If there was one day in the entire year that mattered more than any other for the people of ancient Israel, it was the Day of Atonement. The Hebrew name is Yom Kippur (יוֹם כִּפֻּר)—literally, the "Day of Covering" or "Day of Atonement." On this solemn day, described in detail in Leviticus 16, the high priest performed a complex set of rituals designed to deal with the accumulated sin of the entire nation. It was the only day of the year when anyone—even the high priest himself—was permitted to enter the Most Holy Place, the innermost chamber of the tabernacle (and later, the temple), where God's presence dwelt above the ark of the covenant. The fate of the whole nation, in a very real sense, rested on what happened that day.
Why does this ancient ritual matter for us today? Because the New Testament writers, especially the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, saw the Day of Atonement as one of the most important foreshadowings of what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross. The two goats at the heart of the ceremony—one sacrificed and one sent away into the wilderness—together paint a remarkably complete picture of what atonement means. One goat deals with the pollution of sin through the shedding of blood. The other carries the people's sins far away, never to return. Together, they show us both sides of what God does with our sin: He cleanses it and He removes it.
I believe that when we take the time to walk carefully through this ancient ritual, we discover something breathtaking. The Day of Atonement was not a random religious ceremony. It was a detailed preview—a "coming attraction," if you will—of the saving work that Jesus would one day accomplish once and for all on the cross. And at the very heart of that preview, we find the language of substitution: an innocent victim standing in the place of the guilty, bearing what the people themselves deserved.
The thesis of this chapter is straightforward: The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), 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.
In this chapter, we will walk through the entire Day of Atonement ritual step by step. We will look at what each part of the ceremony meant. We will explore the scholarly debate about the mysterious figure of Azazel. We will examine how the two goats work together as complementary aspects of a single atonement. And we will trace the lines that connect Yom Kippur forward to the cross, showing how Jesus fulfills everything this day pointed to. Along the way, we will engage with important scholarly voices—some who agree with our reading, and some who challenge it—because honest engagement with the best arguments on all sides only strengthens the case for what I believe the text is really saying.
Before we walk through the ritual itself, we need to understand why it existed. What problem was it designed to solve?
The basic problem was this: God is holy, and His people are not. The God of Israel had chosen to dwell among His people—first in the tabernacle during the wilderness wanderings, and later in the temple in Jerusalem. His presence resided in the Most Holy Place, above the ark of the covenant, between the golden cherubim. But here was the tension: a perfectly holy God was living in the middle of a camp full of sinful people. Their sins created a kind of spiritual contamination—a pollution that defiled not only the people themselves but also the very sanctuary where God dwelt.1
Think of it this way. Imagine a perfectly clean room in a hospital—totally sterile, completely spotless. Now imagine that room is surrounded on all sides by sources of contamination. Over time, no matter how careful you are, the contamination seeps in. Something has to be done regularly to purify that room, or it becomes unusable. In a similar way, the sins of the Israelites created a kind of spiritual contamination that accumulated in the tabernacle throughout the year. Individual sacrifices dealt with individual sins (as we explored in Chapter 4), but a comprehensive annual cleansing was needed to deal with the total accumulated defilement. That comprehensive cleansing was the Day of Atonement.2
David Allen puts it well when he notes that atonement as sacrifice in the Old Testament is connected to four things: sin, guilt, forgiveness, and cleansing. The Day of Atonement was the grand culmination of Israel's entire sacrificial system—the day when all four of these dimensions came together in the most comprehensive way possible.3 As Allen observes, the Hebrew terminology used to describe the offerings that God initiated in the Mosaic law all culminated on this single day, Israel's most important day of the year.4
Leviticus 16 opens with a sobering reminder of why such careful preparation was needed. The chapter begins: "The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before the LORD and died" (Lev 16:1, ESV). Aaron's sons Nadab and Abihu had offered "unauthorized fire" before the Lord and had been struck dead (Lev 10:1–2). The message was unmistakable: approaching God's holy presence is not something to take lightly. You cannot just walk in whenever and however you please. God then instructs 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" (Lev 16:2). Even the high priest—Israel's holiest human being, specially consecrated for his office—could only enter God's immediate presence once a year, and only after elaborate preparation.5
Now let us walk through the ceremony itself. Leviticus 16 gives us a detailed account, with both a shorter summary (vv. 6–10) and a longer, more detailed description (vv. 11–28). I want to take the reader through the longer version, because the details matter. Every element of this ritual was designed by God to teach His people something about the nature of sin and the cost of its removal.
On any ordinary day, the high priest wore elaborate, beautiful garments—a breastplate with precious stones, an ephod (a kind of sacred vest) made of gold, blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, a turban with a gold plate engraved "Holy to the LORD." These garments were made, as Exodus 28:2 says, "for glory and for beauty." But on the Day of Atonement, something striking happened. The high priest took off all those magnificent robes. Instead, he put on simple white linen garments—a linen tunic, linen undergarments, a linen sash, and a linen turban (Lev 16:4). He also had to bathe his entire body in water before putting them on.
Why the change? The white linen was a symbol of purity and humility. On this day, the high priest was not coming before God in royal splendor. He was coming as a humble servant, representing a sinful people who desperately needed cleansing. The bathing and the simple garments emphasized that this was not a day for show—it was a day for dealing seriously with sin. Some scholars have also noted that the white linen garments may have symbolized the kind of purity required to enter God's direct presence—a purity that the high priest himself did not naturally possess, which is precisely why his first act would be to offer a sacrifice for his own sins.6
Before the high priest could do anything for the people, he first had to deal with his own sin. He brought a bull as a sin offering for himself and his household (v. 6). He slaughtered the bull, took a censer full of burning coals from the altar, and carried them along with two handfuls of finely ground sweet incense behind the curtain—the veil that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. He 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" (v. 13).
