The Goat That Walked Away

On the Day of Atonement a priest laid both hands on a live goat, spoke over it every wrong the people had done, and sent it into the wilderness. Day 2 asks where the guilt went, and why we keep going back for it.

Leviticus 16:1-34; Psalm 103:10-14; Psalm 32:1-5; Colossians 2:13-15; John 1:29

Opening

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

Leviticus 16:20-22 (BSB)

It is the Day of Atonement. The high priest has already made atonement for himself, for the Most Holy Place and for the altar. One goat has been killed. The second one is still alive.

HEBREW

כִּפֵּרkipper

kee-PAIR

to make atonement; in Leviticus, to purge, to wipe clean, or to cover

Leviticus 16 uses this word again and again: atonement for the high priest, for the Most Holy Place, for the altar and for the people. Scholars still debate its root sense. Some say cover, some say wipe clean, and some link it to a ransom price. The English word atonement began as at-one-ment, which means being made one again.

Whatever the root, the setting is clear. Something has come between God and His people, and this day exists to deal with it.

Sent Away

Today the word scapegoat means a person who is blamed for what others did. In Leviticus the live goat is not blamed. Leviticus does not say it is beaten, cursed or put to death. It is the way the guilt leaves the camp.

The high priest, Aaron, has already cleansed himself and the holy place. Now he lays both hands on the head of the live goat and confesses over it all the iniquities and rebellious acts of the Israelites, in regard to all their sins. He puts them on the goat’s head. A man appointed for the task leads it away, and releases it into the wilderness.

Verse 22 says the goat will carry on itself all their iniquities into a solitary place. The Hebrew for carry is nasa, the verb for lifting and bearing. The people stay in the camp. The guilt does not. Nothing in the chapter has the goat come back.

That is the picture the Lord gave His people, once a year, to look at. Their sins were real. They were named out loud. And they were taken somewhere else.

Jewish communities still keep Yom Kippur today, with fasting, prayer and repentance, and Jewish teaching holds that God forgives those who turn back. Christians read this chapter through Jesus, and Jewish readers do not. This series is written from the Christian side.

REFLECT

Do this today: write down one thing you have already confessed to God that still comes back to you. Beside it write the words, It has been sent away, and read Psalm 103:12 aloud once: As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. If the memory brings real distress, or someone was hurt by what you did, tell a trusted person, a pastor or a counselor today. Some weight needs a person, and not only a verse. If you are thinking of ending your life, call or text 988 now if you are in the United States, or tell someone near you.

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

A Short Prayer

Father, You have already dealt with what I keep carrying. Help me believe that the weight is gone, and give me the courage to speak to someone if it is not. Amen.

IN YOUR OWN WORDS

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.

Psalm 103:10-14 (KJV)

The psalm begins with David telling his own soul to bless the Lord and not to forget His benefits. These verses say what some of those benefits are.

The Priest Goes First

Leviticus 16 begins after a death. The Lord speaks to Moses after the death of two of Aaron’s sons, who died when they approached the presence of the LORD. The chapter is written with that in mind. Nobody walks into the Most Holy Place casually.

So the first thing Aaron does is deal with himself. He presents a bull for his own sin offering, and makes atonement for himself and his household. Only then does he turn to the people. The Letter to the Hebrews points back to this later: every high priest is obligated to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people.

It is easy to skip over. The man who sends the goat has just been cleansed himself. He cannot say, I am clean, you are not. The one at the front is in the same camp.

The other surprise is that the tent is cleansed too. Verse 16 says Aaron makes atonement for the Most Holy Place and for the Tent of Meeting, which abides among them, because it is surrounded by their impurities. God lives in the middle of the camp, and the people’s wrongs defile even the place where He lives. Even the house of God has to be cleaned.

Then comes the goat. The sanctuary is purified first, then the people’s guilt is carried out. God deals with it where He lives, and then He sends it away from where His people live.

