Yom Kippur, or the “Day of Atonement”, marks the day that God forgave the ancient Israelites for the Sin of the Golden Calf, which happened just a few months after their Exodus from slavery in Egypt.
This was the holiest day of the Jewish year, the only time each year when the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle or Temple and offer a sacrifice for the sins of the people. This is also the only Jewish festival where fasting is commanded by God for all the people.
Definitions:
The celebration of Yom Kippur is spelled out in Leviticus 23, along with the other appointed festivals of the Lord. In the Torah, this festival is called Yom Kippurim, or in Hebrew, Yom Hakippurim. In English Bibles, it is called the Day of Atonement.
The Day of Atonement
The LORD said to Moses, “The tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. Hold a sacred assembly and deny yourselves, and present a food offering to the LORD. Do not do any work on that day, because it is the Day of Atonement, when atonement is made for you before the LORD your God.
Leviticus 23:26-28 NIV
The origin of our English word atonement was the middle English phrase “at-one-ment”. To be “at one” meant to be in harmony. The word atonement came to mean to reconcile, to bring into harmony, to restore a harmonious state between people or groups. Reconciliation was the meaning of the word when it was used in the earliest English Bibles, like the Tyndale Bible (1530) or Geneva Bible (1560). The word appears in the King James Bible (1611) over 100 times in the Old Testament, and once in the New Testament.
Today, atone refers to redressing the damage caused by one’s behavior. So in modern dictionaries, you find the following definition, which is how we currently understand the term:
- To make amends or reparation, as for an offense or a crime, or for an offender; to atone for one’s sins.
- (Obsolete) To reconcile; to bring into unity, harmony, concord, etc.
So the now obsolete definition of atonement as reconciliation was the understanding of the word when it was first used in English translations.
What definitions apply to kippur or kippurim? The Hebrew root K-P-R has the meaning “to cover” and the literal meaning of “kippurim” is “cleansing,” as the root kaper means “to cleanse.” Defining kippur as “cleansing” makes sense, since Leviticus 16:30 says
“because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the LORD, you will be clean from all your sins.”
It’s interesting to consider meanings for the root word “cover”. When it’s used as a verb, it can mean “to cover or pay a bill”, or “to afford protection from enemy fire”. Both of those would apply to the ideas we’ve already seen of God himself “covering” the bill for our sins, and of God protecting us from our enemy Satan.
Forgiveness
The Day of Atonement ceremony is almost pure visual symbolism, with few words in the Bible as explanation. Leviticus 16 gives instruction for how the High Priest is to prepare himself to enter the Holy of Holies. He first bathes, puts on sacred garments, then brings a young bull and a ram as a sin offering to make atonement for himself and his household.
After preparing himself to be in God’s presence, the High Priest presents two goats to the Lord at the entrance of the Tabernacle. He casts lots to select one goat as a sacrifice, the other as a scapegoat, to be released to wander in the desert.
With the sacrificed goat, the people symbolically acknowledged their sin and guilt, that it was human sin that unleashed death into God’s good world, and they asked God for forgiveness. With the scapegoat, God sent all their sins away into the wilderness, never to be seen again. This is a picture of God’s forgiveness. He erases any record of our sins completely, sending them into the wilderness, where they vanish forever. God’s atonement ceremony left no doubt that they were forgiven and given a clean slate on the Day of Atonement.
God’s readiness to forgive is a consistent thread through the Bible. The Lord identifies himself as the One who forgives. Our sins will vanish from God’s mind just like the scapegoat vanished in the wilderness.
“I — yes, I alone — will blot out your sins for my own sake and will never think of them again.”
Isaiah 43:25 NLT
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Psalm 103:8-12 NIV
And under the new covenant, God has promised to forgive our sins completely.
“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Jeremiah 31:34 NIV
In the picture illustrated by Yom Kippur, the Israelites asked forgiveness and repented through the sacrificed goat. God demonstrated absolute forgiveness as the scapegoat wandered into the wilderness and out of sight. The Day of Atonement is a picture of our God who is ready and willing to be “at one” with mankind.
Facets of Redemption Found in this Picture:
- Sin isn’t normal or acceptable, and demands atonement (reconciliation) in order for us to have a genuine relationship with our Creator.
- The scapegoat symbolizes God’s readiness to forgive completely, as it disappears from sight. The sacrificed goat acknowledges the seriousness of our guilt and our debt to God, and symbolically asks for his forgiveness.
- God and man will one day be reconciled, and will live in harmony together.