulating. The blood of animals could cover sin for a time, but it could not remove it permanently.⁴⁹

Christ's sacrifice broke this cycle. "For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14). The annual pilgrimage to the Day of Atonement — the fasting, the anxiety, the watching as the high priest disappeared behind the veil, the waiting to see if he would come back alive — all of it pointed toward the day when atonement would be made once and never need repeating. That day came at Calvary.

The implications are staggering. If Christ has truly fulfilled and surpassed the Day of Atonement, then the problem of sin has been dealt with — finally, fully, and forever. There is no need for another sacrifice. No more annual repetition. No more uncertainty about whether atonement has really been made. The veil has been torn. The way into God's presence stands permanently open. As Rutledge emphasizes, the significance of the mercy seat in Hebrews is "heightened tremendously" by the contrast between the old sacrifices and Christ's sacrifice — in Jesus, the hierarchy of religious privilege that restricted access to God is abolished, and the way is open for all.⁵⁰

The Unified Love of the Trinity on the Day of Atonement

Before we close this chapter, I want to address a concern that I believe is vital. As I argued in Chapter 3 and will develop at much greater length in Chapter 20, the atonement must never be understood as the Father punishing an unwilling Son. The Day of Atonement, rightly understood, does not teach that God is an angry deity who needs to be placated by killing an innocent victim. It teaches that God Himself provides the means of atonement out of His own love and grace.

Notice again the remarkable words of Leviticus 17:11: "I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls." God gives the blood. God provides the sacrifice. God initiates the atonement. This is not humanity trying to appease an angry deity but God Himself providing the solution to the problem of sin. As Philippe de la Trinité argues from the Catholic tradition, Christ's sacrifice is not the result of divine rage but of divine love — Christ is the "victim of love," acting in union with the Father to accomplish redemption.⁴²

When we project the Yom Kippur typology onto Calvary, we must preserve this Trinitarian love. The Father and the Son act together with a single will. The Son goes willingly to the cross — "no one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:18). The Father is present with the Son, not raging against Him. The cross is the supreme expression of divine love, not of divine cruelty. Any interpretation of the Day of Atonement or its fulfillment in Christ that pits the Father against the Son, or that depicts the Father as an enraged deity venting His fury on an innocent victim, has misunderstood both Leviticus and the gospel.⁴³

Rutledge captures this beautifully when she writes of the sacrifice at the heart of the biblical vision: "the self-offering of the Son" reflects "an inherent, original movement within God's very being. It is in the very nature of God to offer God's self sacrificially." The Day of Atonement was always pointing toward this — not a reluctant victim coerced by an angry God, but a self-giving God who bears the cost of reconciliation Himself.⁴⁴

Conclusion: The Shadow and the Substance

The Day of Atonement stands as the pinnacle of Old Testament worship — the one day when the full weight of Israel's sin was dealt with comprehensively and the entire nation was cleansed and restored before God. Its rituals are rich, multi-layered, and deeply instructive. For centuries, faithful Israelites gathered on the tenth day of the seventh month, fasted, and watched as the high priest performed the most solemn and sacred acts prescribed in the Torah. Year after year, the same rituals. Year after year, the same blood, the same confession, the same goat disappearing into the wilderness. The repetition was a mercy — God was covering His people's sins again — but it was also a reminder that the ultimate solution had not yet arrived.

We have seen that the dual ritual of the two goats presents a complete picture of atonement: the sacrificed goat addresses the expiation dimension (sin's defilement is cleansed through blood), while the scapegoat addresses the removal dimension (sin is borne away from God's people). Together, the two goats — described as a single sin offering — proclaim that atonement requires both purification and removal, and that both happen through an innocent substitute standing in the place of the guilty.

We have explored the meaning of kipper, the rich Hebrew term for atonement that encompasses forgiveness, purification, ransom, and propitiation. We have engaged with the Azazel debate and found that, regardless of whether Azazel is a place, an abstract concept, or a demonic being, the substitutionary dimension of the scapegoat ritual remains intact. And we have responded to the argument that the scapegoat ritual does not support substitutionary atonement, showing that this argument rests on a too-narrow reading of the text and a failure to appreciate how the two goats function together as a unified whole.

Most importantly, we have traced the lines from Yom Kippur to Christ. Jesus fulfills every element of the Day of Atonement drama. He is the sinless high priest, the sacrificial victim, the scapegoat, and the mercy seat. His blood, brought into the heavenly sanctuary, accomplishes what the blood of goats and bulls never could — permanent, effective, once-for-all atonement for sin. The annual shadow has given way to the eternal substance.

I want to close this chapter with a reflection that I hope captures why this matters so deeply. The Day of Atonement addressed what is perhaps the most fundamental human need: the need to know that our sins have been truly dealt with. Every human being carries guilt — some acknowledged, some buried, some so deep we hardly know it is there. We all know, at some level, that we have fallen short, that we have wronged others, that we have rebelled against what we know to be right. And we long for assurance that those wrongs can be made right — that the guilt can be removed, that we can stand clean before God.

Yom Kippur spoke to that longing. It told Israel: God Himself has provided a way. Your sins can be placed on another. Your defilement can be cleansed. Your guilt can be carried away into the wilderness, never to return. But it could only speak in shadows and symbols. The blood of goats was never truly sufficient. The animal could never truly stand in the place of a human being. The repetition every year testified to the system's inability to finish the job.

Then came Jesus — the true High Priest, the true sacrifice, the true scapegoat, the true mercy seat — and in a single, unrepeatable act of self-giving love, He accomplished everything that Yom Kippur had pointed toward for centuries. "For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14). The shadow has given way to the substance. The type has been fulfilled by the antitype. And we who trust in Him can know — with a certainty that no Israelite standing outside the tabernacle on Yom Kippur could ever fully possess — that our sins have been dealt with, once and for all.

In the next chapter, we turn to what is arguably the single most important Old Testament passage for atonement theology: Isaiah 52:13–53:12, the Fourth Servant Song. There we will find the Suffering Servant who was "pierced for our transgressions" and "crushed for our iniquities" — the one who, in his own body, brought together the substitutionary, penal, and sacrificial themes we have been tracing, and pointed unmistakably toward the cross of Jesus Christ.