Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ATONEMENT, DAY OF

The day (Heb. yôm kippur) marking the sober climax in a 10-day cycle at the beginning of the Jewish new year (Heb. rōʾš haššānâ). It is a day of introspection, self-evaluation, and prayer rooted deeply in Israel’s imagination and history.

Already in Scripture, this day represented a composite of still earlier ritual practices known outside Israel, but uniquely combined in Israel’s worship for profound effect. The classical text Lev. 16 blends the ceremony of purifying the sanctuary with that of the scapegoat ritual, restricting both to performance on the tenth day of the seventh month, Tishri (16:29-34; 23:27-28).

Throughout the year were well-established rituals to beg pardon for one’s known and unknown sins (Lev. 4:1–5:13). However, the sacred ritual space — including the sanctuary, tent of meeting, and altars — as well as the sacramental role of the priesthood itself all became contaminated by the contagion of sins not accounted for by the various ongoing liturgies and sacrifices. Even the people as a whole suffered the effects of sins unaccounted for and wrongs unforgiven that piled on defilement needing entreaty. So once a year, the only time he could do so, the high priest would enter the most holy place where the ark of the covenant was located to purify the sacred spaces, the priestly station, and the whole congregation, literally from the inside out.

A fast was called to underscore the seriousness of the day. The high priest removed his ornamental garments, bathed, and put on white linen. He then sacrificed a bull as a sin offering for himself and the other priests, saving the blood for the rite of purification. Afterward, he entered the most holy place, carrying with him a censer of hot coals and some incense to create a haze which would shroud the ark’s sacred lid (the “mercy seat”) lest he see it (or God?) and die. Once inside, he sprinkled the blood upon and in front of the ark’s covering to effect removal of any sin residue due to priestly offense in the previous year. He then repeated this ritual using one of two goats donated by the congregation and chosen by lot to atone for the sin residue of the people. In effect, the blood served as a detergent removing impurities from the sanctuary and the tent of meeting. He then took some blood from each of the slain animals and cleansed the altar outside of any sinful contamination (cf. Lev. 16; 23:26-32; Exod. 30:10; Num. 29:7-11). With the sacred spaces and priestly office purified, the impurities ritually removed now required official deposition. The priest turned to the scapegoat ritual as the means to that end.

To understand the significance of animal sacrifice and the scapegoat ritual, anthropological studies have recently shown how deeply rooted in primeval time such sacred ceremonies lie. The emergence of human culture depended in large measure on the discovery that reciprocal violence between brothers (e.g., Cain and Abel) and clans and tribal groups that threatened human coexistence could be offset by ritual murder. If the violence inherent in survival of the fittest could be unanimously redirected on a common enemy within the clan, a sense of community (“us against them”) could be restored. Sacrificing a victim seemed to stop the cycle of retaliation and renew the peace. The scapegoat mentality became sacralized as a means of regulating endemic reciprocal violence through vicarious sacrifice. Fortunately for Israel (and others), Yahweh required that the sacral lynching of a human victim be replaced with a surrogate victim in the form of a goat (or other animals). In Scripture, esp. Lev. 1 and 16, pouring the collective sins gathered up by the cleansing rituals of the high priest upon the scapegoat and sending it burdened by sin into the wilderness served to reconcile human community to God and to each other. Doing this every year was not only a theologically important rite, it was a social necessity. The Day of Atonement rituals profoundly respond to psychological and socio-political needs that subsequent atonement theories, focusing as they do so often on dogmatic (i.e., certain “orthodox” doctrinal) interpretations, have not yet fully appreciated.

After the scapegoat carried with it the systemic, structural, and personal sins of the people into the wilderness, the high priest once again bathed and clothed himself in his usual garb. He then offered one more sacrifice, a burnt offering of the skin, flesh, and entrails of the goat and bull outside the now consecrated camp. The atonement of the people was complete for one more year. Communal and personal shalom was restored.

The Day of Atonement would become the annual high point in early Jewish spiritual renewal and remains so to this day. NT writers with equal prophetic imagination would see in the death of Jesus the combined rituals of blood cleansing and the scapegoat mechanism writ large and permanently secured (Heb. 6–9).

Bibliography. R. Girard, Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World (Stanford, 1987); L. L. Grabbe, “The Scapegoat Tradition: A Study In Early Jewish Interpretation,” JSJ 18 (1987): 152-67; J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16. AB 3 (New York, 1991); D. P. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature. SBLDS 101 (Atlanta, 1987).

James E. Brenneman

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

ATONEMENT, DAY OF

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)