Appendix.-I. the Scapegoat
It is generally known that the Hebrew word so translated in the Authorized Version, but left by the Revisers untranslated, has been the occasion of keen debate among men of learning, Jews as well as Christians, though chiefly rationalists. Symrnachus gives ἀπερχόμενος, and Aquila ἀπολυὀμενος (or, as Montfaucon reads, ἀπολελυμένος); and the Vulgate follows, as did Luther in his day. Theodoret in his comment on the passage seems to have had no question but that the Seventy meant ἀποπομπαῖος as ἀποπεμπόμενος. But the learned S. Bochart (Hieroz. II. liv.) objected that their rendering is by a term in classical authors appropriated to the active sense of averting or turning away evils, answering to the Latin averruncus, though he for his part suggests quite a different version of the Hebrew. One of his arguments repeated by moderns, that “ez” is a she goat, not a male, Gesenius confesses is not so certain. Indeed the remark in the Thesaurus, as anyone may verify from Hebrew usage, is “prius caprum quam capram significasse videtur.” It is really an epicene, and so capable of application to either sex. Besides, Azazel is a compound, or which the more general designation sufficed with another word to define. This allowed, the natural formation of the word is obvious: Azazel means goat of departure. Nor is there real difficulty in identifying the people's lot with it: as the slain goat was for Jehovah, so the living one for a scapegoat. This is the express distinction of scripture in each case.
People are easily stumbled who for such reasons abandon the intrinsically simple, suitable, and holy sense, for alternatives of the most equivocal nature, if not absurd and profane. Thus not a few suggest that it is the name of a place, of which nobody ever heard; whereas the context supposes a meaning which all could understand at once. This is true only of the ancient and commonly held view. The advocates for place cannot settle among themselves whether Azazel signifies a precipitous mountain, to which the goat is supposed to be led, or a lonely valley which Deut. 21 probably suggested, though the case was wholly different. Besides, we have the place of consignment already and distinctly specified in ver. 10, which puts this sense of Azazel out of court as intolerable tautology; so Gesenius rightly argues on the latter supposition. “To a desert place, into the desert,” cannot stand; any more than the former supposition of casting the goat down a precipice, instead of letting him go free as ver. 22 requires. Tholuck, Winer, &c., contended for such a manipulation of Azazel as would mean “for a complete removal.” which Gesenius condemned very properly, both for its rigid character and for its incoherence with ver. 8; and therefore he preferred with many others the abominable sense of a demon or Satan! Hence the Septuagint has been cited as if ὁ ἀποπομταῖος must mean some evil genius of the wilderness, who had to be propitiated by the sacrifice of the dismissed goat! One can understand the apostate emperor Julian so sneering at scripture; but Cyril of Alexandria found no difficulty in understanding the Greek translation, as the plain English reader does the A.V.
For on the face of the chapter the two goats were taken “for a sin-offering” (ver. 5); and Aaron presented not one only but both before Jehovah at the door of the tabernacle (ver. 7); and lots were cast (ver. 8) that the whole disposal of each might be of Jehovah. Is it not blasphemy then to find such sentiments insinuated as would involve an unholy compact between Jehovah and Satan, not merely in the face of the entire law which forbade giving His sacred honor to His adversary, but this on the most solemn day of sacrifice and confession of sins in the Jewish year? Now ver. 10 is conclusive proof that the Seventy had no such profanity in their minds, any more than they convey it in their words. For though the word in heathen mouths had no better connection, the LXX show that they simply employed it to mean the God-appointed dismisser of the sins charged on its head by varying the rendering in ver. 10. There, instead of saying τὸν ἀποπομπαῖον, as would have been the natural form after their translation of ver. 8, they seem to go out of their way to guard themselves and the scripture in hand by changing the phrase to αὐτὸν εἰς τὴν ἀποπιητήν, “to send away for the dismissal” (not “the dismisser”). Symmaclius has here εἰς τράγον ἀφιέμενον (Origenis Hexapla, Field, ii. 194). It is certain from this comparison that the Seventy meant by ὀ ἁποπομπαῖος the goat that was sent away; which demonstrates therefore, notwithstanding their use of the word, that the notion of a caco-daemon did not even occur to their thoughts. To crown the evidence, weigh their version of ver. 26, “And he that sends forth the goat that has been set apart to be let go,” as Sir L. C. L. Brenton translates τὸν χίμαρον τὸν διεσταλμένον. Who can doubt that there was no unworthy superstition of an Averruncus, but just simply the second goat of departure? It may be added that Mr. Chas. Thompson, the American Translator (Philad. 1808), did not differ as to this from Brenton, save in being less correct, “And he that letteth go the he-goat which was sent away to be set at liberty,” &c., as he had rendered 1-azazel in vers. 8, 10, simply “for escape.” Neither of them allows the idea of the heathen daemon in any case.
