Day of Atonement

Leviticus 16-17

            The Day of Atonement was never listed among the three holidays of Israel. Those three—Passover, Pentecost, and Booths—celebrated the journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur in Hebrew) was of a different character; it was the day on which the priests and the tabernacle were rededicated, maybe reconsecrated is better, to the Lord. The regulations read as if the high priest were to perform the rituals himself. He was to bathe in the basin in the tabernacle courtyard, put on special clothes, sacrifice a bull as a sin offering for himself, and present the blood of that offering in the Most Holy Place. In this way, his sins were forgiven and he was purified to offer sacrifices on behalf of the people.

            When the high priest was about to enter the Most Holy Place, he had to make an offering of incense in the Holy Place. Previously I’ve talked about the purposes of the incense altar as 1) masking the odor of the place and 2) representing the prayers of the people going up before the Lord. I hadn’t notice this before, but in the Yom Kippur regulations, there is a specific note that the high priest’s incense offering will “conceal the atonement cover” (16:13). Very often, the Lord covers His glory in a cloud; this third purpose of the incense is perhaps the most important: it creates a cloud, in a sense concealing the full glory of the Lord.

            An interesting part of the Yom Kippur ritual was the selecting and casting out of a scapegoat, a visual enactment of the sin of Israel being carried away from the camp. The first sin (Genesis 3) caused the banishment of Adam from the garden of God’s presence. In the Day of Atonement, God separates sin from the people and banishes the sin so that the people remain in His presence.

            The New Testament interprets the death of Jesus in light of both the Passover and the Day of Atonement. The book of Hebrews has this to say:

But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:11-12).

So, Jesus is at once high priest and sacrifice. He does not need to atone for His own sins, so His offering of His own blood becomes the perfect and final sacrifice.