A Tale Of Two Goats

“For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the Lord from all your sins.” – Leviticus 16:30

“For the like of the great day of atonement, we look in vain in any other people. If every sacrifice pointed to Christ, this most luminously of all.” – Samuel H. Kellogg

Leviticus describes the rituals, priesthood, and purity laws required for a sinful people to enter God’s holiness in a symmetrical structure: 

            chapters 1-7: Rituals (animal sacrifice)

            chapters 8-10: Priesthood (ordainment)

            chapters 11-15: Purity laws (food, health)

            chapters 16-17

            chapters 18-20: Purity laws (moral behavior)

            chapters 21-22: Priesthood (standards of living)

            chapters 23-28: Rituals (sacred days, festival days)

Highlighted in the middle of the book is what has been called “one of the mountain peaks of the Scriptures” and “the Good Friday of the Old Testament”: the Day of Atonement. It was the one day a year designed to cover all the sins of all the people, including unintentional sins. It was the one day the high priest could enter behind the veil into the Holy Place. It became the most holy day of the Jewish year, celebrated as Yom Kippur or “the day of covering,” so central to Jewish life it was simply called “yoma,” or “the day.”

At the center of this day were two goats, which together constituted the singular sin offering (Leviticus 16:5). One goat was killed and its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat in the Holy Place, literally between the cloud of God’s presence over the seat, and the law in the ark of the covenant under the seat (Exodus 25:21). The second goat bore the sin of all the people and was sent into the wilderness.

Why two goats? There has been much debate about their typology, but I think the simplest answer is that God wants to show us that when atonement is made, he both forgives and forgets our sin. God is not forgetful per se, but he chooses not to recall our sins to memory; they are completely removed from his sight. “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us,” David writes in Psalm 103:12. Micah writes, “you will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19). When John the Baptist sees Jesus, he exclaims, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Aaron alone witnessed what happened with the blood of the first goat; the second goat was an object lesson meant to be seen by all.

Lately I’ve been thinking about this idea of forgiving myself. Sometimes a particular sin haunts me, and I struggle with replaying it, or find it hard to let go of lingering feelings of shame or regret. People talk about being able to forgive yourself, which is theologically incorrect: I can’t forgive myself, only God can. What I struggle with is not forgiving myself so much as believing that when God has forgiven me, it also means the sin has been removed. I picture the second goat, wandering into the horizon, so far I can’t see it anymore, never to come back, not having to hold on to the shame or punish myself anymore. The main way the people had to participate in the Day of Atonement was to rest (Leviticus 16:31), to do nothing. All we have to do is receive what God has done for us, and that includes believing that he has sent our sins far away. As the author of Hebrews writes when he recounts the Day of Atonement, “how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). We are clean, truly clean.