Thread by @JoelBaden

#Leviticus 16:20-22

The goat for Azazel

Did the biblical authors believe in the following: divine beings aside from YHWH? various demons and other supernatural beings? spaces not controlled by YHWH? dumping grounds for sins where they wouldn’t bother anyone?

Yes to all.

When we get hung up on the identity of Azazel, we miss the point (in this case, what’s actually happening in the ritual). Was Azazel a goat demon? Maybe! Probably, even. Is the identity of Azazel important here? Not so much, actually.

The question should be: if Aaron has just purified the sanctuary with the purification offerings, even brought inside the inner sanctum, all the way to YHWH’s seat, then what sins are left for hm to be placing on this goat?

Remember: the purification offering, as presented to us in Leviticus 4, is specifically and explicitly for addressing the contamination caused by sins that are unintentional. It’s when they are realized that one brings that offering.

So the entire system to this point has been premised on two main ideas: that Israelites won’t sin on purpose, and that when they do realize they’ve sinned unintentionally, they’ll clean it up. But…what if not? That’s precisely what this ritual is here for.

The latter situation is what Aaron’s purification offerings were for: for unrecalled, unremembered, unrecognized sins and impurities. Those are still contaminating the sanctuary, even while the person responsible for creating and cleaning them is totally oblivious to the fact.

But intentional sins - brazen sins, unrepentant sins - what happens to those? Neither regular purification offerings nor those just offered by Aaron do anything for those. They’re almost outside the system. Almost - except for this weird goat thing.

Brazen sins can’t be cleaned with the regular ritual detergent of blood. They have to be physically removed - loaded onto a goat and sent into the wilderness. They’re indestructible - but they are removable. And so they’re sent off, to a place where they won’t bother YHWH.

The goat isn’t bad, or even blamed - “scapegoat,” at least in modern usage, doesn’t quite capture it - heck, the goat isn’t even killed. It’s set free to graze. (Later tradition, reinterpreting the ritual, holds that it is pushed off a cliff.)

The goat is just a vehicle. It’s a pack animal. (But you can’t use a donkey, because those aren’t sacrificial animals - can’t go into the sanctuary compound.) It literally carries the physically real (if invisible) brazen sins of Israel out to the dump of the world.

And with that, every possible contaminant of the sanctuary is accounted for: sin and impurity, intentional and unintentional. YHWH’s home has been scrubbed clean, and the trash taken out. What’s left is just the final ritual steps, but the work of the ritual is done.