The offerings on Yom Kippur may be grouped into three categories. First, the morning and evening daily sacrifices represented Israel’s posture of a continual fiery ascension offering (including its grain and drink offering),  the constant trust of one’s entire life to YHWH to transform into a new creation. Specific to the festival, offerings for the high priest and the tabernacle consisted of purification offerings. The day’s peculiar atonement liturgy for the people involved one purification offering of two goats, one for YHWH and one for Azazel. Lastly, the ascension offerings concluded the unique atonement offering sequence with a display of total worship. This blog will examine the offering details of the goat chosen for YHWH on the Day of Atonements.

YHWH created us, His images, to be near Him, connected and living in His holy Presence. However, humanity’s involvement with sin, its corruption and death, necessitated the sin or purification offering. Sin and death destroy God’s good creation, and His fire burns against those things that damage His images. Severed from God in exile, we must reconnect to the Source of Life by passing through Eden’s gates of flaming fire into the Presence of a holy God. He desires us to become one with Him, living without destruction. How this happens was acted out in the sin offering ritual. 

Since sinful humans cannot safely approach God without harm, YHWH gave Israel a gift. As their representative, the sin offering had to be a blameless (tamim) archetype. The goat chosen for YHWH was slain for the purification of the tabernacle and Israel by means of its blood. Leviticus 17:11 explains, “The life of any creature is in its blood. I have given you the blood so you can make atonement for your sins. It is the blood, representing life, that brings you atonement” (NLT). YHWH gave Israel the innocent animal’s life so that they, the guilty, could be at-one with Him.

Before Aaron could offer the goat for YHWH, he made atonement for himself and his house by slaughtering a young bull and collecting its blood in a basin. Aaron entered the holy place with a censer full of burning coals from the bronze altar before the tabernacle and two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small. He placed the incense on the coals before the paroket (inner curtain) and entered the Holy of Holies with the fire before YHWH, making a cloud of incense shielding him from YHWH’s glory covering the Ark of the Covenant (YHWH’s throne and footstool). The cloud served to protect him so that he did not die.  Aaron left the sanctuary, returned with the bull’s blood, and entered the Holy of Holies to sprinkle the bull’s blood on the east side of the kapporet (Ark lid) and before it seven times. 

Then Aaron killed the goat of the sin offering for the people. Once the guiltless substitute animal was slain, he drained its lifeblood, collected it in a basin, and brought it also inside the paroket of the Holy of Holies. Aaron sprinkled its blood on the east side of the kapporet and before it seven times. In this manner, he made atonement for the Most Holy Place because of Israel’s uncleanness, rebellion, and all their defiling sins. He did the same for the incense altar, smearing the blood on the horns, sprinkling the altar seven times, and continued sprinkling the Tent of Meeting (tabernacle), which sits among them amidst their pollution. No one else was allowed to enter the tabernacle until Aaron completed making atonement for himself, his household, and all of Israel’s assembly. After Aaron had come out of the tabernacle, he took a mix of the bull’s blood and goat’s blood and put it on the horns of the bronze altar all around to clean it, covering death with reconsecrating life.

While we in our modern age see the death of the creature, God saw a blameless life entering His Presence via its blood. A blameless life washed away the stains of Israel’s sins, covering their ways of death with life and thereby giving them access to YHWH’s life-giving Presence. Restored to the light of His face, the twelve loaves were renewed week by week on the Sabbath. The focus was not on the death of the animal but on its life in the blood, given as a gift from God. After Cain and Abel had brought their offerings to the sanctuary’s door guarded by the cherubim with the flaming sword flashing back and forth, God talked to Cain about His gift. If he did not control his anger toward his brother, a sin-offering lay at the sanctuary doorway whose blood would restore his relationship with God and his brother. It foreshadowed God giving His Son as a gift, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jhn. 3:16-17). 

Like the flaming sword at Eden’s doorway, the daily evening and morning burnt offerings on the bronze altar continually burned before the door to the tabernacle. These offerings represented the Israelites’ complete submission and trusting relationship with YHWH Elohim. In order to cross the boundary from darkness to light, from banishment to His face, from death to life, we must be washed in the blood of the Lamb and pass through the fire, giving up our lives so that we may gain a new life. Placed on either side of Leviticus 16, YHWH defined the new life by boundaries of clean and unclean, holy and profane, delineating life without destruction.  

Takeaway:
After clothing them with animal skins, God banished Adam and Eve from Eden’s holy garden with a fiery sword blocking the gate. Humans must pass through the fire to draw near the Holy One of Israel, be cleansed of sin’s pollution, refined, and made holy. God gave Israel a blameless gift of life, the goat chosen for YHWH, to represent the people, one who could safely draw near Him and make atonement, covering their stain of death with its life. Life is more powerful than death. The purification of atonement maintained the covenant relationship they needed for YHWH to remain among them in the midst of their uncleanness so that they could be a light to the nations. 

The blood of the Lamb washes us from sin’s harmful contaminants so that He may dwell in us, altering us by teaching us a new way of living through drawing near God and hearing His voice. Yeshua was the ultimate gift of love God gave us so that we, in Him, could be transformed and renewed by His holy Presence, becoming lights of the world.

Fun Factors:
The total number of animals offered on Yom Kippur was fifteen; if the Day of Atonements holyday fell on a Sabbath, the sum was seventeen. Both numbers fifteen and seventeen earmark restoration and victory (See Blog 17 for more details).