Leviticus 16: The Live Goat Comes Last

Leviticus 16 gets taught as the chapter about two goats, though the second goat doesn't come out until verse 20, after the priest has killed a bullock, filled a room with incense smoke, sprinkled blood seven times in front of the mercy seat and gone out to cleanse the altar. I think that order is the point of the chapter, and most lessons hurry past it to get to the goat, since the goat is the part with a name we still use.

So here's the order, the way it reads.

Why does the chapter begin with two dead men?

Verse 1 dates the instruction: "after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they offered before the Lord, and died." Those are Nadab and Abihu, who in Leviticus 10:1 "offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not." The next thing the Lord says to Moses is that Aaron shouldn't come into the holy place "at all times" (16:2), "that he die not."

Read like that, the chapter is a set of directions for getting close to something that can kill you. The incense in verses 12 and 13 is there for the same reason, and verse 13 repeats the line from verse 2: the cloud covers the mercy seat "that he die not." Nobody in the chapter is casual about it.

What happens first, and what happens last?

Aaron washes first and then puts on the linen garments in verse 4. He brings a bullock "which is for himself" and makes atonement "for himself, and for his house" (v. 6). He casts lots on two goats, one for the Lord and one for the scapegoat (v. 8), and the second goat stands there alive at the tent door while he goes to kill the bullock (v. 11). Verses 12 through 14 are the censer, the incense and the blood on the mercy seat. Only then, in verse 15, does the first goat die and its blood goes the way the bullock's did.

Verse 16 is the one I'd put on an index card.

And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins: and so shall he do for the tabernacle of the congregation, that remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness.

First the holy place gets atoned for and then the tabernacle, and after that, in verses 18 and 19, the altar outside, with blood on its horns and seven more sprinklings, "and cleanse it, and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel." Verse 20 says he "hath made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar," and only after that does he bring the live goat.

The people, meanwhile, aren't in the room. Verse 17 says "there shall be no man in the tabernacle of the congregation" while Aaron is inside. That means no one. The people never go into the place that verse 16 says needs cleaning because of them.

The room gets dirty too

Two Decembers ago my father-in-law Robert asked me to come by his dental office in St. George on a Saturday. A drawer front I'd built for his sterilizing room the summer before had started to bind, and I was on the floor with a screwdriver when he began telling me how a room gets turned over between patients. He's been a family dentist since before I met his daughter. Everything in the instrument tray goes through the autoclave, which I knew. What I didn't know was how much of the wiping has nothing to do with instruments. The light handle gets a barrier sleeve and then a wipe, and so do the drawer pulls, the arm of the chair and the faucet. He said the patient never touches the drill. The patient touches the drawer pull on the way past, and then the next patient does.

"The instruments are the easy part," he said. "It's all the stuff nobody was supposed to handle."

I thought of Robert on my third reading of verse 16. Israel's sin, as the chapter has it, doesn't stay with the people who committed it. It gets into the place, including the parts none of them is allowed to walk into, and that's a harder idea than the people needing forgiveness. I'd missed how much of the chapter rests on it.

The last clause is the part that surprises me most in the whole chapter. The tabernacle "remaineth among them in the midst of their uncleanness." Nothing here has it moved off to a clean spot while the camp sorts itself out. It stays where it is, in the middle of the mess, and once a year somebody goes in with blood and cleans it. That's my reading of the clause and I wouldn't hang a doctrine on it, but I can't find another way to take "in the midst."

Aaron goes first, and the chapter says so twice

Verse 6 says Aaron offers the bullock "which is for himself" and makes atonement "for himself, and for his house." Verse 11 says it again in nearly the same words, and then he kills the bullock. Nobody goes into the innermost room for the camp until the priest has made an offering for himself and his house, and the chapter puts that in twice so you can't skip it.

The garments are a small detail I like, and verse 4 lists them: linen coat, linen breeches, linen girdle, linen mitre, all of it linen and all of it "holy garments." Verse 23 has him take them off after the goat is sent away and "leave them there." In verse 24 he puts on "his garments," which are apparently different clothes, and comes out to offer the burnt offerings. I don't know what happened to the linen afterward. The chapter only says leave it.

What does the goat carry off?

And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.

Leviticus 16:21-22

Both hands go on the head, and the list is as long as the text can make it: iniquities, transgressions, all their sins. A man leads the animal out and lets it go.

The goat isn't killed, and verse 10 says it "shall be presented alive." Nothing in verses 21 and 22 or after describes any harm to it. What it does is leave, carrying things. When I wrote about the two birds in Leviticus 14, I took issue with the teaching that the live bird there is a smaller scapegoat, and putting the two chapters side by side shows why. Here there's a spoken confession, hands laid on and a list of what's being put there. In Leviticus 14 the living bird is dipped in the other bird's blood and let loose into the open field, and as far as I can find nobody confesses anything over it.

Verse 26 has one more detail. The man who leads the goat out has to wash his clothes and bathe before he comes back into the camp, and so does the man who burns the bullock and the first goat in verse 28. Even the work of taking sin out of the camp leaves you needing a wash.

The people's own part comes at the end, and it's almost nothing. Verses 29 through 31 set the date, the tenth day of the seventh month, and the people are to "afflict your souls, and do no work at all," with the stranger among them named in the same verse. Verse 31 calls it "a sabbath of rest." The priest does the atoning "to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord" (v. 30), and the people stay out and stop.

Hebrews takes this chapter up directly, and Hebrews 9:7 says "into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people," which puts Leviticus 16:2 and 16:6 into one line. What bothers the writer comes in Hebrews 10:3: "in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year." Leviticus 16:34 says "once a year" as a plain fact, and Hebrews hears it as a flaw, that the year keeps coming around.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the scapegoat Satan?

The chapter doesn't say so and I'd leave it there, because the lot in verse 8 is "one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat," and the goat that gets the second lot is the one that lives, takes the confession and is let go. Some traditions read the word as the name of a wilderness spirit, but I wouldn't build a lesson on that when the chapter is so careful about what it does tell us.

Why does Aaron bring a bullock for himself first?

Because he's the one going in. Verses 6 and 11 both say it's "for himself, and for his house," and the verse 11 mention comes right before he takes the censer behind the veil in verse 12.

Did the people see any of this?

Most of it, no, since verse 17 empties the tabernacle of every other person, and the innermost room was one even Aaron couldn't enter whenever he liked (v. 2). The people were fasting, with no work in their hands. They'd have seen the live goat led out, since verse 21 puts the confession on its head.

Do Latter-day Saints keep the Day of Atonement?

Not as far as I know. It's the Jewish Yom Kippur, and the sacrifices stopped with the temple. What we do with the chapter is read it as a picture, with Hebrews 9 and 10 as the guide.

Read verses 11 through 20 aloud in one go and notice how long it takes before anyone but Aaron is mentioned. Then open Hebrews 9 beside it.

— D.