Once a year one man walked behind the curtain with blood, and one goat walked out into the desert. Here is what that day did, and why Hebrews says Jesus finished it.
The Day of Atonement is Yom Kippur, the tenth day of the seventh month in Israel's calendar, laid out in Leviticus 16 and 23. On that one day the high priest cleansed the sanctuary with blood and sent a second goat, carrying the people's confessed sins, out into the wilderness.
Hebrews, which we believe Paul wrote, says Jesus is both the priest and the offering. He did once, with His own life, what that day had to repeat every year, and when the temple fell in AD 70 the old system ended with it.
That is the whole thing in two paragraphs. The rest of this study walks through the day step by step, because the details are where it gets beautiful.
Aaron bathes and dresses in plain linen, not the gold and colored garments he wore on other days (16:4). The most important man in Israel walks into the holiest place dressed like a servant.
Before he can do anything for the people, the priest offers a bull for his own sin and for his household (16:6, 11). The mediator needs cleansing too, and the text says so out loud.
He carries burning coals and incense through the curtain, and the smoke covers the atonement cover on the ark (16:12-13). Nobody gets a clear look at the glory, not even him.
Blood from the bull, and then from the goat chosen for the Lord, is sprinkled on the front of the cover and seven times before it (16:14-15). The same is done for the tent and the altar.
Aaron lays both hands on the second goat and confesses over it all the sins of Israel. A man leads it into the wilderness and lets it go (16:21-22).
The priest leaves the linen in the tent, bathes, puts on his regular garments and offers burnt offerings for himself and the people. What remains of the sin offerings is burned outside the camp (16:23-28).
Notice what the blood is for. Leviticus 16:16 says the priest makes atonement for the Most Holy Place itself, because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites. The people's sin had soiled the place where God chose to live among them, and the day cleans the house so He can keep living there. We work through the Hebrew word behind that in our atonement definition, and the gold lid itself in what the mercy seat is.
“Because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins.”
Leviticus 16:30Leviticus 23:27-28 adds the people's side of it. The day is a sacred assembly. They deny themselves and do no work. The priest works and everyone else stops. That picture is worth sitting with before we go anywhere near the cross.
Two male goats are brought, and Aaron casts lots over them. The ESV keeps the Hebrew in plain sight.
“And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel.”
Leviticus 16:8 (ESV)One goat dies, and its blood cleanses the sanctuary. The other stays alive, carries the confessed sins away and is let go in the wilderness. Two pictures of one work. The defilement is washed off, and the guilt is carried so far away it cannot find its way back.
Scholars do not agree on what it means. Anna Angelini notes at TheTorah.com that the word as spelled in the Hebrew text “has no clear meaning in Hebrew.”
William Tyndale read it as goat plus sent away and called it the escape goat, which gave English the word scapegoat, as the Jewish Theological Seminary explains.
Rabbinic readings often took Azazel as the name of a harsh, rocky place in the wilderness where the goat was taken.
Some read it as the name of a wilderness power. Centuries later, 1 Enoch built a whole myth around an Azazel who taught people metalwork and cosmetics. That is later tradition, not Leviticus.
Azazel is a demon, and Israel sent him a goat every year to keep him quiet in the desert.
Both goats are presented before the Lord (16:7, 10). Nothing is offered to anyone else, and Leviticus 17:7 forbids sacrifices to goat idols outright. The sins go out. Nobody gets paid.
So hold the word loosely and the meaning firmly. Whatever Azazel named, the direction of the day is plain: the sin leaves the camp and does not come back. If you want to know why we do not read a wilderness name as a spirit being with a personality, we lay that out in are demons fallen angels.
Hebrews was written to believers who knew this day by heart. We believe Paul wrote it, for reasons we explain in who wrote Hebrews: Timothy is named in 13:23, the early Eastern church received it as Paul's, and its themes run straight through his other letters. Some scholars see another hand, and we respect that conversation, but we read it as Paul.
In chapter 9 he walks the reader through Leviticus 16 and then lays Jesus over it, piece by piece.
“He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.”