The cloud of incense served as a protective screen between the priest and the overwhelming glory of God's presence. Even with all his preparations, the high priest needed this additional layer of protection. Then he took some of the bull's blood and sprinkled it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat (the kapporet, כַּפֹּרֶת), and sprinkled it seven times before the mercy seat (v. 14).
This step is important for a reason that William Hess also acknowledges: the priest had to first purify himself before he could enter the holy place and make reparation on behalf of Israel.7 Even the most sacred human figure in Israel was a sinner who needed atonement. No human mediator was good enough on his own. This point will become theologically significant when we consider how Jesus, as our sinless high priest, needed no sacrifice for Himself—a contrast that the author of Hebrews will develop at length (as we will see in Chapter 10).
Now we arrive at the most famous part of the ceremony. Aaron was to "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" (Lev 16:7–8, ESV).
Two goats were brought forward—but their fates would be very different. The casting of lots was a way of allowing God to determine which goat would serve which purpose. One goat was designated "for the LORD" and would be sacrificed as a sin offering. The other goat was designated "for Azazel" and would be sent alive into the wilderness. (We will discuss the meaning of "Azazel" shortly—it is one of the most debated terms in the Old Testament.)
Key Observation: Notice that both goats are described together as constituting a single sin offering. Leviticus 16:5 says Aaron was to "take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering" (emphasis added)—singular, not plural. As John Stott perceptively notes, some commentators make the mistake of driving a wedge between the two goats, overlooking the fact that the two together are described as "a sin offering" in the singular. Thomas Crawford was likely right to suggest that each goat embodied a different aspect of the same sacrifice—"the one exhibiting the means, and the other the results, of the atonement." The two goats together make one complete picture of what atonement involves.
The goat designated "for the LORD" was killed as a sin offering for the people. The high priest then took its blood behind the veil into the Most Holy Place—just as he had done with the bull's blood earlier—and sprinkled it on and before 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" (v. 16).
Notice something crucial here: the blood was applied to the mercy seat. The Hebrew word for mercy seat is kapporet (כַּפֹּרֶת), which comes from the same root as kipper (כָּפַר), the verb meaning "to make atonement" or "to cover." The mercy seat was the golden lid that sat on top of the ark of the covenant. Inside the ark were the tablets of the Law—the Ten Commandments that Israel had broken. Above the ark, between the cherubim, God's presence dwelt. So picture the scene: the broken law lies inside the ark, God's holy presence hovers above, and between them—covering the law and facing God—sits the mercy seat, now sprinkled with the blood of the sacrifice. The blood comes between the broken law and the holy God. It is the blood that makes things right.8
This image will become enormously important when we get to the New Testament. In Romans 3:25, Paul writes that God put forward Jesus as a hilastērion (ἱλαστήριον)—a word that, as we discussed in Chapter 2, can mean "propitiation," "expiation," or "mercy seat." Many scholars believe Paul is deliberately evoking the kapporet—the mercy seat—and saying that Jesus Himself is the place where God's justice and mercy meet, just as the mercy seat was the place where the blood of the sacrifice met the presence of the holy God. (For the full exegesis of Romans 3:21–26, see Chapter 8.)9
But the high priest was not finished. After sprinkling the blood in the Most Holy Place, he came out and applied blood to the tent of meeting itself and to the altar (vv. 16–19). The entire sacred space was being cleansed. The accumulated contamination of the people's sins over the past year was being purged. Verse 19 captures it memorably: the priest was to "sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it and consecrate it from the uncleannesses of the people of Israel."
This is what scholars call the "expiatory" dimension of atonement. Expiation (from the Latin expiare) means the removal or cleansing of sin and its defilement. The blood of the sacrificed goat purified the sanctuary, removed the stain of sin, and restored the sacred space so that God could continue to dwell among His people. This is a genuine and important dimension of what Christ accomplished on the cross—He removes our sin and cleanses us. But as we shall see, it is not the only dimension. The second goat adds something further.
After the high priest finished the blood rituals, he turned to the second goat—the one designated "for Azazel," the live goat. Here is the text:
"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)
This is one of the most vivid and dramatic images in the entire Old Testament. Let us look at each element carefully.
First, the high priest laid both his hands on the goat's head. In Chapter 4, we discussed the laying on of hands (semikah, סְמִיכָה) and the scholarly debate about what this gesture signified. Here in Leviticus 16, the meaning seems especially clear, because the text tells us exactly what happened as the hands were laid on: the high priest "confess[ed] over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins." The triple piling up of terms—"iniquities... transgressions... sins"—emphasizes the completeness of the transfer. Nothing was left out. Every category of wrongdoing was named and placed on the goat's head.
Second, after the confession, the high priest "put them on the head of the goat." The sins were symbolically transferred from the people to the animal. The goat now carried what had belonged to the people.
Third, the goat was sent away "into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness." A designated person led the goat far away from the camp—far from the people, far from the tabernacle, far from everything. The sins of the nation were being physically removed, carried away to a place from which they would never return.
