Leviticus 16:20 - Meaning and Application

After the high priest had offered the atoning sacrifices to the Lord and sprinkled their blood, he likely poured the remaining blood out at the foot of the bronze altar. Next, he was to confess Israel’s sins with both hands on the head of the scapegoat, that is, the goat sent away to carry sin away (Leviticus 16:20, Leviticus 16:21). Whenever hands were laid on the head of any sacrifice, it was always done with confession, according to the kind of offering. Since this was a sin offering, the confession had to be a confession of sin.

In later, more corrupt times in the Jewish church, they prepared a fixed form of confession for the high priest. God gave no such form here. He could be expected to know the people’s condition well and to feel deep concern for them. So the confession was to be as detailed as possible, covering not only all the sins of Israel, but all their wrongdoings in all their sins. One sin can have many wrongdoings in it because of its many bad circumstances. In our own confessions, we should notice those details too, and not just say, “I have sinned,” but, like Achan, “This is exactly what I have done.”

By this confession, he was to place Israel’s sins on the goat’s head. That meant he was, by faith in God’s appointed way, transferring the punishment from the sinners to the sacrifice. Without God’s own command, that would have been a joke, even an insult to God. But since he had appointed it, the act had meaning.

Then the goat was to be sent away at once by a suitable man into the wilderness, a deserted land. God allowed them to understand this as a sign that the goat’s sending away meant their sins were being sent away too, through full and free pardon: “He shall bear upon him all their iniquities” (Leviticus 16:22). The goat’s disappearance told them that Israel’s sins would be searched for and not found (Jeremiah 50:20).

Later Jews tied one strip of scarlet cloth to the goat’s horns and another to the temple gate, or to the top of the rock where the goat was lost. They believed that if the cloth turned white, as they said it usually did, it showed Israel’s sins were forgiven, based on, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as wool.” They also said that for forty years before Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, the scarlet cloth never changed color. That is a strong confession that, since they rejected the real thing, the shadow could do them no good.

Then the high priest was to take off his linen garments in the tabernacle and leave them there. The Jews said he never wore them again, and that new ones were made each year. He was to bathe in water, put on his rich garments, and then offer both his own burnt offerings and those of the people (Leviticus 16:23, Leviticus 16:24). When we receive the comfort of pardon, God must get the glory for it. If we enjoy the blessing of atonement, we should not begrudge the offerings of thanksgiving. It seems the burning of the fat from the sin offering was delayed until then (Leviticus 16:25), so that it could be burned together with the burnt offerings.

The flesh of both sin offerings, whose blood had been brought inside the veil, was to be burned completely, not on the altar but outside the camp. This pointed to two things, our putting away of sin through true repentance and God’s putting it away through complete pardon, so that it will never rise up against us in judgment. The man who led the scapegoat into the wilderness, and those who burned the sin offering, were counted ceremonially unclean. They had to stay out of the camp until they had washed their clothes and bathed themselves in water. This showed sin’s defiling power. Even the sacrifice that was made sin in this ceremony made those who handled it unclean. It also showed the weakness of the law’s sacrifices, since they could not truly remove sin and still left some stain on the people who touched them.

When all this was finished, the high priest went back into the most holy place to get his censer, and then returned to his own house with joy, because he had done his duty and had not died.