Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 147 · May 27
Land Not Inhabited
“And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.”
In everyday English, a scapegoat is someone who takes the blame for what other people did. The word came out of this chapter of Leviticus, and it came into English with that unfairness attached. Once you have heard it used that way, the ceremony can look like the same trick with incense added: the people keep their hands clean while an animal walks off with the charge.
Look at what actually happens. Two goats are taken for one sin offering, and lots are cast, "one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat." The first goat is killed. The second is brought alive before the LORD. Then "Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins." Iniquities, transgressions and sins are three different words for wrongdoing, stacked one on another, and they are spoken out loud while a man leans his weight on the animal. Then a man is chosen to lead it away, described only as "a fit man," and the two of them go out together. Nobody is pretending here. The guilt is named and confessed before it is carried off.
Follow the goat, because today's verse is about where it ends up. "And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited." The Hebrew word describes a land cut off, set apart from where anyone lives. It is far enough out that the goat will not find its way back. Israel kept coming back to that picture of sin carried far away: "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us."
Stay with the picture long enough and you also see its limit. The chapter makes this "an everlasting statute," an atonement "for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year." So it had to be done again every year. Hebrews says why: "it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." Then, when John the Baptist sees Jesus coming toward him, he says, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." Jesus carried sin away once, and no date is set for it to be done again.
The confession in Leviticus was specific, and it was said out loud. Aaron named the sins over the goat's head, after he had first made atonement for himself and his own household. You are welcome to do the same today. Name your sins to God plainly, the real ones and not a general list, and lay them on Jesus, who has carried them away to a place they will never come back from.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 147 is God Sings Over You (Zephaniah 3:17).