Hebrews 9:12Aaron went in with blood for his own sins first (Hebrews 9:7). Jesus needed no bull for Himself. He is the priest the day was always missing.
The old day used blood that was not the priest's own (9:25). Jesus brings His own life, which is to say He brings Himself.
While the first tabernacle stood, the way in was not yet open (9:8). Now there is “a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body” (10:20).
The sin offerings were burned outside the camp. “Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood” (13:12).
And the repetition is the point. “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (10:4). Then 10:11-12 sets priests standing day after day beside one priest who offered one sacrifice and sat down. You sit down when the work is finished.
The Day of Atonement did not fail. It did exactly what it was built to do, which was cleanse for a year and point past itself. Jesus is where it was pointing.
John the Baptist reached for a different picture when he called Jesus the Lamb of God. The New Testament does not pick one image and discard the rest. It lets every one of them land on Him.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Here is the teaching we are correcting. Many of us were taught that the Day of Atonement shows an angry God who had to see something die before He would calm down, and that the cross is the same transaction at a bigger price. The Father is the problem, the Son is the solution, and the blood is the payment.
That view deserves its strongest form. It takes sin seriously. It takes seriously that Scripture says He bore our sins (Isaiah 53; 1 Peter 2:24). And it notices, rightly, that something costly happens on this day. We affirm all of that.
At Sound of Heaven we believe the Day of Atonement was God's gift to Israel, not Israel's payment to God. In Leviticus 17:11 God says He gave the blood to make atonement. The blood in Leviticus 16 cleans the sanctuary. It does not buy a change of mood in heaven.
So the cross is love's proof, not its purchase. Father, Son and Spirit are one God, and at the cross God was not punishing someone else so He could finally stand us. He was carrying our sin Himself, all the way out of the camp. We lay out the wider case in what propitiation means and in what it means that Jesus died for our sins.
The appeasement picture does its worst damage to people who already believe God is disappointed in them. They hear the Day of Atonement as proof. It is the opposite. It is God saying, I want to live with you, so I will make a way to clean what needs cleaning.
In Leviticus 16:16, what does the priest make atonement for?
Leviticus 16:16 says the priest makes atonement for the Most Holy Place itself. The sanctuary is cleansed so God can keep dwelling among His people. The day is about a restored home, not a calmed temper.
Some teaching treats the Day of Atonement as a slot on a prophetic calendar still waiting to be filled, with Israel's feasts laid out as a timetable for events yet to come. We think that is wrong, because Hebrews says the opposite.
“By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.”
Hebrews 8:13Soon meant soon. Paul wrote while the temple still stood and a high priest still went in once a year. Within a generation it was gone.
In the wilderness, Israel receives one day a year to cleanse the tent where God dwells among them.
Through Solomon's temple and the second temple, the high priest goes behind the curtain again and again, year after year.
When Jesus dies, the curtain of the temple is torn in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51). The way in is open.
Paul tells believers the first covenant is obsolete and will soon disappear, and that the one who is coming will come “in just a little while” (Hebrews 10:37).
Roman armies destroy Jerusalem and the temple. No Most Holy Place is left to enter and no altar remains to serve. The old system ends with the end of the age.
One more detail from Hebrews 9:28, which pictures Christ appearing a second time to those waiting for Him. On the Day of Atonement the people stood outside and waited for the high priest to come back out, because his coming out meant the offering had been received. The first readers were waiting for exactly that, and in the judgment of AD 70 the old order was taken away and the new one stood alone. We are not standing outside the tent anymore. We live inside the finished work.
After the temple fell, the Jewish people did not stop keeping the day. The rabbis carried it forward through prayer, repentance and fasting, and the Mishnah, compiled around AD 200, records how. It is still the most solemn day of the Jewish year, landing in September or October on our calendar. On Long Island you notice it. Many schools close, and whole neighborhoods go quiet.
The Mishnah lists what is set aside on the day: eating and drinking, bathing, anointing with oil, wearing shoes, and marital relations (Yoma 8:1). The evening opens with Kol Nidre, many wear white, and the day closes with a final service as the sun goes down.
