Peter SmytheA Different Kind of Word Preacher

This essay will be our last in the series exploring the sacrificial background of 2 Corinthians 5.21’s “He Made Him Sin.” In these seven or so essays, we’ve seen that the idea of imputing sin to Jesus (saying it without really doing it) isn’t just absent in the text, but it’s not supported by the Old Testament sacrificial system, Isaiah, or even Jesus’s own statements about the crucifixion. For the last few essays, we’ve focused on the Yahweh goat of the Day of Atonement and we’ve shown how the sacrifice of that Yahweh goat mirrors Jesus’s sacrificial death on the cross.

[The rest of the sacrificial sequence - the taking of the goat’s blood behind the veil and sprinkling on the Mercy Seat and how that is the shadow Hebrews 10:20 (“through the veil, that is, his flesh”) and Hebrews 9.12 (“through His own blood, He entered the holy place”) - will be the subject of some future essays.]

But here we turn our attention to the “scapegoat,” the goat to Azazel:

Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat [Azazel]… . But the goat on which the lot for [Azazel] fell shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make atonement upon it, to sent it unto the wilderness as Azazel … Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it the iniquities of the sons of Israel and all their transgressions in regard to all their sins; and he shall lay them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands in readiness. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness. (Lev. 16.8, 21-22, NASB)

Modern preachers really haven’t known what to do with this goat. We imagine it is because it makes an awful mess of tidy theologies that pay lip service to Satan as the “god of this world” and the utter extremes that Jesus had to undertake to rescue mankind. For years and years, the moderns have preached to us that this all-important goat of the Day of Atonement, a shadow of the Lord Jesus himself, only dramatized, in an odd way, the taking away of the people’s sin:

On Israel’s Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the high priest selected two goats. One was sacrificed, the other set free. Before releasing the second goat, the high priest symbolically placed the sins of the people on it by laying his hands on its head. This “scapegoat” was then taken a great distance from camp and released – never to return again (Lev. 16:7-10).

The Greek word translated “forgiveness” in Ephesians 1:7 means “to send away.” It speaks of canceling a debt or granting a pardon. Like the scapegoat, Christ carried away our sins on the cross. John MacArthur, Drawing Near, “January 13” at 13.

This sterile explanation is much like Bill Parcell’s career with the Dallas Cowboys: it just doesn’t deliver. It doesn’t explain anything about the goat. Why must it be “without defect” if it’s going to turn to sin? Why is it to be presented alive and not slaughtered like the other one? Why is it “to Azazel” - who’s Azazel? Why isn’t there a scapegoat or something like it on all the other sin offerings if it’s all about taking away sin? Who is this man who “stands in readiness” who is not an Israelite? Weren’t the people’s sins atoned with the sacrificial goat? What does the Greek in Ephesians have to do with a Jewish goat? … We’re not supposed to ask any of those questions because … well, they just don’t give us the kinds of answers that we like to hear.

Since we started with D.R. McConnell’s A Different Gospel in examining the “Levitical background” of 2 Corinthians 5.21, we should come full circle. In his catcall that those who preach that Jesus descended into hell after he died on the cross are preaching a heretical gospel, he says:

Moreover, if as the Faith teachers say, Jesus was immediately taken to hell after his death, why then did he tell the thief on the cross “today you shall be with me in Paradise”? [Lk. 23.43] Although we do not know definitively “what happened from the cross to the throne,” the above passages [Lk. 23.46, Mt. 27.50, Jn. 19.30] would indicate one thing that did not happen. Jesus was not taken to hell by the devil after his death. Thus, the house of cards constructed on the double-death of Jesus by the Faith teachers comes crashing to the ground. (D.R. McConnell, A Different Gospel, Updated Edition at 126-127)

We’ve dealt with Luke 23.43, Luke 23.46, and John 19.30 in other essays so we won’t restate what we’ve already said, but here we want to focus on the statement, “Jesus was not taken to hell by the devil after his death,” in light of the Azazel goat that A Different Gospel fails to address. Once we see what God meant by “to Azazel” without theological slapdash, 2 Corinthians 5.21’s “He Made Him Sin” becomes screechingly real.