A priest in a striped turban and robe, seen from behind, rests his hand on the head of a white goat at the door of a tent at sunset. — Leviticus 16:21: Aaron lays both hands on the head of the live goat and confesses all the iniquities and rebellious acts of the Israelites.

The goat will carry on itself all their iniquities into a solitary place.

What the Goat Carries

Verse 21 piles up three words for wrong. Our translation gives them as iniquities, rebellious acts and sins. In Hebrew they are avon, pesha and chatta’ah. Avon is the twisted thing and the guilt that comes with it. Pesha is the willful break. Chatta’ah is the miss. The word all comes before each one. Whatever way the people had gone wrong, it was all on the goat.

These three words also stand together in Psalm 32, and again when the Lord passes in front of Moses on Sinai, where He is described as forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. The Hebrew for forgiving there is the same verb as the goat’s, nasa. It is a participle: the one who carries away. What the goat does in a picture, God does in person.

Another verse in the same book says the sin offering was given to take away the guilt of the congregation by making atonement. The verbs for taking away and for atoning stand in one verse. They are closely linked.

The goat goes to a land cut off. The Hebrew word in verse 22 appears nowhere else and is usually read as a land cut off. Our translation renders it a solitary place.

One name in verse 8 needs a note. Verse 8 says one lot is for the LORD and the other for Azazel, and our translation reads the scapegoat. Nobody knows for certain what Azazel means. It may be a place, a being of the wilderness, or a word for the goat that goes away. The English word scapegoat is usually traced to William Tyndale’s translation of 1530, which read the Hebrew as the goat that escapes.

Leviticus does not say what happens to the goat after the man lets it go. A Jewish tradition written down around AD 200, in the Mishnah, adds that it was led out along a road with booths where the man leading it was offered food and water, and in the end pushed from a cliff. Leviticus says none of this. The chapter cares about one thing, which is where the guilt went.

When you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our trespasses, having canceled the debt ascribed to us in the decrees that stood against us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross! And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Colossians 2:13-15 (BSB)

Paul writes to the church at Colossae about what God did with the record of their debts.

As Far as the East Is from the West

Psalm 103 says how far: as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. The word for transgressions is pesha, the same word as the rebellious acts on the goat’s head. The verb is hirhiq, which means to put far away.

The psalm picks a direction. Go north long enough and you reach a pole, and at the pole the next step is south. Go east and you never reach a point where east turns into west. That is a plain fact about the globe, and the psalm does not claim it. But it fits what the psalm is saying. The distance it names is one that does not double back.

The New Testament says the same thing in its own words. Colossians says God canceled the debt that stood against us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross. The Greek for took it away is a verb that means to lift up and carry off. It is in the perfect tense, which describes something done that stays done. John the Baptist calls Jesus the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. The same Greek verb is in that line.

Many people confess something, mean it, and carry it for years anyway. The goat is already in the wilderness, and they are still standing in the camp, looking at the place where it was.

Some of that is guilt, and some of it is not. Guilt is about what I did. It is a fact, and it can be confessed and forgiven. David knew the weight of unconfessed guilt: when I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. Then he wrote, I acknowledged my sin to You and did not hide my iniquity, and You forgave the guilt of my sin. Confession lifted it.

Shame is different. Shame is about who I am. It says I am the thing I did, long after the thing has been dealt with. And some weight is consequences. A forgiven theft still leaves a stolen thing. A forgiven lie still leaves a broken trust. God’s forgiveness does not always undo the harm or repair the person who was hurt. That work may still be ahead.

What the goat carried is the guilt, the thing that stood between you and God. That is the part the Lord says He has put far away. The weight you still feel may be shame, or consequence, or grief. Those can be spoken to a person, and they can be carried together. They are not a reason to doubt the goat.

A single goat, seen from behind, stands alone on a pale, stony plain under an orange and blue sky. There is no road, no tent and no other creature. — Leviticus 16:22: the goat carries on itself all their iniquities into a solitary place, and is released into the wilderness.