The notion of Witsius, &c., is less offensive, as might be expected in pious men. It was that the goat sent away to the Averter indicated Christ's relation to the devil, whom He, however tried, did overcome. And Henstenberg sought to purge it so as to express in symbol that he whom God forgives is freed from the devil's power. But it is all an inexcusable departure from the simple truth of the type by an attempt to christen a heathen idea, which has no ground whatever in the original, and only a semblance in the LXX corrected almost immediately by the context. “When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive.” Such is the noble way in which was displayed, completely and forever, Christ triumphing over the evil powers, which had before seemed to triumph for a while: they were really vanquished and despoiled in His cross.
MODERN VIEWS SUBVERSIVE OF THE ATONEMENT
It may be helpful to notice briefly some prevalent speculations of our day which work banefully against the truth, and to the injury of souls.
We need not dwell on the virtual Socinianism which reduces the death of Christ to an example of love, or to a fidelity which stopped not short of martyrdom. His suffering for us was as unique as His person. Many have lived in devoted love, many have died martyrs, and on a cross too. How comes it that not one suffered as Christ, that He alone is an object of faith or means of peace? Because He, and He only, suffered for our sins. Quite as low do they go who make His death only a necessary step to His resurrection for assuring men of a future life and fresh pardon, either on God's prerogative, or on man's repentance, or on both. It is clear that, for vindicating God and the conscience, any theory of the kind scarce goes beyond heathenism. Such men neglect the true light which now shines with fullness of love in Christ. Righteousness and grace are alike lost by these thoughts; and Christ, far from being “all,” is reduced comparatively, and really indeed, to nothing for atonement.
(1) Beyond these in appearance is the scheme that, as our Lord ever went about doing good in grace and mercy, so His sufferings were endured up to death as a perfect manifestation of God in man. So Mr. Maurice on “Sacrifice,” who regarded the Son of God as the ideal man, the true root and eternal anti-type of humanity. But this is no more than philosophizing on Christ. As it obliterates the guilt and ruin of fallen man, so it accounts in no true sense or divine way for the sufferings of Christ at the hand of God. Guilt on the one hand is ignored, and God the Judge of sin on the other. Hence the infinite work of Christ is viewed merely on the side of love and self-surrender, not at all in the light of His suffering once for sins, that He might bring the believer to God. Thus the cross is regarded in its most superficial aspect. The judgment of God therein is wholly absent from the theory, no less than the deliverance and new status of the believer as identified with Christ risen from the dead, and seated at God's right hand in heaven.
It is true that Christ felt the sins of men with that anguish, with which only a perfectly pure and holy One could feel the sins of others, along with perfect grace toward themselves in His heart. But sympathy is not what is wanted with sins, or even with sinners as such. Suffering for sins can alone avail, and that by One Who is adequate to meet God in all His holy feeling and righteous dealing about sin. Sinners need a sufficient Savior, and a divinely acceptable salvation.
Again, union does not mean Christ becoming partaker of man's nature, though this was essential to save souls. The faithful now are united by and in the Spirit to Him glorified on high. The union of mankind as such with Christ is a fiction destructive of truth and holiness.
(2) The late Dr. J. McLeod Campbell, in his book on “The Nature of the Atonement,” betrays the like ruinous departure from revealed truth. He contends for Christ's “condemnation of sin in His own Spirit” as atoning, not His blood-shedding. Scriptural atonement is given up for one of purely holy and loving sentiment, altogether short of, and differing from, what the cross really means. For Christ is supposed to have atoned for men by offering up to God a perfect confession for their sins, and an adequate repentance! for them, with which divine justice is satisfied! as a full expiation made for human guilt! “Fatherliness in God originating our salvation: the Son of God accomplishing that salvation by the revelation of the Father.”