Fourth, the text says the goat "shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area." The Hebrew verb here is nasa (נָשָׂא), meaning "to bear" or "to carry." This is the same language used in Isaiah 53:4, where the Suffering Servant "has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows," and in Isaiah 53:12, where the Servant "bore the sin of many." David Allen notes that when the subject of the verb nasa is the goat rather than God, the phrase refers to the actual bearing of the sin itself. The scapegoat bore not only the guilt of the people but also the sin of the people—and it did so in their place, as a substitute.10
The Two Goats Together: The sacrificed goat and the scapegoat represent two complementary aspects of the same atonement. The sacrificed goat deals with expiation—the cleansing of the sanctuary and the purging of sin's defilement through the shedding of blood. The scapegoat deals with removal—the bearing away of the people's sins, carried far from them into the wilderness, never to return. Together, they give us the full picture: sin is both purged and removed. As Allen summarizes, "The first animal was slain sacrificially. The shedding of blood pictured the necessary means of atonement (propitiation/expiation). The scapegoat ritual pictured the effect of the atonement: the removal of guilt and forgiveness."
I want us to sit with that for a moment, because it is theologically profound. Atonement is not just about cleaning up the mess that sin makes. It is also about taking sin away—removing it, carrying it to a place where it can never come back. When John the Baptist sees Jesus and cries out, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29), he is using language that echoes this very ritual. The sin is not merely covered or overlooked. It is borne away. It is gone.
After the scapegoat was sent away, the high priest re-entered the tent of meeting, took off the simple linen garments he had worn for the ceremony, bathed again, and put on his regular priestly garments (vv. 23–24). He then offered burnt offerings for himself and for the people. The man who had led the scapegoat into the wilderness also had to wash his clothes and bathe before returning to the camp (v. 26), and the remains of the bull and goat whose blood had been brought into the sanctuary were carried outside the camp and burned completely—skin, flesh, and dung (v. 27). Even the person who burned these remains had to wash and bathe before re-entering the camp (v. 28).
All of these washing requirements drive home a single point: contact with sin—even the symbolic, ritual kind—is serious business. Sin contaminates. It defiles. It requires thorough cleansing. The elaborate process of purification that surrounded the Day of Atonement was designed to impress upon Israel the gravity of what sin does and the extraordinary measures required to deal with it.
The chapter concludes by establishing this as a permanent, annual observance. "And it shall be a statute to you forever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves and shall do no work... For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the LORD from all your sins" (Lev 16:29, 30). The phrase "afflict yourselves" refers to fasting and self-denial—this was a day of solemn repentance, not celebration. The people were to recognize the weight of their sin and the cost of its removal.
Yet the final note is one of hope: "You shall be clean before the LORD from all your sins." After all the blood, all the ritual, all the solemnity—the result was cleansing. The goal was restored relationship. The purpose of the Day of Atonement was not simply to make people feel bad about their sins. It was to make them clean—to remove the barrier between them and their God so that fellowship could continue.
We need to address one of the most discussed and debated terms in the entire Old Testament: Azazel (עֲזָאזֵל). The text says that one goat was designated "for the LORD" and the other "for Azazel" (Lev 16:8). But what does "Azazel" mean? Scholars have proposed three main interpretations, and the debate continues.
Some scholars argue that Azazel refers to a remote, desolate place—a "jagged cliff" or a "rough, inaccessible region" in the wilderness. On this reading, the goat is simply being sent to a barren, uninhabited place far from human settlement. The word would essentially mean "place of removal" or "complete destruction." Some later Jewish traditions described the scapegoat being pushed off a cliff in the wilderness, which may reflect this interpretation. The Talmud (Yoma 67b) records that a crimson thread was tied to the goat, and the goat was pushed backward off a rocky precipice. When the thread turned white, it was a sign that God had accepted the atonement.11
A related view is that Azazel is not a proper name at all but an abstract term derived from the Hebrew roots ez (goat) and azal (to go away)—essentially meaning "the goat that goes away" or "the goat of departure." This is the origin of the English word "scapegoat" (originally "escape-goat"), which the King James Version used to translate the term. On this reading, the emphasis is entirely on the function of the goat: it is the one that carries sins away.12
A third view—widely held in recent scholarship and supported by ancient Jewish traditions—is that Azazel is the name of a demonic or evil spiritual being associated with the wilderness. In ancient Jewish literature, particularly the Book of 1 Enoch (chapters 8–10), Azazel appears as a fallen angel or demonic figure who was banished to the wilderness. On this reading, the scapegoat was being sent to Azazel—that is, the sins of the people were being sent back to the demonic realm where they belonged. The wilderness in ancient Near Eastern thinking was often associated with evil, chaos, and the dwelling place of unclean spirits (cf. Isa 13:21; 34:14; Matt 12:43).13
Hess favors this third reading and develops it in an interesting direction. He argues that Azazel in ancient literature is associated with evil, and that the goat carrying the sins of Israel into the wilderness represents sin being sent back to the darkness from which it came—back to the domain of evil, away from God's people. For Hess, this reinforces a Christus Victor reading: the Day of Atonement is fundamentally about God casting sin out of His community and sending it back to the evil realm where it belongs.14
I find elements of truth in all three views, but I think the third view—Azazel as a personal evil being—has the strongest support from both the ancient sources and the structure of the text itself. Notice the parallelism in Leviticus 16:8: "one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel." The symmetry strongly suggests that Azazel, like "the LORD," is a personal being, not a place or an abstract concept. You would not normally say "one lot for Yahweh and the other lot for a cliff." The parallel structure suggests a personal designation on both sides.15
However—and this is crucial—the fact that Azazel may be a demonic figure does not mean the scapegoat was a sacrifice to a demon. The goat was not offered to Azazel as an act of worship. Rather, the sins of the people were being symbolically sent to the domain of evil. The message is powerful: sin does not belong among God's people. It belongs in the wilderness, in the desolate place, in the domain of the evil one. And on the Day of Atonement, it was ceremonially returned there. This reading actually enriches both the substitutionary and the Christus Victor dimensions of the ritual. The scapegoat bearing sin into the wilderness is both a picture of substitutionary sin-bearing (the goat carries what the people deserved) and a picture of victory over evil (sin is sent back to the demonic realm where it originated).
