Over the course of a year in ancient Israel, purification offerings would transfer ritual and moral impurities to the tabernacle or temple. Then once a year, on the Day of Atonement, a cleansing of sacred space took place. The cleansing rituals are described in Lev 16.
These rituals carried some powerful symbolism. Especially meaningful was a ceremony involving two goats. One goat was a purification offering for the congregation. Over the second goat, the high priest confessed the sins of the nation. This would have been quite a prayer, as Rob Wilson pointed out in a sermon at Church of the Messiah on January 29, 2022. The congregation supported the high priest with prayers of their own.
The second goat was then released into the wilderness, never to return. (During the Second Temple period, this goat was sent over a cliff to ensure that it did not return.)
The second goat was called the goat "for Azazel." Azazel is a Hebrew word that appears only here, and it has more than one possible meaning. One of the possibilities is that this is a compound of the words for "goat" and "going away". The goat went away with the sins of Israel, removing them far from the tabernacle or temple.
Christians see in the two goats a picture of the fact that through the sacrifice of Jesus, our sins are forgiven and also forgotten---taken "as far as the east is from the west" (Ps 103:12). Jesus is "the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world" (John 1:29).
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