Azazel

Narrator: Chris Genthree
Leviticus 16:10  •  2 min. read  •  grade level: 10
Listen from:
• BibleTruthPublishers.com
Q.-Lev. 16:1010But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:10). No one can be surprised at the uncertainty of such as trust either the ancient fathers or the modern Germans. But one does wonder at the dilemma of the late Archdeacon Hardwick in “Christ and other Masters” (Procter's Ed. 1874, p. 504): “How...could the goat as mentioned in ver. 10 be sent to or for Azazel, if Azazel were the goat itself?” Pray explain this. X.
A.-The answer is simple enough. Azazel does not mean the goat simply, but the goat of dismissal. It is all a mistake that the phrase leads directly to the notion of either a person or a place. As the first goat was that on which Jehovah's lot fell for sacrifice, the second was allotted to signify in a striking light the people's sins sent away into oblivion. The foundation was laid in the goat sacrificed to Jehovah. The goat on which the lot fell for Azazel (i.e. for this specific sign of dismissal) was set alive before Jehovah, to make atonement with or on it (i.e. in conjunction with the one slain), to send it away as Azazel into the wilderness, or as said in ver. 22 to a land apart. This was the place; and it is wholly unfounded to conceive Satan or a demon, or any other being. Jehovah forbade everything of the sort in the next chapter (Lev. 17:77And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations. (Leviticus 17:7)), and is as far as possible from sanctioning such wicked folly here or anywhere else. It is sad to think of a pious man like Hengstenberg carried away by a notion so gratuitous, to say nothing of its impiety. The true and only sense is as evident as it is satisfactory, adding substitution to propitiation, and thus completing atonement, as far as the type could.