The Azazel Debate — Summary: Three main views exist: (1) Azazel as a place name ("rough, inaccessible region"); (2) Azazel as an abstract term ("the goat of removal"); (3) Azazel as a personal demonic being. The parallel structure of Leviticus 16:8 ("one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel") most naturally supports the third view. But even if Azazel refers to a demonic figure, the scapegoat was not a sacrifice to that being. Rather, the sins of the people were being sent away to the evil realm they came from. This simultaneously reinforces both the substitutionary and the Christus Victor dimensions of the Day of Atonement.
Now that we have walked through the entire ritual, we need to step back and ask the big theological question: What does all of this mean? And specifically, does the Day of Atonement support the idea of substitutionary atonement?
I believe the answer is clearly yes—and the evidence is strong. Let me lay out the case.
First, consider the overall logic of the ritual. An animal dies so that the people can live. The goat is killed, its blood is offered in the most sacred space on earth, and as a result, the people are declared clean before God. As Steven Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach pointedly observe in their treatment of this ritual: "When a person lives who otherwise would have died, and an animal dies that would otherwise live, substitution is necessarily entailed."16 That basic logic is hard to escape.
Second, consider the scapegoat ritual specifically. The high priest lays hands on the goat, confesses the people's sins over it, and "puts them on the head of the goat" (Lev 16:21). The goat then "bears all their iniquities" (v. 22). Allen's analysis is incisive here: 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.17
Third, consider the language itself. The Hebrew verb nasa (נָשָׂא, "to bear, to carry") combined with the object "iniquities" (avonot, עֲוֹנוֹת) is the language of sin-bearing, which as we will see in Chapter 6, is the same language used in the great Suffering Servant passage of Isaiah 53. When Isaiah says the Servant "has borne our griefs" (53:4, nasa) and "bore the sin of many" (53:12, nasa), the prophet is drawing directly on the vocabulary of the Day of Atonement. Allen notes that Isaiah's vocabulary is drawn from the Day of Atonement ritual, with the Servant carrying out the role of the scapegoat.18
Fourth, the unity of the two goats reinforces the substitutionary reading. As Stott emphasizes, the two goats together constitute "a sin offering" (singular) in Leviticus 16:5. They are two aspects of a single atonement. One shows the means of atonement (blood sacrifice), and the other shows the result (sin removed). Together, the public proclamation of the Day of Atonement was plain: "reconciliation was possible only through substitutionary sin-bearing."19
Not everyone agrees with this reading, of course. William Hess presents an important challenge that deserves careful engagement. Hess makes several arguments against reading the Day of Atonement as supportive of penal substitutionary atonement, and we need to take them seriously.
Hess's first argument is that the scapegoat was not killed. He writes that the very goat that supposedly carries the sins of the people "is not killed—it gets to live!" He reasons that if penal substitutionary atonement were the correct reading, we would expect the sins of the people to be transferred to the goat and the goat immediately killed, while the other goat walks free. Since the opposite happens—the sin-bearing goat lives and is sent away, while the other goat is killed—Hess argues this undermines the PSA reading.20
Hess's second argument is that the transfer of sin was symbolic and metaphorical, not literal or ontological. The sins were confessed over the goat, he argues, and the goat then bears the burden of iniquity by going into exile. The community is symbolically saying, "this goat is cut off for sin." But the goat does not inherit actual guilt or become liable to punishment.21
Hess's third argument is that the text never mentions God needing His wrath or justice satisfied. The ritual, Hess argues, is about casting sin away from Israel and cleansing them ritually before the Lord in an act of worship—not about satisfying divine anger.22
These are fair arguments, and I want to respond to each one carefully.
On the first point—that the scapegoat is not killed—Hess is factually correct, and this is an important observation. The scapegoat is sent away alive, not slaughtered. But I think Hess draws the wrong conclusion from this fact. The reason the scapegoat is not killed is that the two goats represent different aspects of the same atonement. The killing has already been accomplished by the first goat. The scapegoat's role is not to die but to carry sin away. Together, the two goats show us both the cost of atonement (death, blood sacrifice) and the effect of atonement (sin removed). Stott's point about the singular "sin offering" (Lev 16:5) is decisive here: we should not drive a wedge between the goats. They are complementary halves of one picture. The first goat shows what had to happen (blood had to be shed); the second goat shows what the result was (sin was carried away). When we look at Jesus, we see both goats fulfilled in one person: He both shed His blood and carried our sins away.23
On the second point—that the transfer was symbolic—I actually agree with Hess that the ritual is symbolic. Of course it is. A goat cannot literally absorb human sin in some ontological sense. The entire sacrificial system was symbolic—the New Testament itself says so, declaring that "it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins" (Heb 10:4). But the question is: What is the symbolism pointing to? The fact that a ritual is symbolic does not mean it is not pointing to something real. The symbolism of the Day of Atonement is pointing forward to a real act of substitutionary sin-bearing that Christ would one day accomplish—not symbolically, but actually and definitively. The symbolism is a preview, a type, a shadow of the coming reality (Heb 10:1). And the shape of that symbolism is unmistakably substitutionary: the goat carries the people's sins, not its own, and does so in their place.
