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.”
A scapegoat is whoever takes the blame for what other people did. The word came out of this chapter and went into English with the injustice attached, and once you have heard it used that way the ceremony looks like the same trick with incense on it, the community keeping its hands clean while something else walks off with the charge.
There are two goats and one sin offering. Lots are cast, one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat. The first goat is killed. The second is presented alive before the LORD, and 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. Three words for the same thing, stacked up, said aloud with a man's weight on the animal. Then somebody is chosen for the walk, described only as a fit man, and the two of them go out.
Follow the goat, because the verse is about where it ends up. And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited. The destination is described by what is missing from it: nobody lives there, and it is far enough out that nothing finds its own way back. Israel kept reaching for that shape. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.
Hold the picture long enough and its limit shows. The chapter makes it an everlasting statute, an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year. Hebrews reads that calendar: it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. When John sees Jesus walking toward him he reaches for the wilderness verb: Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. No date is set for the next one.
The confession in Leviticus was specific and audible. Aaron named the sins over a head, having dealt with his own household first. You are welcome to that today, in those terms rather than in general ones, over a head that has made the walk and stayed out there.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 147 is God Sings Over You (Zephaniah 3:17).