Book of Leviticus Summary: A Complete Animated Overview — Eight minutes on the whole book of Leviticus. Watch for how a holy God makes a way to live among a people who sin, which is the setting of the Day of Atonement.BibleProject

When It Comes Back

Here is a way to work with an old guilt that returns. Ask three questions, and answer them honestly.

First: is this guilt that has never been dealt with? If you did something and have never told God, or never made right what you could, then the weight may be telling the truth. The remedy is plain. Say what you did, once, to God, in specific words. First John says that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Second: if I have already done that, is this shame, or consequence, or grief? Name which one. Shame needs to hear a different word than the one it keeps repeating. Consequence needs repair, where repair is possible and safe. Grief needs company.

Third: who knows? The high priest did not send the goat out alone. A man was appointed to take it. People were there. A burden that is only ever carried in your head gets heavier. Tell a friend, a pastor or a counselor, and say it in words.

Then go back to the picture, once. When the old thing returns, you do not have to confess it again as if it were new. You can say that it was named, carried out and sent away, and you can read the psalm aloud once.

If the same worry keeps returning, however many times you confess it or read the psalm, do not keep feeding it. Repeating a prayer or a verse to make the feeling stop can become a trap of its own. This pattern is common. It has a name, scrupulosity, it is not a sign of weak faith, and a counselor who works with anxiety can help.

If what you carry is harm that someone did to you, none of this is a request to forgive on a schedule or to feel nothing. The goat in this chapter carries the sins of the people who did wrong. It does not tell the hurt person to get over it.

The Goat on the Salt

In November 1854 the English painter William Holman Hunt left Jerusalem for the salt shore of the Dead Sea at a place called Oosdoom. He wanted to paint the goat of Leviticus 16 where he believed it would have happened.

He took a goat with him. It was weak, and it would not walk back up the slope. In his memoir he wrote that the goat sank and died, much to his regret.

Back in Jerusalem a second, nearly white kid, brought from beyond the Jordan, died the day after it arrived, before he could paint a stroke. A third goat lasted to the end. Hunt painted the landscape at the sea, but he could not paint the goat there. He finished that part in Jerusalem, leading the animal across a salt crust he had made on a tray of sun-baked mud.

The finished picture shows a single white goat on white salt, with bones nearby and a band of scarlet wool on its head. It was shown at the Royal Academy in 1856.

Hunt went to the place and found what a sent-away goat really faces, which is emptiness. Leviticus does not say what happens to the goat or what it feels. It says only where the guilt went, to a land cut off from the camp.

A Goat That Departed Alive and Free

John Calvin wrote about the live goat in his commentary on Leviticus 16. He called it an atonement. The goat which departed alive and free, was an atonement, that by its departure and flight the people might be assured that their sins were put away and vanished. He means that the point of the picture was to be seen. A people who watched a goat walk out of the camp had something to look at. The sins were not only forgiven in a ledger. They were gone, where the eye could follow them. Augustine used memory differently. He began the second book of his Confessions by looking back on his sixteenth year on purpose. I will now call to mind my past foulness, and the carnal corruptions of my soul; not because I love them, but that I may love Thee, O my God. He remembers his sin in order to love God, and not to be held by it.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Calvin wrote his commentary on the last four books of Moses in Geneva. The translation here is by Charles William Bingham. Augustine wrote his Confessions around AD 400; the translation is by E. B. Pusey.

Where This Sits in the Story

ANCIENT TRUTH

The Day of Atonement is given at Sinai, in the WILDERNESS stretch of the story. Israel lives in tents around a tent, and the law tells them how a holy God can live among people who sin.

In Leviticus the guilt is carried out of the camp by an animal. In Psalm 103 it is carried as far as the east is from the west. Both pictures want the same thing from the person watching, which is to look at where the guilt went and not at where it was.

MODERN APPLICATION

Most of us live in a camp of our own: a house, a workplace, a church. We carry things we have named to God, and we still look for them in the places we left them.