On the third point—that the text does not mention satisfying God's wrath—this is partly true and partly misleading. It is true that Leviticus 16 does not use the specific phrase "satisfying God's wrath." But the entire context of the Levitical system presupposes the reality of God's holy opposition to sin. The opening verses of the chapter remind us that Nadab and Abihu died for approaching God wrongly. The elaborate precautions required to enter the Most Holy Place testify to the danger of coming into God's presence with unresolved sin. And as we explored in Chapter 4, the Hebrew word kipper (כָּפַר), which occurs sixteen times in Leviticus 16 alone, carries meanings that include not only "cleansing" and "forgiveness" but also "the averting of God's wrath."24 The Day of Atonement may not use the word "wrath" explicitly, but its entire structure assumes a situation in which sin has created a deadly problem between the people and their holy God—a problem that requires blood to resolve.
Responding to the Objection: Hess correctly observes that the scapegoat is not killed—but this is because the two goats together form one atonement, with the first goat providing the blood sacrifice and the second showing the result: sin removed. Hess correctly notes the symbolism is not literal ontological transfer—but the symbolism points to a real substitutionary reality that Christ would one day fulfill. And while Leviticus 16 does not use the word "wrath," the entire context assumes sin creates a lethal barrier between the people and their holy God that only blood can resolve.
Before we move to the New Testament connections, we need to address the theology of blood that runs through the Day of Atonement. We touched on this in Chapter 4, but it deserves further attention here because blood is absolutely central to Yom Kippur.
The key verse 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" (ESV). This verse gives us God's own explanation for why blood is necessary for atonement. Three things stand out.
First, blood represents life. "The life of the flesh is in the blood." In the ancient understanding, blood was not simply a fluid in the body—it was the very seat of life itself. When blood was shed, life was given up.
Second, God says He has given the blood "for you on the altar to make atonement." The blood-sacrifice system was not something humans invented to try to appease an angry deity. God Himself initiated it. He gave it as a gift, as a provision for dealing with sin. This is consistent with the picture we see throughout Scripture: atonement is God's idea, not ours. He is the one who provides the remedy for the problem our sin has created.
Third, "it is the blood that makes atonement by the life." The atoning power of the blood lies in the life it represents. When the animal's blood was shed, its life was given up in place of the offerer's life. The life of the substitute was offered in place of the life of the sinner. This is substitution in its most basic form: one life given for another.25
On the Day of Atonement, blood was applied to the most sacred places imaginable—the mercy seat itself, the Holy Place, the altar. The repeated sprinkling of blood throughout the entire sacred space was a comprehensive cleansing. Nothing was left untouched. And the message was clear: sin's contamination reaches everywhere, and only the blood—the life given in death—can deal with it.
Fleming Rutledge captures the significance of the blood sacrifice powerfully in her treatment of the sacrificial motifs. She stresses that the sacrifice of Christ was not God's reaction to human sin, but an inherent, original movement within God's very being. It is in the very nature of God to offer Himself sacrificially.26 This is a profound insight. The blood of the Day of Atonement was not wrested from an unwilling deity. God Himself gave the blood. And in Christ, God Himself would become the sacrifice—giving His own blood, His own life, for the sins of the world.
The Hebrew verb kipper (כָּפַר, "to make atonement") appears an astonishing sixteen times in Leviticus 16 alone (vv. 6, 10–11, 16–18, 20, 24, 27, 30, 32–34). If ever there was a chapter built around a single theological concept, this is it. But what does kipper actually mean?
As we noted in Chapter 4, scholars have identified at least four possible dimensions of meaning, and Allen provides a helpful summary. First, when God is the subject, kipper can mean "forgive"—though in some texts, kipper is distinct from forgiveness and is actually a prerequisite to it (Lev 4:20, 26, 31; 19:22; Num 15:25). Second, the word can mean "cleansing" or "purifying," as in Leviticus 16:30 ("on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you"). Third, kipper can mean "ransom"—its cognate noun kopher (כֹּפֶר) refers to a ransom price in Exodus 30:12. In the Day of Atonement, the life of the animal is substituted for human lives. Fourth, the word can refer to the averting of God's wrath—a propitiatory function.27
Allen's conclusion is significant: the word kipper includes the notions of propitiation, expiation, purification, and reconciliation. All four dimensions are present. We do not need to choose between them—they work together. The sacrificial offering propitiates God's just response to sin, expiates the guilt of sin, purifies the contamination of sin, and effects reconciliation between God and His people.28
This is important for our larger argument. Some scholars (including Hess) want to limit the meaning of the Day of Atonement rituals to purification and expiation alone—cleansing and removal of sin's defilement—without any propitiatory dimension. But the full range of meaning of kipper will not allow that restriction. When the high priest entered the Most Holy Place with blood and applied it to the mercy seat, he was not merely cleaning a sacred room. He was dealing with the deadly reality of sin in the presence of a holy God—a God whose holiness demands a response to sin, whose justice cannot simply overlook it, and whose mercy provides the means of atonement. All of these dimensions—purification, removal, propitiation, reconciliation—come together on the Day of Atonement.
We come now to the most exciting part of this chapter: the connection between Yom Kippur and the work of Jesus Christ. The New Testament writers did not see the Day of Atonement as an interesting but outdated ceremony. They saw it as a divinely designed preview of the cross.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is the New Testament book that most extensively interprets Christ's death through the lens of the Day of Atonement. (We will examine Hebrews in full detail in Chapter 10; here, our focus is on how Hebrews reads Yom Kippur.) The author of Hebrews makes several stunning claims.