Scriptural Canon

They shall no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat demons with which they play the harlot. This shall be a permanent statute to them throughout their generations. (Leviticus 17.7, NASB)

Leviticus 17 shows us that the Israelites were apt to worship “goat demons” which were demonic spirits thought to inhabit the desert regions. The Old Testament (along with a lot of today’s heavy metal bands) associated goats with sin and demon spirits. That is one reason why we see two goats for the Day of Atonement instead of two lambs.

The desert creatures will meet with the wolves, The hairy goat will cry to its kind; Yes, the night monster will settle there, And will find herself a resting place. (Isaiah 34.14)

Isaiah writes of “hairy goat” demons that meet in the desert.

He set up priests of his own for the high places, for the satyrs [goat-demons] and for the calves which he had made. (2 Chronicles 11.15, NASB)

Here the book of Chronicles speaks of Jeroboam setting up places of worship for the satyrs [goat-demons].

Extra-Scriptural Books

The whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin. 1 Enoch 2.8 (1 Enoch 1.9 is quoted explicitly in Jude 14-15)

While the book of Enoch doesn’t hold the place of scriptural canon, it does provide us with the thoughts about Azazel of those who lived back in the day (some early groups did consider Enoch to be canonical).

The Experts

While we’ve quoted scriptures and the book of Enoch, we let the experts flesh him out further:

Azazel … was probably a demonic being … Apocryphal Jewish works, composed in the last few centuries before the Christian era, tell of angels who were lured … into rebellion against God. In these writings, Azazel is one of the two leaders of the rebellion. And posttalmudic documents tell a similar story about two rebel angels, Uzza and Azzael - both variations of the same Azazel. These mythological stories. which must have been widely known, seem to confirm the essentially demonic character of the old biblical Azazel. (Union of American Hebrew Congregations, The Torah - A Modern Commentary, pg. 859).

This name was used for that of an evil demon … . The name Azazel … is also used by the Arabs as that of an evil demon.” (William Gesenius, Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon at 617)

Azazel is … an Aramaic … name for an unclean and godlike power, which has its abode in the wilderness, in the accursed land outside the sacred bounds of the camp. (Hermann Schultz, Old Testament Theology, translated by Paterson, 1892, v. 1 at 405)

Most modern scholars … have accepted the opinion mysteriously hinted at by Ibn Ezra and expressly stated by Nahmanides to Lev. xvi. 8 [16.8], that Azazel belongs to the claim of “se ‘irim,” goat-like demons, jinn haunting the desert, to which the Israelites were wont to offer sacrifice (Lev. xvii. 7 [17.7] [A.V.“devils”] … (Jewish Encyclopedia.com)

The most common view among scholars today is that [Azazel] is the proper name of a particular demon (perhaps even the Devil himself) associated with the wilderness desert regions. (NET Bible Notes on Leviticus 16.8)

The scriptural canon, extra-biblical books, and even the modern scholars all show that Azazel was known to be a demon-goat or goat-god and that the Israelites knew it. Of course, the consequences of these facts are enormous to a proper understanding of the “good things to come” as Hebrews puts it. Contrary to the popular notion that “God laid on him the sins of us all” was all in the saying and not in the doing, the Azazel goat gives us the God-orchestrated shadow of how Jesus fully identified with our sins and spent three days and nights in the belly of the earth before he was ultimately resurrected by the Father.

[Note: Some preachers say that Jesus’s Descent into Hell forms some sort of sacrifice to Satan. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the Old Testament sacrificial rituals, the animal was killed and we see that with the goat to Yahweh. The goat to Azazel was presented “alive” and was never killed as a sacrifice to Azazel. The goat to Azazel represents an aspect of entering the “strong man’s” house (one meaning of Azazel is “strong man”) that modern theology virtually ignores. See Luke 11.21-22:

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed. But when someone stronger that he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder. (NASB)

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[Note: If you have any doubts about Azazel and just what the nature of evil is all about, we suggest that you do a search of “Azazel” on iTunes and then look up the lyrics of those bands who sing about him (google the band name and add “lyrics” and you should come up with a page or two of the band’s lyrics). We had intended to print out some lyrics here to demonstrate, in part, what it meant to be taken to Azazel, but we just couldn’t - they were too awful.]