The high drama of the Day of Atonement would have been burned into the consciousness of every Jew from his or her earliest years. It was the central day of the Jewish year that dramatically portrayed how Yahweh promised to deal with the central problem of their life as a nation and of themselves individually. Their sin, which rendered them guilty and liable before the just and holy God, would be atoned for and removed by the very God against whom they had offended. It was salvation’s story enacted sacramentally as well as related verbally in advance.

Like nearly all the Christian Festivals (however many or few our particular churches may celebrate) the events marked by Easter can easily loom large on our horizons momentarily, only to be forgotten until the following year. If we allow ourselves to lapse into this pattern we can easily lose sight of the year-round, lifelong and eternal significance of what is marked by these seasons in the church calendar – all of which chart the redemptive work of our Lord. Indeed, with Easter especially, the institution of the Christian Sabbath and the Lord’s Supper forbid us from doing so.

So, as the dust of Easter celebrations settles here in Wales after the special services and events held in our little church, some details of the Passion week linger on in my mind. One in particular concerns the great Old Testament preview of the Passion enshrined in the greatest day of the Jewish Calendar: the Day of Atonement.

In terms of the arrangement of the Pentateuch, many Old Testament Scholars, not least Michael Morales in his book, Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? (IVP; Downers Grove, IL) 2015, point out that Leviticus is framed as the central focus of the combined message of the five books [scrolls] of Moses. And, even more to the point, the Day of Atonement is located at the centre point of Leviticus and therefore of the corpus as a whole. To the trained eye of the original Jewish readers of the Torah, the structural arrangement of these books and location of this key day in the Jewish year would have said almost as much about its importance as the detailed instructions spelled out for its observance.

The one detail that struck me afresh was what it says about the second goat required for the ritual of that day (Lev 16.8). Many translations render it ‘the scapegoat’, but the ESV has opted to simply transliterate the Hebrew at this point by Azazel. John E. Hartley in his commentary in the Word Biblical series notes, ‘The meaning of Azazel has been lost’[1] and this would certainly lend credence to the ESV’s decision to remain agnostic on how it ought to be rendered.

Read More