First, Jesus is the true High Priest—but unlike Aaron, He needed no sacrifice for His own sins. "For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He 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" (Heb 7:26–27, ESV). Aaron had to offer a bull for his own sin before he could represent the people. Jesus, being sinless, went directly to the work of dealing with the people's sin. This alone marks an enormous advancement over the Yom Kippur ritual.29
Second, Jesus entered not a man-made sanctuary but heaven itself. "For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf" (Heb 9:24). The earthly Most Holy Place—impressive as it was—was only a copy, a shadow, a model of the true heavenly reality. The high priest on the Day of Atonement entered a room behind a curtain. Jesus entered the very presence of God in the heavenly throne room.
Third—and most importantly for our purposes—Jesus offered His own blood, not the blood of animals. "He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God" (Heb 9:12–14, ESV). The annual repetition of the Day of Atonement was itself proof that the animal sacrifices were insufficient (Heb 10:1–4). They were shadows pointing to a greater reality. Jesus' sacrifice was that greater reality—the once-for-all offering that accomplished what countless goats and bulls never could.30
Rutledge stresses that the significance of the mercy seat in Hebrews is heightened tremendously by the repeated contrasts the author makes between the old sacrifices and the sacrifice of Christ. The Aaronic high priest went in to the mercy seat alone; he came out alone. But Jesus has performed a radically new act—He has opened the way for all to enter God's presence. No longer is access to God restricted. No longer is an intermediary required. The way is open for everyone—Gentiles, women, sinners of all kinds.31
Fourth, Hebrews combines both goats in the person of Christ. Stott makes the perceptive observation that the author of Hebrews has no hesitation about seeing Jesus as both the sacrificed goat (whose blood was taken into the inner sanctuary, Heb 9:7, 12) and the scapegoat (who carried away the people's sins, Heb 9:28: "Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many").32 What took two animals in Leviticus 16 is accomplished by one Savior on the cross. Jesus both shed His blood for the cleansing of sin and bore our sins away, carrying them to a place from which they will never return.
The second major New Testament connection to the Day of Atonement is Romans 3:25, where Paul writes that God "put forward [Jesus] as a propitiation [hilastērion, ἱλαστήριον] by his blood, to be received by faith" (ESV). As we noted earlier, the Greek word hilastērion is the same word used in the Septuagint (the Greek Old Testament) to translate the Hebrew kapporet—the mercy seat. Many scholars believe Paul is making a deliberate Day of Atonement allusion: Jesus is the new mercy seat, the place where God's justice and mercy meet, where the blood of sacrifice is applied and atonement is accomplished.
The full exegesis of Romans 3:21–26 belongs to Chapter 8, so we will not develop the argument fully here. But the Day of Atonement connection is worth highlighting. If Paul really does have the mercy seat in mind—and the linguistic evidence is strong—then he is saying something extraordinary: the mercy seat that was hidden behind the veil, accessible only to the high priest once a year, has now been brought out into the open. God has "put forward" (proetheto, προέθετο) Christ as the mercy seat—publicly displayed for all to see. What was once hidden is now revealed. What was once available only to one man on one day is now available to everyone who has faith. The Day of Atonement has gone public in Jesus Christ.33
Christ Fulfills Both Goats: Jesus is simultaneously the sacrificed goat and the scapegoat. He shed His blood for the cleansing and expiation of sin (like the first goat), and He bore our sins away, carrying them to a place from which they will never return (like the scapegoat). He is also the true High Priest who needed no sacrifice for His own sins, and He is the mercy seat (hilastērion) where God's justice and mercy meet. Every element of the Day of Atonement finds its fulfillment in Him.
Beyond Hebrews and Romans, the Day of Atonement echoes throughout the New Testament. John the Baptist's declaration, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29), uses language that combines the Passover lamb with the scapegoat's function of carrying sin away. The phrase "takes away" (airōn, αἴρων) means to lift up and carry off—the same action performed by the scapegoat in the wilderness.
Peter writes that Christ "bore our sins in his body on the tree" (1 Pet 2:24)—language that, as several scholars including Morna Hooker have noted, may allude to the scapegoat bearing the people's iniquities.34 Whether or not the scapegoat allusion is explicit here, the sin-bearing language is unmistakable and connects directly to the Day of Atonement vocabulary.
Even the detail in Hebrews 13:11–13 that Jesus "suffered outside the gate" may echo the Day of Atonement: the remains of the bull and goat whose blood was brought into the sanctuary were burned "outside the camp" (Lev 16:27). Jesus, like the sin-bearing animals, was taken outside the city to accomplish His atoning work.35
One of the most remarkable things about the Day of Atonement is how naturally it holds together multiple dimensions of the atonement that some modern scholars have tried to separate. In a single ceremony, we find:
Substitution: An innocent animal dies in the place of guilty people; another animal bears the people's sins in their stead.
Expiation: The blood cleanses and purifies the sanctuary from the contamination of sin.
Propitiation: The blood is applied to the mercy seat, dealing with the lethal barrier that sin creates between a holy God and His people.
Victory over evil: If the Azazel interpretation is correct, sin is sent back to the demonic realm—the domain of evil is confronted and the people are freed from sin's grip.
Reconciliation: The result of the entire ceremony is that the people are declared "clean before the LORD" (Lev 16:30)—fellowship is restored.