One line from the same tractate deserves every Christian's attention. Mishnah Yoma 8:9 teaches that for wrongs done between people, “Yom Kippur does not atone until he appeases the other person.” The day that deals with your standing before God sends you to your neighbor's door first. Jesus said something very close in Matthew 5:23-24: leave your gift at the altar and go be reconciled.
How should a Christian treat the day? With respect. We do not believe the temple rites are waiting to return, and we believe Jesus is the fulfillment of what Yom Kippur pictures. We can say that plainly and still honor neighbors who fast and pray. No pressure, no pitch, no turning a solemn day into a debate. The traditional greeting, G'mar chatimah tovah, wishes someone a good sealing for the year, and a sincere kind word is always welcome. Five days later Israel moved from fasting to celebration at the Feast of Booths, and if the fast itself draws you, start with what the Bible says about fasting.
Some people read about a day of affliction and confession and feel the weight of everything they have never made right. If that is you, hear this: the day was built by a God who wanted to live close to His people, and in Jesus that closeness is not rationed to once a year.
You do not have to earn a clean heart before you come. Come as you are. If there is someone you have wronged, the Mishnah and Jesus agree on the next step, and grace gives you the courage to take it. If you would like someone to pray with you, ask us for prayer.
Honor the people who keep Yom Kippur, learn from its call to make things right with each other, and rest in the Priest who finished what it pictured.
For centuries one man went in, once a year, carefully, in a cloud of smoke. Everyone else stood outside and waited.
Then Jesus went in with His own life, and He did not keep the door to Himself. Hebrews 10:19 says we now have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus. Confidence. Not permission for the brave or the flawless. Confidence, handed to ordinary brothers and sisters.
That is what the Day of Atonement was for all along. God wanted to live with His people, so He made a way to clean the house. In Jesus the house is clean, the guilt has been carried off and the door stays open every day of the year. Live like someone who is welcome, because you are.
For related reading, see what the new covenant is, the blood of Jesus and what we believe at Sound of Heaven.
The Day of Atonement was Israel's yearly cleansing of God's house, with one goat's blood on the mercy seat and another goat carrying sins away, and Jesus, priest and offering at once, finished it for good before the temple itself fell in AD 70.
Tell us what is weighing on you. Someone at Sound of Heaven will pray with you and walk through it with you.
The Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur in Hebrew, was the tenth day of the seventh month in Israel's calendar, set out in Leviticus 16 and 23. On that day the high priest entered the Most Holy Place, sprinkled blood on the atonement cover of the ark to cleanse the sanctuary, and laid the people's confessed sins on a live goat that was sent into the wilderness. The people fasted and did no work. Hebrews presents Jesus as the priest and the offering who completed what the day pictured.
Nobody knows for certain, and honest scholars say so. The word appears only in Leviticus 16. Some take it as the goat that goes away, which is how Tyndale arrived at the English word scapegoat. Rabbinic tradition often read it as a rugged place in the wilderness. Others see the name of a wilderness power, and much later books like 1 Enoch built myths around it. What the text makes clear is that both goats are presented before the Lord and the sins are carried away, not paid to anyone.
Hebrews 9 and 10 walk through the day and apply it to Jesus. He is the high priest who needed no offering for Himself, and the offering who brought His own blood rather than an animal's. He entered once for all instead of every year, and He sat down because the work was finished. He suffered outside the city gate, like the sin offerings burned outside the camp. The curtain that kept people out has become a new and living way in.
No. Christians are not bound to keep the Day of Atonement, because Hebrews teaches that Jesus completed what it pictured and that the old covenant system was passing away, which it did when the temple fell in AD 70. That does not make the day meaningless. Reading Leviticus 16 deepens how you understand the cross, and fasting and confession are still good practices. Treat your Jewish neighbors' observance with respect, and let Jesus be the reason you do not need to repeat it.
When Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70, the sacrifices and the high priest's entry into the Most Holy Place ended, because there was no longer a sanctuary to enter. Jewish life carried the day forward through prayer, repentance, fasting and charity, and the Mishnah records how it was kept. For Christians, AD 70 marks the covenant transition Hebrews anticipated when it said the first covenant was obsolete and would soon disappear.