Here again, Christ suffering for sins, the Just for the unjust, has no true place, any more than the righteousness of God in answer to Christ's infinite suffering. It is a strange and vague substitution of Christ making a confession, “Which must, in its own nature, have been a perfect amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.” It thus evidently leaves out God arrayed against our sins laid on Jesus. All admit the love which brought Him down and carried Him through to the uttermost. But what was the meaning of the cup which His Father gave Him to drink? What of His praying in agony that, if it were possible, this cup might pass from Him? What, still more, of the cry on the cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” These were no merely sympathetic woes, which last He never prayed should pass from Him, but His unutterable suffering—yea, beyond all our thoughts—at God's hand, when His necessary hatred and judgment of sin broke forth even on His own Son made sin for us. Nothing but vicarious suffering for us from God can account for the profound feelings and language of our Lord when delivered for our offenses, and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. It is allowed also that Christ in grace took up our sins and confessed them as His own, in His heart substitution for us. But to say that all the elements of a perfect contrition and repentance except! the personal consciousness of sin (the very element essential to repentance and contrition) were in Him, is to mistake the word of God, and foist in a fable.
As contrary to scripture is it to say that thus was accorded to divine justice that which is its due, and which could alone satisfy it. Was it not immeasurably more to be forsaken of God? This Christ suffered for us, if we believe Himself, on the cross. He poured out His soul an offering for sin. Isaiah says nothing short of this could satisfy divine justice, nor an adequate expiation be, unless our guilt were righteously borne as it was in His cross. Here again is the same swamping of necessary truth which characterizes the theory of Mr. Maurice. Like his it also blots out the essential difference which faith creates, Substitution is wholly gone in these efforts to show nothing but divine love to everybody. If in these solutions there were any adequate answer to the first goat, there is no recognition whatever of what the second conveys; but even as to the first, how poor is the notion of sympathy in the presence of God's judgment of sin in Christ's cross!
(3) Another human key has been offered whereby to escape the offense of the cross. The late Mr. Robertson (of Brighton) labored to make out that “Christ simply came into collision with the world's evil and bare the penalty of that daring. He approached the whirling wheel, and was torn in pieces. He laid His hand on the cockatrice's den, and its fangs pierced Him. Such is the law which governs the conflict with evil. It can be crushed only by suffering from it. The Son of Man, who puts His naked foot on the serpent's head, crushed it; but the fang goes into His heel.” Here again the same irreparable want appears. God is in none of these thoughts. It is not suffering for sins, but suffering from sinners only. The judgment of God is left out, sin being unjudged; and the grace of God does not appeal to or for sinners. How irreverent also to think and speak of Christ bearing the penalty of His “daring”! How grievous the lowering and the loss of truth which reduces all in Christ to “law"! It is a mere victim overcome of evil, instead of a divine sacrifice for us which overcame it with good, but at infinite cost to Himself even from God. Jehovah bruising Him becomes a mere figure, instead of being the deepest reality. Scripture is plain that His sacrifice on the cross was not merely by God's foreknowledge, but by His determinate counsel. Whatever part the Jews played in heart, whatever the lawless hands of Gentiles did, after all it was that which God's hand and God's counsel determined before to be done. “Jehovah laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” Such was the baptism with which He must be baptized; such the cup His Father had given Him to drink. Thus only can we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins; as God set Him forth a propitiation through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness. Thereby is God just and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus.
In his Expository Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians, Mr. R. joins others of the school in basing all on the Incarnation, as if God then reconciled the world unto Himself and Himself to man. “Consequently everyone is to be looked at now, not merely as a man, but as a brother in Christ!” The passage on the contrary declares that, whatever God's loving attitude and overtures in the Incarnate Word, man was so evil and hostile that there was no way to bring him to God, short of His making Christ sin for us that we might become His righteousness in Him (2 Cor. 5).
(4) Hence all the efforts of such men as Dr. Young in the “Life and Light of Men” are vain. “The Jews sacrificed Christ—sacrificed Him to their vile passions; but as certainly (!) He did not mean to atone for their sins (!!), or to tender satisfaction to divine justice (!!!).” It is not a question of Jews or Gentiles, but of God's purposes and means. All scripture from beginning to end reveals the way of sacrifice to be not Abel's only, but divine. Of all that was done in faith the foundation lay before God only in the atoning death of the Lord Jesus. His inward sufferings were as perfect as real; but it is sheer unbelief to abuse them to the denial that God made Christ, Who knew no sin, to be sin for us. How false and bold then to say that “a true salvation is not escape from the consequence of sin, present or remote”! Undoubtedly salvation by Christ is far fuller; but it is rebellion against God to deny that remission of sins is included. “Without shedding of blood is no remission:” so says the N. T., as well as the Old.