All of these dimensions are present in a single ritual. They are not competing theories. They are complementary aspects of one atonement. And this is precisely the point I am making throughout this book: the atonement is multi-faceted, with many genuine and important dimensions, but substitution stands at the center. On the Day of Atonement, everything revolves around the act of one standing in the place of the many—the goat dying so the people may live, the scapegoat carrying what the people deserved. Without the substitutionary heart, the other dimensions have no foundation.
This is why I respectfully disagree with scholars who try to read the Day of Atonement as only about purification, or only about sending sin away, or only about Christus Victor. All of those dimensions are genuinely there. But they all depend on the underlying logic of substitution: something else stands where the sinner should have stood, and bears what the sinner should have borne. Remove the substitution, and the entire ceremony loses its theological coherence.
For all its theological richness, the Day of Atonement was ultimately insufficient. The author of Hebrews makes this point with great force: "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" (Heb 10:1). The very fact that the Day of Atonement had to be repeated every single year was proof that it was not accomplishing a permanent solution. The blood of goats and bulls could symbolize atonement; it could not achieve it.36
Think of it this way: if the Day of Atonement had truly and completely solved the problem of sin, it would never have needed to be repeated. The annual repetition was a built-in confession of inadequacy. Every time the high priest entered the Most Holy Place on Yom Kippur, he was implicitly acknowledging that last year's ceremony had not been enough. The stain of sin kept coming back. The pollution kept accumulating. The barrier between God and the people kept re-forming.
Consider, too, the limitations of the human high priest. He was mortal—he would eventually die and be replaced. He was sinful—he needed to offer sacrifice for his own sins before he could represent the people. He could only enter the Most Holy Place once a year, and when he came out, the veil closed behind him again. Access to God's immediate presence was temporary, restricted, and incomplete. The entire arrangement cried out for something—or someone—better. It cried out for a priest who would never die, who had no sin of his own, and who could open the way into God's presence permanently, not just for a single day each year. The Day of Atonement, for all its beauty and power, was a finger pointing beyond itself to a greater reality that had not yet arrived.
Hebrews 10:3 adds a deeply pastoral observation: "But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year." Rather than removing the consciousness of sin once and for all, the annual repetition actually reminded the people of their ongoing sinfulness. Year after year, the same ceremony, the same blood, the same goats—and the same underlying problem that refused to go away. The sacrificial system was honest enough to admit its own limitations. It never pretended to be the final answer. It was always looking forward, always pointing ahead, always whispering: Something greater is coming.
What was needed was not another goat, but someone who could do what no goat ever could—someone who could bear sin once for all and never need to repeat the offering. As Hebrews 9:26 declares: "He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." The Day of Atonement was the shadow. Christ is the reality. The shadow was repeated annually because it could only point to the reality it could not accomplish. The reality—the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ—never needs to be repeated because it truly and permanently accomplished what the shadow could only symbolize.
This is why Christians do not observe the Day of Atonement as an ongoing ritual. Not because we disrespect the Old Testament, but because we believe that what Yom Kippur pointed to has now arrived. The true High Priest has entered the true Holy of Holies. The true blood has been applied to the true mercy seat. The true scapegoat has carried our sins away into a wilderness from which they will never return. As the writer of Hebrews exults: "Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin" (Heb 10:18).
The Day of Atonement stands as the climax of the Old Testament sacrificial system—the most comprehensive, the most solemn, and the most theologically rich ceremony in all of Israel's worship. Its two-goat ritual provided a remarkably complete picture of atonement: the sacrificed goat dealing with sin's defilement through blood, and the scapegoat bearing sin away into the wilderness, never to return. Together, the two goats formed a single sin offering that communicated a unified message: atonement requires both the shedding of blood (a life given in death) and the removal of sin (guilt carried away by a substitute).
The Hebrew word kipper, which appears sixteen times in Leviticus 16, carries a rich range of meaning that includes propitiation, expiation, purification, ransom, and reconciliation—all of which are genuine dimensions of what happens when sin is dealt with. The Azazel debate, while fascinating and unresolved, ultimately reinforces rather than undermines the theological richness of the ceremony: whether Azazel is a place, a concept, or a demonic figure, the scapegoat ritual powerfully pictures sin being sent away from God's people to a place where it belongs—far from the community of the faithful.
Most importantly, the Day of Atonement finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ. He is the true High Priest who needed no sacrifice for His own sin. He is the sacrificed goat whose blood was shed for our cleansing. He is the scapegoat who bore our sins in His body and carried them away. He is the mercy seat (hilastērion) where God's justice and mercy meet. And His sacrifice, unlike the annual repetitions of Yom Kippur, was offered once for all—never to be repeated, because it accomplished perfectly and permanently what the Day of Atonement could only foreshadow.
As we turn in the next chapter to Isaiah 53, the great Suffering Servant passage, we will see the same themes—substitution, sin-bearing, the innocent suffering for the guilty—expressed in the most powerful prophetic language the Old Testament has to offer. The Day of Atonement showed Israel what atonement looked like in ritual form. Isaiah 53 will show us what it looks like when embodied in a person. And both point forward to the cross, where the Lamb of God would take away the sin of the world once and for all.