NEW TESTAMENT ECHO

Colossians 2:14 says God took our debt away, nailing it to the cross, and John 1:29 calls Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We read both on the next day.

REFLECT

When an old guilt comes back, is it still guilt, or has it turned into shame, or consequence, or grief?

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

Where have you confessed something and then gone back to check on it?
Who knows the thing you carry, and who could you tell this week?
What would it look like to read Psalm 103:12 aloud the next time the old thing returns?

A Practice for Today

Aaron named the wrongs out loud before the goat left. This practice does the same on paper. It takes about ten minutes. Do it somewhere private, and keep the paper afterward only if you want to.

Write it

Write down the thing you keep carrying, in plain words, in two sentences.

Sort it

Beside it, write one word: guilt, shame, consequence or grief. If it is more than one, write each.

Answer it

For guilt, write a sentence of confession to God. For shame, write the opposite of what it says. For consequence, write one step of repair you could take. For grief, write the name of someone you could tell.

Send it

Read Psalm 103:12 aloud. Then fold the paper, and tear it, or put it away somewhere you will not look for it.

Gone

We stop in the wilderness today, with a goat walking away and a man turning back to the camp.

The man who released it must wash his clothes and bathe before he comes in again. Leviticus is honest that even carrying the sin out leaves a mark. It also says he comes back in. The one who dealt with the guilt is not left outside with it.

Return to the goat. It carries on itself all their iniquities, and it goes where no one is. The people were not there to see it vanish. They had to believe it, on the word of a priest and a man who had done the walking.

Faith rests on a word that says where the guilt went. Tomorrow we find out what that word costs, and who had to carry it.

A man leads a goat on a rope along a narrow path away from a camp of tents on a rocky ridge. The path runs out across a wide, empty plain toward a low sun. — Leviticus 16:21: the live goat is led away into the wilderness by the hand of a man appointed for the task.

Prayer

Father, You are the one who carries iniquity away. Thank You that the thing I keep looking for is not where I left it. Where my guilt is real, give me the nerve to say it once and plainly. Where it is shame, tell me the truth about who I am. Where it is the weight of what I broke, show me one step of repair. And where I need a person, send me to one. Keep me looking at where the guilt went, and not at where it was. Amen.

BREATH PRAYER

Inhale: It has been carried away — Exhale: and I am not the thing I did

IN YOUR OWN WORDS

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

Today’s Commitment

When an old guilt comes back, I will name it, ask which kind it is, and read Psalm 103:12 aloud once. If it keeps coming back, I will tell a counselor.

LEAVING AT THE CROSS

Checking on a sin I have already confessed
Believing I am the thing I did

RECEIVING FROM THE CROSS

A God who carries iniquity away
Someone to tell, and a next step I can take

Check Yourself

In Leviticus 16:21-22, what happens to the live goat?

The Priest Who Went First

Aaron, the high priest

the wilderness years at Sinai, in the Exodus story

Aaron was Moses’ brother and the first high priest of Israel. Leviticus 16 opens after the death of two of his sons. On the Day of Atonement he made atonement for himself and his household before he made it for the people.

Aaron is to present the bull for his sin offering and make atonement for himself and his household.

— Aaron, the high priest

LESSON FOR US

The one who stands in front of the people is in the same camp as the people. Leaders who go first with their own confession are the ones who can be trusted to send anyone’s guilt away.

REFLECT

One Question to Carry

What are you still carrying that God already sent away?

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

Sources & Further Study

RELATED SCRIPTURES

Leviticus 16:1-34

The whole Day of Atonement.

Psalm 103:1-14

The psalm of benefits and of how far the transgressions went.

Psalm 32:1-5

The weight of silence, and what confession lifts.

Exodus 34:6-7

The Lord described as forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.

Leviticus 10:17

The sin offering given to take away the guilt of the congregation.

Hebrews 5:1-3

The high priest offers for his own sins as well as the people’s.