Similar remarks apply to Dr. Bushnell's treatise on “Vicarious Sacrifice,” and “Forgiveness and Law.” His is another variety of atonement by moral power. What can be worse than to say that, in Christ made a curse for us, “the meaning of the expression is exhausted, when Christ is said simply to come into the corporate state of evil, and to bear it with us—faithful unto death for our recovery”? Is this to give “His life a ransom for many”? “He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him.” He bore the penalty of our sin, and by His blood purged our conscience to serve the living God. It is to reverse the truth, if His aim and way were, as Dr. B. says, “to bring us out of our sins themselves, and so out of their penalties.” Vitally needful was the vicariousness of His suffering for us, and not love only. Indeed love is incomparably more proved therein. Otherwise we have no more left than goodness and martyrdom, an example for us to imitate and reciprocate. “Hereby know we love, because He laid down His life for us.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins.” This is excluded by all these unbelieving theories. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved through His life.”
Prof. B. Jowett, in his “Epistles of Paul” as elsewhere, has committed himself to rash and irrelevant utterances on this most sacred and momentous subject. His distinct tendency if not effort is to undermine divine authority and certainty in scripture; which if accepted would dissolve the truth of atonement as indeed of everything else.
Thus he writes in his second Vol. p. 549: “The Old Testament is not on all points the same with the New, for, Moses allowed some things for the hardness of their hearts '; nor the law with the prophets, for there were proverbs in the house of Israel ' that were reversed; nor does the gospel, which is simple and universal, in all respects agree with the epistles, which have reference to the particular state of the first converts; nor is the teaching of James, who admits works as a co-efficient with faith in the justification of man, absolutely identical with that of Paul, who asserts justification by faith only; nor is the character of all the Epistles of Paul precisely the same; nor does he himself claim an equal authority for all his precepts.” How grave the fault to avail oneself of points more or less true to upset the truth! And what can we think of his statement farther on— “Christ Himself hardly uses, even in a figure, the word sacrifice; never with the least reference to His own life or death.” And this, in the face, not only of Matt. 20:2828Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:28), but of chap. 26:28! And what is the meaning of His giving His flesh for the life of the world? of His laying down His life for the sheep? of the corn of wheat dying and bringing forth much fruit? of His being lifted up from the earth and drawing all men unto Him? From the transfiguration we hear Him setting His death constantly before His disciples.
In his Essay on the Atonement which follows his Exposition, Mr. J. strives to get rid of the Levitical types of Christ's death on the ground of no such interpretation accompanying them. Now this really means, that, if true, we should have had the N.T. side by side with the Old: a notion which would blot out God's wisdom and will in various dispensations. 1 Peter 1:1212Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into. (1 Peter 1:12) is in principle the inspired answer. Christ's coming and death for us, followed by the gift of the Spirit on His ascension, was the right time and way of plainly teaching all, which had been wrapt up in figure but not in uncertainty. When declared and seen to be the divine intention after 1500 years, the truth comes out only the more impressively as of God. And unbelief is proved to be not only blind but irreverent as well as absurd, in presence of such facts when Mr. J. adds, “It would seem ridiculous, to assume a spiritual meaning in the Homeric (I) rites and sacrifices; and although they may be different in other respects, have we any more reason for inferring such a meaning in the Mosaic (11)?” One might have hoped that even pre-occupation with Plato's reveries, diversified with relaxation over the Iliad and Odyssey, might leave room even in the most prejudiced mind to remember that the scriptures claim to be inspired of God; so that, even though they consist of two very distinct collections in wholly different tongues, for an earthly people and for Christ's heavenly body, there cannot but be one mind of God in all, either preparing for Christ, or at length revealed in Him fully by the one Spirit sent down from heaven. Now Christ's presence on earth was the stumbling-stone of the one, as the O.T. prophets declared beforehand; and His death of shame, yet in God's hand of eternal redemption, introduces the others. This also explains why He Who was the rejected Messiah, and the glorified Head of the church, did not Himself bring out His death, resurrection, and ascension glory, but left it to the Holy Spirit by the apostles and prophets of the N.T. Yet He said enough to prove that all was known perfectly: only the disciples could not bear to hear all whilst He was here, and the atoning work not yet accomplished. How then must one estimate Mr. J.'s words, “It is hard to imagine that there can be any truer expression of the gospel than the words of the Lord Jesus, or that any truth omitted by Him can be essential to the gospel” (Exp. ii. p. 555)? Had it been true that His death for our sins was absolutely left till it was in fact fulfilled and for the Holy Spirit to testify, how childish the reasoning! Alas! it is much worse: “A deceived heart have turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?”
(To be continued).