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LEVITICUS 16–18

Week 7, Day 2

What does the grandeur of the Day of Atonement have do with the food we eat or with our sexual relations? A very great deal, if we take our walk with God seriously. The way this passage moves from the sublimely spiritual to what we might consider cultic and then to the physical dramatizes how the Jewish Law (and our continuing faith) sees life as a whole. The line between the sacred and the secular is not so sharp as our logic might want to make it.

The most fascinating creature in the atonement experience is the scapegoat, Azazel. The sins of the people are laid on it, and it is led out “into the wilderness.” The scene reminds me of Psalm 103:12, when the psalmist notes that God has removed our transgressions “as far as the east is from the west,” and also of the New Testament writer who, in probable reference to this ceremony, says that Jesus “suffered outside the city gate” (Hebrews 13:12).

The code of sexual conduct is specifically to be other than what “they do in the land of Egypt . . . [and] in the land of Canaan” (18:3). The conduct of those peoples caused the land to be “defiled” so that at last its inhabitants would be “vomited out” (18:25). The people of Israel were to have a different standard because of their relationship to God and their regard for the bodies God had given them. No doubt much of the popular culture of our time (which can easily engulf us) is equally repugnant to God’s standards.

PRAYER: Jesus, Savior, I lay on you the burdens of shame I cannot bear; take them far from me, I pray; to your glory. Amen.

What connection do you see between the instructions for the Day of Atonement and the ensuing prohibitions against the eating or drinking of blood?