Everything in Leviticus has been building toward one day. All year the sins and uncleannesses of Israel have been carried, in figure, into the sanctuary. On the tenth day of the seventh month the high priest goes where no one else may go, behind the veil, with blood — and the sanctuary itself is cleansed. Two goats stand at the door: one dies, one is driven into the wilderness carrying the sin away. It is the clearest picture in the Old Testament of how God finally deals with sin.
A study in Leviticus 16 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 10 min read
That He Come Not At All Times Into The Holy Place
“And the LORD said unto Moses, Speak unto Aaron thy brother, that he come not at all times into the holy place within the vail before the mercy seat, which is upon the ark; that he die not: for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat.”
Leviticus 16:2
The chapter opens by naming the danger: this is the room where Nadab and Abihu had just died. The most holy place is not off limits because God is unwilling to be met, but because a sinner cannot survive that meeting unprepared. Once a year, one man, after a bullock for his own sin, may go in — and only with blood.
One Lot For The LORD, And The Other For The Scapegoat
“And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the LORD at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for the scapegoat.”
Leviticus 16:7-8
Two goats, identical, chosen by lot. One will be killed as a sin offering for the people; the other — the “scapegoat,” in Hebrew Azazel — is kept alive “to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness” (Leviticus 16:10). They do two different jobs. The first provides the blood; the second carries the guilt away and does not come back.
Bring His Blood Within The Vail
“Then shall he kill the goat of the sin offering, that is for the people, and bring his blood within the vail… and sprinkle it upon the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat: And he shall make an atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions in all their sins.”
Leviticus 16:15-16
Notice what is cleansed: not first the people, but “the holy place.” All year the daily offerings had transferred confessed sin into the sanctuary; now, on this one day, the record is cleared and the sanctuary purged of it. Blood goes onto the mercy seat itself — the lid of the ark, directly over the ten commandments the sinner had broken. Mercy is laid over the broken law.
“The blood, representing the forfeited life of the sinner, whose guilt the victim bore, was carried by the priest into the holy place and sprinkled before the veil, behind which was the ark containing the law that the sinner had transgressed. By this ceremony the sin was, through the blood, transferred in figure to the sanctuary.”
Ellen G. White · The Great Controversy, p. 418
Confess Over Him All The Iniquities
“And 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, putting them upon the head of the goat… And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited.”
Leviticus 16:21-22
The final act is removal. Once the sanctuary is clean, the accumulated guilt is laid on the live goat and sent by a fit man into a land where no one lives — gone, out of the camp, never to return. The Day of Atonement thus has two movements: a substitute’s blood makes satisfaction, and then the sin itself is carried right out of the community. Ellen White reads the whole of it as a working model of something still to be finished in heaven:
“A substitute was accepted in the sinner’s stead; but the sin was not canceled by the blood of the victim. A means was thus provided by which it was transferred to the sanctuary… And what was done in type in the ministration of the earthly sanctuary is done in reality in the ministration of the heavenly sanctuary.”
Ellen G. White · The Great Controversy, p. 420
Ye Shall Afflict Your Souls
“And this shall be a statute for ever unto you: that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all… For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD.”
Leviticus 16:29-30
The people do not watch this from a distance as spectators. Every Israelite spends the day in fasting, stillness, and “deep searching of heart” — anyone who refused to afflict his soul that day was “cut off from among his people” (Leviticus 23:29). Judgment day and cleansing day are the same day. To be found humbling yourself before God while the atonement is being made is to come out of it “clean from all your sins.”
Once A Year
“And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins once a year.”
Leviticus 16:34
Hebrews takes up this exact scene and says the thing it pointed to has come: Christ is “not entered into the holy places made with hands… but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (Hebrews 9:24), and “now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). The yearly rite was a shadow; the substance is one High Priest, one sacrifice, and a real cleansing of the real sanctuary. Daniel was told the day would come: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed” (Daniel 8:14) — the study of Leviticus 16 and the study of Daniel 8 are two ends of one rope.
