16:11-22

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Day of Atonement: sacrifices

(Le 16:11-22)

Aaron sacrificed the priests’ sin offering at the altar in the tabernacle courtyard, then took fire from this altar along with blood from the sacrifice into the tabernacle (that is, into the tent). He used the fire to burn incense on the golden altar that stood in the Holy Place against the curtain dividing the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place.

As he drew back this curtain to enter the Most Holy Place, incense from the altar floated through the open curtain and covered the mercy seat (the lid of the ark, the covenant box), the symbolic dwelling place of God. Aaron then sprinkled the blood of the sacrificial animal on and in front of the mercy seat (Le 16:11-14).

This sprinkling of the blood on the mercy seat reminded the Israelites that mercy, God’s mercy, was their only hope for salvation. In spite of all their sacrifices and other rituals, when they at last reached the climax of their highest religious exercise, they could do nothing but acknowledge that they were helpless sinners, dependent entirely on God’s mercy for their forgiveness.

After completing the ritual for the priests’ sin offering, Aaron came out of the tabernacle-tent into the open courtyard. He offered the people’s sin offering on the altar of sacrifice, and returned into the Most Holy Place with the sacrificial blood to repeat the ritual at the mercy seat.

Since everything that human beings have contact with is affected by their sin, the blood of the people’s sin offering was used also to make atonement for all parts of the tabernacle that any person had touched (Le 16:15-19; cf. Heb 9:21-22).

The people’s sin offering consisted of not one goat but two. After sacrificing the first goat and applying its blood inside the tabernacle-tent, Aaron returned to the courtyard to carry out the ritual with the second goat.

He laid his hands on its head, confessed over it the sins of the people, and sent it far away into the wilderness to a place from which it could not return. This was apparently a further picture to the people that their sins had been laid on an innocent victim and taken far away from them (Le 16:20-22).

Although the blood ritual of the annual Day of Atonement had meaning to the Israelite people of Old Testament times, it was still only a shadow or outline of the reality that was to come through Jesus Christ (Heb 7:19; 10:1).

For the way in which it pictured the sacrificial death of Christ, and for the contrast between its limitations and the perfection of the atoning work of Christ, see Hebrews 9:6-14,23-28.