Commentary - Leviticus 16:20-22

Bird's-eye view

This passage describes the central and most vivid ceremony of the Day of Atonement: the sending of the scapegoat. After the high priest has purified the tabernacle with the blood of the sin offering, a goat that represents the sins of the people, he turns his attention to the second goat, the live one. This is not a second sacrifice, but rather the second half of a single, unified action. The first goat deals with the Godward side of atonement, propitiating His wrath through substitutionary death. This second goat deals with the manward side, visibly demonstrating the complete removal of sin. Through the symbolic act of laying on of hands and confession, the sins of Israel are judicially transferred to the goat. It is then led away into the wilderness, into an uninhabited land, carrying the nation's guilt with it. This ritual is one of the clearest Old Testament foreshadowings of the work of Jesus Christ, who not only died for our sins but also carried them away, removing them from us as far as the east is from the west.

The core theological principles on display here are substitution and imputation. The goat stands in the place of the people, and their sins are reckoned to its account. This is not a mere metaphor; it is a divinely ordained legal transaction. The result is a tangible assurance of forgiveness. The people could see their sins, confessed and transferred, walking away from them. This powerful drama was designed to teach Israel the reality of God's provision for sin and to build their faith in His promise of pardon, a promise that finds its ultimate fulfillment in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, our true and final Scapegoat.

Outline

Context In Leviticus

Leviticus 16 is the liturgical heart of the entire book. The preceding chapters (1-15) have painstakingly detailed the various sacrifices and the laws of clean and unclean, all of which underscore the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man, creating a profound problem: how can a holy God dwell among an unholy people? Chapter 16 provides the ultimate Old Covenant answer in the rites of the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur. This was the one day of the year when the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, the very throne room of God on earth. The chapter gives meticulous instructions for the purification of the priest himself, the sanctuary, and the people. The ceremony of the two goats is the climax of this day. It provides a comprehensive solution to the problem of sin, dealing with both the need for a blood sacrifice to satisfy God's justice and the need for the people to be assured that their sins have been taken away. The chapters that follow (17-27), the Holiness Code, then lay out the practical implications of living as a people who have been atoned for and set apart for God.

Key Issues

The Great Exchange

The entire Christian faith hinges on a transaction that the world considers foolishness, but which we know to be the wisdom and power of God. That transaction is what theologians call imputation. It is a legal crediting, a reckoning of something to someone's account. On the Day of Atonement, we see a dramatic picture of double imputation's negative side. The sins of Israel are taken from their account and placed onto the account of the goat. This is not just a feeling; it is a fact established by God's ordinance.

This ritual is the foundation for understanding the cross. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." God took all our iniquities, transgressions, and sins, every last one, and laid them on Jesus. He legally became what we were, so that we could legally become what He is. He took our sin; we get His righteousness. The scapegoat ceremony is a glorious, tangible, Old Testament portrait of this great exchange. It shows us that God does not just sweep our sins under the rug. He deals with them justly. He transfers them to a substitute, and that substitute bears them away forever. This is not divine child abuse, as some critics foolishly charge; it is divine love in action, providing a representative to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.

Verse by Verse Commentary

20 “And when he finishes making atonement for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall bring near the live goat.

The sequence here is crucial. The live goat is only dealt with after the work of blood atonement is finished. The first goat has been slain, and its blood has been sprinkled on the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies. This is the act of propitiation, satisfying the righteous requirements of God's law. God's justice must be satisfied before the people's guilt can be removed. You cannot have the benefits of forgiveness without the foundation of a substitutionary death. The blood purifies the sanctuary from the defilement of a sinful people dwelling around it, making it possible for God to continue to meet with them. Only once the Godward aspect of sin is dealt with can the priest turn to the manward aspect, which is the removal of guilt from the conscience of the people. This ordering teaches us that our assurance of pardon rests not on our feelings, but on the objective, finished work of our sacrifice, Jesus Christ.

21 Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it out into the wilderness by the hand of a man ready to do this.

This is the central action, the moment of imputation. The laying on of hands in Scripture is a physical sign of identification and transference. By placing both hands firmly on the goat's head, Aaron, as the representative of the entire nation, is formally identifying the goat with the people and transferring their guilt to it. The confession is not a vague, general admission of fault. The text piles up the language: all the iniquities, all their transgressions, and all their sins. This is comprehensive. It covers sins of commission and omission, internal attitudes and external actions, intentional rebellion and ignorant mistakes. The confession makes the transfer specific. The sins are named, and then they are judicially "laid" upon the goat. The goat now stands legally condemned in their place. Then, a designated man, someone "ready" or appointed for the task, takes the sin-laden goat to lead it away. The removal of sin is a deliberate, appointed act.

22 And the goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to an isolated land; and he shall send out the goat in the wilderness.

Here we see the effect of the imputation. The goat literally shall bear on itself all their iniquities. This is the language of substitutionary atonement. The guilt is no longer on the people; it is on the goat. And where does the goat take this burden? To an "isolated land," a place cut off, uninhabited. The Hebrew word is erets gezerah, a land of separation. The point is that the sins are taken to a place of no return. They are removed from the community, banished from the presence of God and His people. The man releases the goat, and it disappears into the wilderness, never to be seen again. This provided the Israelites with a powerful visual aid for the promise of forgiveness. Just as that goat disappeared over the horizon, so their sins, once confessed and placed on their substitute, were gone for good. As the psalmist would later write, "as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12). This is not just pardon; it is expiation, the complete removal of the stain and record of sin.

Application

The ceremony of the scapegoat is far more than an interesting piece of ancient history. It is a picture of the gospel that is meant to shape our entire Christian lives. First, it teaches us the gravity of our sin. Our sin is not a small matter that can be overlooked. It is a heavy burden of guilt that requires a substitute to bear it and a divine act to remove it. We must never treat our sin lightly, because God certainly does not.

Second, it teaches us the completeness of Christ's work. Jesus is both goats for us. He is the goat of propitiation, whose blood was shed to satisfy the justice of God. And He is our scapegoat, who has carried our sins away into a land of forgetfulness. This means that when God forgives us in Christ, He does not keep a secret record of our faults. Our sin is gone. It has been banished. This truth is the only solid foundation for a robust Christian assurance. Our assurance does not come from looking inward at the quality of our repentance, but from looking outward to Christ, our scapegoat, and seeing our sins disappear over the horizon.

Finally, this passage calls us to a life of confession. Aaron had to name the sins of the people. We too are called to confess our sins, not in order to be forgiven, but because we have been forgiven. We confess our sins to acknowledge the truth of what Christ has done. We agree with God about our sin so that we can more fully rejoice in the reality that He has already laid it on our substitute and sent it away. We don't confess to make the goat go away; we confess because the goat is already gone. And because our sins have been carried away, we are free to live as a forgiven people, no longer defined by our past failures but by the finished work of our great High Priest and perfect Scapegoat, the Lord Jesus Christ.