p. 133 | The Scape-Goat

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 24, 1863

The Scape-Goat.

Bro. J. Bostwick writes : I send you the following extract from Cassel’s Family Bible, which is much nearer the truth than the popular opinion. In his notes on Lev. xvi, he says :

“All the theories involved in these questions have had their apologists and their advocates ; but, without exception, they leave the difficulty just where they found it. We offer the following exposition as much more likely, and much more satisfactory : That Azazel is a personal denomination for the Evil One ; that the word rendered devils, in chap. xvii, 7, is literally “goats ;” that the one word thus standing for the other in the immediate context, the scape-goat is to be taken as the type of evil ; that the high priest putting his hands upon its head, confessing over it the sins of the people, and then sending it into the wilderness, where it was set free, was a virtual acknowledgment on the part of the congregation that they were prepared and willing to put away from them the evil of their doings, and, as those who had been redeemed by the blood of atonement (the other goat having been offered as a sacrifice for their sins), to live a righteous and godly life. Hence the exhortations in chapters xviii, 3-5, and xix, 2-4, to forsake sin, to walk in the ordinances of God, and to be holy as the Lord God is holy ; and hence, too, the striking fact which is brought out in the text, that the man who led the goat out into the wilderness was held to be so defiled by contact with the animal, that he could not be received into the camp or congregation till he had been washed and purified. Nor could Aaron himself approach the altar till he had washed and changed his vestments. So we read in connection with the proceedings of the last day, that the separation between the righteous and the wicked is a separation between the sheep and the goats. The fate of the scape-goat was, therefore, a type of the final condition of those who, after propitiation has been made for them, yet die in sin.”