Cult and Character Purification Offerings Day of Atonement and Theodicy

CULT AND CHARACTER
CULT AND CHARACTER

Purication Offerings, Day of Atonement,
and Theodicy

Roy E. Gane

Winona Lake, Indiana

Eisenbrauns

2005

Copyright 2005 by Eisenbrauns.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gane, Roy, 1955
Cult and character : purication offerings, Day of Atonement, and
theodicy / Roy E. Gane.
p. cm.
Includes indexes.
ISBN 1-57506-101-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Purity, ritualJudaism. 2. Yom Kippur. 3. Bible. O.T. Leviticus
Criticism, interpretation, etc. 4. Theodicy. I. Title.
BM702.G35 2005
296.4

u

9dc22
2005009783
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the Ameri-
can National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Dedicated to my teacher,

Jacob Milgrom

\oz n nox n\n

(Malachi 2:6)

Dedication

One evening in the 1980s, Prof. Jacob Milgrom relaxed with his students
during a break in the Advanced Biblical Hebrew Texts seminar that he con-
ducted in his Berkeley home. To explain his preoccupation with Leviticus, he
told us a story about a yeshiva student who noticed that his teacher was study-
ing a certain page of Talmud. On a subsequent day, the student was surprised
to nd the rabbi perusing the same page. When he inquired why, the teacher
simply responded: I like it here.
Since that evening in Berkeley, Milgrom has moved through the sacricial
and purity instructions of Leviticus 116 and on to the legislation of chapters
1727. But now it is the student who lingers. I am still pondering the sacri-
ces, especially the

nxon

(purication offering) and the ceremonies of Yom
Kippur. Why? I like it here.
Before participating in Milgroms seminar, I had no interest in Leviticus
whatsoever. Without the inspiration, mentoring, and example of scholarship
that he has provided through his teaching and published writings, the present
book would never have been contemplated, let alone written. So this humble
offering is respectfully and affectionately dedicated to Jacob Milgrom.

vii

Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix

Part 1
Ritual, Meaning, and System

1. The Locus of Ritual Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Ritual actions have no inherent meaning 4
Ritual = activity + attached meaning 6
A structural approach is inadequate for identifying ritual
meaning 9
The meaning/function of a ritual is the goal assigned to its
activity system 12
A ritual is an activity system with a special kind of goal 14
Systems theory concepts can aid interpretation of Israelite
rituals 18
The biblical text provides instructions for physical
performance and interpretations of activities 21
Conclusion 24

2. The System of

nxon

Rituals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

In the nal form of the biblical text, the Day of Atonement
rituals function within the larger system of Israelite
rituals 25
Challenges to the unity of Leviticus 16 do not prevent
consideration of the Day of Atonement rituals as a
system 31
Scholars present diverse interpretations regarding the role of
the special Day of Atonement services 37
Conclusion 42

Part

2
Purication Offerings Performed throughout the Year

3. Outer-Altar Purication Offerings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

The ritual procedure includes some activities that are
mentioned in the text and others that are not 47
The overall goal/meaning of an outer-altar purication offering
for sin is to purge evil on the offerers behalf, prerequisite to
forgiveness 49

Contents

viii

Activity components contribute to the overall goal 52
Conclusion 70

4. Outer-Sanctum Purication Offerings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

mentioned in the text and others that are not 71
The sevenfold sprinkling of blood before the veil is
performed in front (east) of the incense altar 72
The overall goal/meaning of an outer-sanctum purication
offering for sin is to purge evil on the offerers behalf,
prerequisite to forgiveness 80
Conclusion 90

5. Purication-Offering Flesh: Prebend or Expiation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

When priests eat the esh of purication offerings at which
they have ofciated, they contribute to expiation 91
The priests participate with

