This week in Come Follow Me we read about a couple of the sacrifices regularly conducted in the Tabernacle. This year I have been able to see more than ever before how all of these ancient practices, although they seem a bit barbaric to us, were actually pointing to the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is as if God was sitting up in heaven with Mother God, and trying to come up with as many ways as possible to foreshadow the life and mission of Jesus. They tried using every sense--taste, smell, touch, sound, sight. They used a variety of ceremonies and places--the altar of sacrifice, the altar of incense, the laver, the show bread, the menorah, the curtains... everything foreshadowing some aspect of Jesus' life and mission as our Savior.
I can't go into all of them in one post, so I wanted to talk about the Day of Atonement. It is one of the high holy days in Judaism, and the only time that anyone was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies. It is explained in Leviticus 16:2-22. The high priest first made a sin offering for himself, washed himself, and changed into specific clothing to represent his ritualistic purity. Then he took two goats and presented them at the door of the Tabernacle. There they cast lots to establish which goat will be sacrificed and which will be set free as the scapegoat. The first goat was offered up as a sin offering for all the people. The high priest brought the blood of the offering into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled it on the Mercy Seat (the cover of the Ark of the Covenant). Finally, he went out of the Holy Place, confessed over the live goat all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and then sent him off into the wilderness.
Some of the symbolism here is really clear. The first goat represents Jesus whose blood atones for the sins of the people. Just as Jesus will advocate before the throne of God for us, the blood of the first goat is placed on the Mercy Seat, which represents the throne of God. This symbolic act says, "Look father, I have given my blood for these people, therefore have mercy on them."
But what of the other goat? The sins of the House of Israel are ritualistically placed on the second goat and that goat is taken out of the camp. One obvious symbolism is that the second goat also represents Christ. He takes upon him our sins and then removes them from the community. By his departure (i.e. his death) the community is cleansed of sin.
But why does one goat die and one goat live? Jesus died for our sins (first goat) and thus reconciles us to God. He also takes away our sins, like the second goat, but where does he go with them? Does he pass them off to another community? Is it understood that he would die in the wilderness? One Jewish commentary, Mishna Yoma 6:6, suggests that the scapegoat was pushed off a cliff. This symbolized that those sins were permanently removed out of the community in a way that they wouldn't come back.
What if, however, there is another foreshadowing here. Maybe the scapegoat represents what Jesus did after his death. The casting out of the scapegoat does happen after the sacrifice of the first goat. We know from the scriptures that after he was killed, Jesus went and ministered to the spirits in spirit prison (1 Peter 3: 19-20). Couldn't that be like a wilderness of type? We also understand that Jesus visited his other "sheep" (John 10:16). From a Biblical point of view, that could represent the Gospel going to the Gentiles. From a Book of Mormon point of view, it could represent Jesus visiting the saints in the Americas. Both of these groups could be metaphorically on the other side of a barren wilderness because they were separate and different from the community where Jesus taught during his ministry.
This is all a bit of a stretch. None of the podcasters I listened to this week brought up this idea as a possible symbolism of the scapegoat. Still, who knows? There has to be some reason why there are two goats and one is left alive. In all the other sacrifices, the animals are killed.
It is easy to see symbolism if you are looking for it, and it is easy to take it too far. One might even suggest that a "goat" is used in this sacrifice instead of a sheep or bull because God knew that 3000 years later in English the term "G.O.A.T" would be an acronym for Greatest of All Time, and Jesus was certainly the greatest man of all time. That's silliness, of course, but it could make a good t-shirt, especially for those who know their Old Testament. In a way it explains the symbolism of all the sacrifices of the Levitical worship: "Jesus is the GOAT".
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