1 On the concept of sin as contamination that defiles the sanctuary, see Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 254–61. Milgrom's work on the priestly theology of impurity and sanctuary contamination remains foundational. ↩
2 Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 228–29. ↩
3 David L. Allen, The Atonement: A Biblical, Theological, and Historical Study of the Cross of Christ (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2019), 32. ↩
4 Allen, The Atonement, 32. ↩
5 The gravity of approaching God's presence is underscored by the death of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus 10:1–2, which forms the narrative backdrop for the instructions in Leviticus 16. See Allen, The Atonement, 32–33. ↩
6 Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, 230–31. The shift from garments "for glory and beauty" (Exod 28:2) to plain white linen emphasizes the penitential character of the day. ↩
7 William L. Hess, Crushing the Great Serpent: Did God Punish Jesus? (2024), chap. 9, "The Scapegoat." ↩
8 Allen, The Atonement, 35. Allen notes that the kapporet (Hebrew; Greek hilastērion), called the "mercy seat," was made of gold with cherubim stretching over the ark, and upon it the high priest sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, effecting forgiveness for the nation. ↩
9 On the possible mercy seat allusion in Romans 3:25, see Daniel P. Bailey, "Jesus as the Mercy Seat: The Semantics and Theology of Paul's Use of Hilasterion in Romans 3:25" (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1999). See also the discussion in Chapter 8 of this volume. ↩
10 Allen, The Atonement, 33–34. Allen notes that when the subject of the verb nasa is the goat rather than God, the phrase means that the animal bears the sin in place of the people—a substitutionary act. ↩
11 See b. Yoma 67b. Later Jewish tradition elaborated significantly on the biblical text, including the practice of pushing the goat off a cliff and tying a crimson thread to it. These traditions, while not part of the biblical text itself, reflect early Jewish interpretation of the Azazel ritual. ↩
12 This view was favored by some older commentators and is reflected in the KJV's rendering "scapegoat." See Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, 234. ↩
13 On Azazel in 1 Enoch and ancient Jewish tradition, see Lester L. Grabbe, "The Scapegoat Tradition: A Study in Early Jewish Interpretation," Journal for the Study of Judaism 18, no. 2 (1987): 152–67. See also Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1020–21. ↩
14 Hess, Crushing the Great Serpent, chap. 9, "The Scapegoat." Hess argues that the wilderness is associated with evil and that the goat carrying Israel's sins represents sin being metaphorically transferred and sent back to the domain of evil. ↩
15 Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 1020–21, argues persuasively for the personal interpretation on the basis of the parallelism. See also Bernd Janowski, "Azazel," in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed., ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 128–31. ↩
16 Steven Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 48. Allen cites this observation approvingly in Allen, The Atonement, 33. ↩
17 Allen, The Atonement, 33–34. ↩
18 Allen, The Atonement, 39. Allen notes that Isaiah's vocabulary is drawn from the Day of Atonement and that the Suffering Servant carries out the role of the scapegoat. See the detailed exegesis of Isaiah 53 in Chapter 6 of this volume. ↩
19 John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 144. Stott argues that the two goats together constitute a single sin offering (Lev 16:5, singular) with each goat embodying a different aspect of the same sacrifice. ↩
20 Hess, Crushing the Great Serpent, chap. 9, "The Scapegoat." Hess argues that the fact that the sin-bearing goat is not killed undermines the PSA reading, since one would expect the goat carrying the sins to be slaughtered as a substitute if PSA were correct. ↩
21 Hess, Crushing the Great Serpent, chap. 9, "The Scapegoat." ↩
22 Hess, Crushing the Great Serpent, chap. 9, "The Scapegoat." ↩
23 Stott, The Cross of Christ, 144. See also Allen, The Atonement, 34, where Allen summarizes that the first animal was slain sacrificially (the means of atonement) and the scapegoat ritual pictured the effect of the atonement (the removal of guilt). ↩
24 Allen, The Atonement, 34–35. Allen notes four possible meanings of kipper: forgiveness, cleansing, ransom, and the averting of God's wrath—none of which necessarily excludes the others. ↩
25 Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965), 112–28. Morris argues that the blood represents life violently taken in death, not merely life released. See the fuller discussion of the theology of blood in Chapter 4 of this volume. ↩
26 Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 245. Rutledge stresses that the sacrifice of Christ was not God's reaction to human sin but an inherent movement within God's very being. ↩
27 Allen, The Atonement, 34–35. ↩
28 Allen, The Atonement, 35. ↩
29 See the full discussion of the Epistle to the Hebrews in Chapter 10 of this volume. ↩
30 On the "once for all" (ephapax, ἐφάπαξ) nature of Christ's sacrifice in Hebrews, see William L. Lane, Hebrews 9–13, Word Biblical Commentary 47B (Dallas: Word, 1991), 240–45. ↩
31 Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 269–70. Rutledge emphasizes that in the sacrifice of Christ, all distinctions forbidding access to God came to an end. The way is open for Gentiles, women, laypeople, and sinners of all conditions. ↩
32 Stott, The Cross of Christ, 144. Stott notes that the author of Hebrews sees Jesus as both the sacrificed goat (Heb 9:7, 12) and the scapegoat (Heb 9:28). ↩
33 On the public display of Christ as the hilastērion, see Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 231–36. See the full exegesis in Chapter 8 of this volume. ↩
34 Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 248. Rutledge notes that Morna Hooker and E. G. Selwyn have suggested a scapegoat allusion in 1 Peter 2:24, though this is far from certain. ↩
35 On the connection between Hebrews 13:11–13 and the Day of Atonement, see Lane, Hebrews 9–13, 540–43. ↩
36 See the fuller discussion in Chapter 10 of this volume. The author of Hebrews repeatedly stresses the inadequacy of the old sacrificial system to accomplish permanent atonement (Heb 10:1–4, 11). ↩
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Grabbe, Lester L. "The Scapegoat Tradition: A Study in Early Jewish Interpretation." Journal for the Study of Judaism 18, no. 2 (1987): 152–67.
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