Yhwh

in bearing the culpability of
the people 99
Conclusion 105

6. Purication Offering: Purgation of Sanctuary or Offerer? . . . . . . . . . 106

Physical ritual impurities are puried from offerers 112
Moral faults are puried from offerers 123
The special Day of Atonement purication offerings remove
moral faults and physical impurities from their offerers
through purgation of the sanctuary 129
Some purication-offering formulas refer to removal of either
moral faults or physical ritual impurities from offerers 130
An outer-altar purication offering purges the outer altar at the
time of its initial consecration 130
Inner-sanctum purication offerings on the Day of Atonement
purge the sanctuary and its sancta 133
On the Day of Atonement, a nonsacricial goat for Azazel is an
instrument to purge the moral faults of the Israelites by
carrying them away 136
Following initial decontamination of the altar, purication
offerings throughout the year, except for the inner-sanctum
sacrices of the Day of Atonement, only purge their
offerers 136
Conclusion 142

7. Pollution of the Sanctuary: Aerial or Only by Direct Contact? . . . . . 144

Some serious moral faults pollute the sanctuary from a
distance when they are committed 144
Milgroms miasma theory is based on his general theory of
the

nxon

sacrice, which generalizes from specic cases of
automatic delement 151

Contents

ix

Only inner-sanctum purication offerings on the Day of
Atonement can remove automatic delement 154
Automatic delement is nonmaterial in nature 158
Legal and biological approaches to sin are intertwined in
the purication-offering system 160
Conclusion 162

8. Blood or Ash Water: Detergent, Metaphorical Carrier Agent,
or Means of Passage? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Purication-offering blood uniquely serves to carry away
contamination 164
In outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings, the
offerer is the source of delement carried by the
blood 167
A purication offering transfers imperfection in mitigated form
from the offerer to

Yhwh

s sanctuary 176
Water mixed with ashes of the red cow can be directly applied
to persons because it is not already carrying their
impurity 181
Impurity of participants in the red cow ritual comes from
persons to whom the ash water is subsequently applied,
rather than constituting some kind of super-sanctity 186
The verb

oa

metaphorically expresses removal of an
impediment to the divine-human relationship 191
Conclusion 197

9. The Scope of Expiability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

Physical ritual impurities and moral faults are related but
distinct 198
Nondeant sinners can receive the benet of expiation
through sacrice, but deant sinners cannot 202
Conclusion 213

Part

3
Phases of

1bo

10. Inner-Sanctum Purication Offerings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

On the Day of Atonement, ve main rituals are structurally
bound together as a unied system 217
Two inner-sanctum purication offerings form a unit 221
The purication-offering procedure includes some activities
that are mentioned in the text and others that are not 222
Two performances of the inner-sanctum purication-offering
paradigm are interwoven and then merged 229
The inner-sanctum purication offerings purge ritual
impurities and moral faults from the three parts of the
sanctuary on behalf of the priests and laity, and
reconsecrate the outer altar 230

Contents

x

The inner-sanctum purication offerings accomplish

oa

that
is beyond forgiveness 233
Conclusion 240

11. The Purication Ritual of Azazels Goat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

The live goat is banished from the sanctuary court to the
wilderness 242
The overall goal of the ritual with Azazels goat is to banish
moral faults from the Israelite camp 243
Confession and leaning two hands serve to gather the moral
faults and transfer them to Azazels goat 244
The

nxon

of Azazels goat is a unique, nonsacricial
purication ritual 246
Purgation (

oa

) on the live goat returns the moral faults of the
Israelites to their source: Azazel 261
Conclusion 265

12. Two Major Phases of Sacricial

oa

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

Some scholars have argued for one phase of sacricial

oa

267
The one-phase theory is not adequately supported by the
biblical data 273
There are two phases of sacricial

oa

for expiable sins 274
The two-phase theory accounts for data that would otherwise
be problematic 277
Conclusion 284

13. Trajectories of Evils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

The words

vOo

,

nxon

, and

\v

represent distinct categories of
evil 285
Categories of evil have different dynamic properties 291
Categories of evil follow different trajectories 298
The purpose of the Day of Atonement is to preserve the justice
of

Yhwh

s administration 300
Conclusion 302

P

art

4
Cult and Theodicy

14. Divine Justice and the Cost of Kindness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

The Day of Atonement is Israels judgment day 305
The Israelites are to demonstrate their continuing loyalty
to

Yhwh

on the Day of Atonement 310
Moral cleansing beyond forgiveness recognizes the need for
loyalty to endure 316