Colossians 2:13-15

God took the debt away, nailing it to the cross.

John 1:29

The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us.

FOR DEEPER STUDY

Hebrew: kipper (כִּפֵּר, H3722) is debated: cover (BDB), wipe or purge (Milgrom, Averbeck), or linked to the ransom noun kofer. Atonement in English is at-one-ment; Tyndale used it in his Bible translations, but he did not coin it. Avon (H5771), pesha (H6588) and chatta’ah (H2403) stand together in Leviticus 16:21 and Exodus 34:7. Ish itti, “a man appointed”, is a word found only here. Gezerah (H1509, from gazar, to cut off) appears only in 16:22. Azazel (H5799) is used in 16:8, 10 and 26; its meaning is disputed (a place, a being, or “the goat that goes away”); the Septuagint reads “the one sent away” and the Latin Vulgate caper emissarius. The English “scapegoat” first appears in Tyndale’s 1530 Pentateuch. Nasa (H5375) is the verb of the goat in 16:22, of the Lord in Exodus 34:7, and the verb in Leviticus 10:17. Psalm 103:12 uses mizrach (east, H4217), ma’arav (west, H4628) and hirhiq (to put far away, H7368). Greek: in Colossians 2:14 the verb for took it away is a perfect form of airo (G142); John 1:29 uses a participle of the same verb. The Mishnah (about AD 200) describes the goat’s journey in tractate Yoma, chapter 6, including the road with stations and the cliff; Leviticus 16 does not. Hunt’s account of the goats is in his own memoir, volume 1, around pages 497 to 510. Sources 1. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, book 2, chapter 1, translated by E. B. Pusey. Project Gutenberg, gutenberg.org/ebooks/3296. 2. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses, translated by Charles William Bingham (Calvin Translation Society, 1852-55), vol. 2, on Leviticus 16. Christian Classics Ethereal Library, ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom04. 3. William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (London: Macmillan, 1905), vol. 1 (the goats) and vol. 2 (the scarlet band). Internet Archive. 4. Mishnah Yoma 4:1, 6:1-8, Mishnah Yomit translation by Joshua Kulp (CC-BY), sefaria.org. 5. Jacob Milgrom, “Kipper,” Encyclopaedia Judaica. Further: BibleProject, “Book of Leviticus Summary: A Complete Animated Overview.”

BACK TO SERIES

Finished reading? Mark this day read.

CLIPPINGS

BEFORE YOU GO

Anything you want to keep from today?

Your writing is kept to your account, and only yours.

EUANGELION

Sent Away

That is the picture the Lord gave His people, once a year, to look at. Their sins were real. They were named out loud. And they were taken somewhere else.

The Priest Goes First

It is easy to skip over. The man who sends the goat has just been cleansed himself. He cannot say, I am clean, you are not. The one at the front is in the same camp.

Then comes the goat. The sanctuary is purified first, then the people’s guilt is carried out. God deals with it where He lives, and then He sends it away from where His people live.

What the Goat Carries

The goat goes to a land cut off. The Hebrew word in verse 22 appears nowhere else and is usually read as a land cut off. Our translation renders it a solitary place.

As Far as the East Is from the West

Many people confess something, mean it, and carry it for years anyway. The goat is already in the wilderness, and they are still standing in the camp, looking at the place where it was.

When It Comes Back

Here is a way to work with an old guilt that returns. Ask three questions, and answer them honestly.

Gone

We stop in the wilderness today, with a goat walking away and a man turning back to the camp.

Faith rests on a word that says where the guilt went. Tomorrow we find out what that word costs, and who had to carry it.

Aaron, the high priest

the wilderness years at Sinai, in the Exodus story

Aaron is to present the bull for his sin offering and make atonement for himself and his household.

— Aaron, the high priest

LESSON FOR US

The one who stands in front of the people is in the same camp as the people. Leaders who go first with their own confession are the ones who can be trusted to send anyone’s guilt away.