Contents

xi

Yhwh

s kindness/mercy carries a cost of judicial
responsibility 318
Conclusion 323

15. Divine Presence and Theodicy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324

The Israelite cult involves theodicy on the corporate
level 324

Yhwh

meted out retributive justice from his sanctuary 329
Ritual remedies for human imperfection enact theodicy 331
Conclusion 333

16. Loyalty and Royalty in Hebrew Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334

Numbers 14 illustrates divine sin-bearing 334
Some narratives concerning David and Solomon describe a
two-phased treatment of offenses, with loyalty as the
decisive factor in the ultimate verdict 337
Conclusion 353

17. Yearly Accountability in Mesopotamian Cult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355

The Nanshe New Year 355
There are similarities between the Nanshe New Year and the
Israelite Day of Atonement 356
There are differences between the Nanshe New Year and the
Israelite Day of Atonement 360
The Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring 362
There are similarities between the Babylonian ceremonies of
Nisannu 5 and the Israelite Day of Atonement 363
There are differences between the Babylonian ceremonies of
Nisannu 5 and the Israelite Day of Atonement 370
Final days of the Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring, like
the Israelite Day of Atonement, involve accountability for
loyalty and determination of destiny 374
Conclusion 378

18. Conclusion:
Cult and Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Indexes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

Index of Authors 383
Index of Scripture 387

Contents

xii

xiii

Acknowledgments

To Jacob Milgrom goes the primary credit for stimulating and equipping
me to tackle this daunting project. Thanks are also due to other members of
my Ph.D. committeeProfs. Anne D. Kilmer, Frits Staal, and Ruggero Ste-
faninifor their contribution to the 1992 dissertation (Ritual Dynamic
Structure: Systems Theory and Ritual Syntax Applied to Selected Ancient
Israelite, Babylonian and Hittite Festival Days, University of California at
Berkeley)

1

that laid much of the methodological foundation for the present
work.
I am grateful for encouragement, feedback, and ideas from Baruch
Schwartz (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Richard Davidson (my depart-
ment chair at Andrews University), Moise Isaac (my student at Andrews
University), Constance Gane (my wife), and Glenn Hartelius (Santa Rosa,
California). My secretaryKathy Ekkensand a succession of research as-
sistantsJan Sigvartsen, Oleg Zhigankov, Wann Fanwar, Afolarin Ojewole,
and Gregory Arutyunyanhave facilitated collection of secondary source
material.
My wife and daughter, Constance and Sarah, have given loving support
and patient toleration through the long and grueling gestation and birth of
this book. Last and foremost, I thank God for his Torah and for the opportu-
nity to learn from it.

1. Now published as

Ritual Dynamic Structure

(Gorgias Dissertations 14, Religion
2; Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias, 2004).

xiv

Abbreviations

General

Akk. Akkadian

Ant.

Josephus,

Antiquities of the Jews
b

. Babylonian Talmud

Ber. Berakot

CD Cairo Genizah copy of the

Damascus Document

cstr. construct
Fr. French
H Holiness documents, sources, or redactions

ag.

agigah
Hor. Horayot

inn. innitive

Ker. Kerithot
m

. Mishnah
masc. masculine

Mena

. Mena

ot

MT Masoretic Text

neb

New English Bible

njb

New Jerusalem Bible

njpsv

New Jewish Publication Society Version

nrsv

New Revised Standard Version
obj. object
obv. obverse
P Priestly documents, sources, or redactions

Pesa

. Pesa

im

pf. perfect tense/aspect
pl. plural
poss. possessive
prep. preposition
pron. pronoun/pronominal
rev. reverse

Ro

s

Ha

s

. Ro

s

Ha

ss

anah

rsv

Revised Standard Version

S

ebu.

S

ebuot

sing. singular
subj. subject
suff. sufx

t

. Tosefta

Abbreviations

xv

Taan. Taanit
Tem. Temurah
Tg. Onq. Targum Onqelos
y

. Jerusalem Talmud

Zeba

. Zeba

im

Reference Works

AA American Anthropologist

AB Anchor Bible

ABD

D. N. Freedman, ed.

Anchor Bible Dictionary.

6 vols. New York, 1992
AfOBei Archiv fr Orientforschung Beiheft

AHW

W. von Soden.

Akkadisches Handwrterbuch.

3 vols. Wiesbaden, 196581
AnBib Analecta Biblica

ANET

J. B. Pritchard, ed.

Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old
Testament.

3rd ed. Princeton, 1969
ANETS Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies
AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament

AoF Altorientalische Forschungen

AOTS Augsburg Old Testament Studies
ASORDS American Schools of Oriental Research Dissertation Series
ATA Alttestamentliche Abhandlungen
ATD Das Alte Testament Deutsch

AThR Anglican Theological Review

ATS Alttestamentliche Studien
AUSDS Andrews University Seminary Dissertation Series

AUSS Andrews University Seminary Studies
BBR

H. Zimmern.

Beitrge zur Kenntnis der babylonischen Religion

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1901
BDB F. Brown, S. R. Driver, and C. A. Briggs.

Hebrew and English Lexicon

of
the Old Testament.

Oxford, 1907
BEATAJ Beitrge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des antiken
Judentum
BETL Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium

Bib Biblica

BibB Biblische Beitrge
BibT Bibliothque Thologique
BIS Biblical Interpretation Series
BKAT Biblischer Kommentar: Altes Testament

BM Beth Miqra

(or

Beth Mikra)
BN Biblische Notizen
BO Bibliotheca Orientalis

BRLJ Brill Reference Library of Judaism

BSac Bibliotheca Sacra

BSem Biblical Seminar
BSC Bible Students Commentary

Abbreviations

xvi

BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
BZ Biblische Zeitschrift

CAD

The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of
Chicago

. Chicago, 1956
CahRB Cahiers de la Revue biblique
CB Century Bible
CBC Cambridge Bible Commentary

CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly

CHL Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum

CJ Conservative Judaism
COS

W. W. Hallo, ed.

The Context of Scripture

. 3 vols. Leiden, 19972003
CSHJ Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism

CTM Concordia Theological Monthly
CTQ Concordia Theological Quarterly
DARCOM Daniel and Revelation Committee Series
DSB Daily Study Bible
EAC Entretiens sur lAntiquit Classique
EgT glise et thologie
EncJud Encyclopaedia Judaica. 16 vols. Jerusalem, 1972
ErIsr Eretz Israel
ETSS Evangelical Theological Society Studies
EvQ Evangelical Quarterly
EvT Evangelische Theologie
ExpBib The Expositors Bible
ExpTim Expository Times
FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament
FOTL Forms of the Old Testament Literature
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen
Testaments
GKC E. Kautzsch, ed. Gesenius Hebrew Grammar. Trans. A. E. Cowley.
2nd ed. Oxford, 1910
HALOT L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner, and J. J. Stamm. The Hebrew and Aramaic
Lexicon of the Old Testament. Trans. and ed. M. Richardson. 2 vols.
Leiden, 2001
HAT Handbuch zum Alten Testament
HKAT Handkommentar zum Alten Testament
HS Hebrew Studies
HSAT Die Heilige Schrift des Alten Testamentes
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
IB G. A. Buttrick et al., eds. Interpreters Bible. 12 vols. New York, 195157
IBC Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching
IDBSup K. Crim, ed. Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible: Supplementary Volume.
Nashville, 1976
IJT Indian Journal of Theology
Int Interpretation
Abbreviations xvii
IRT Issues in Religion and Theology
ITC International Theological Commentary
ITL International Theological Library
JAGNES Journal of the Association of Graduate Near Eastern Students of the
University of California at Berkeley
JANES Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies
JETS Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JM P. Joon. A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew. Trans. and rev. T. Muraoka.
Subsidia biblica 14/12. Rome, 199193
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
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Periods
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JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: Supplement Series
JSQ Jewish Studies Quarterly
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JTS Journal of Theological Studies
KTU M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmartn, eds. Die Keilalphabetischen
Texte aus Ugarit. AOAT 24/1. Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1976
LBC Laymans Bible Commentary
LBS Library of Biblical Studies
Les Lesonnu
LHC Laymans Handy Commentary
MTZ Mnchener theologische Zeitschrift
NAC New American Commentary
NCB New Century Bible
NEchtB Neue Echter Bibel
NIB The New Interpreters Bible
NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament
NIVAC NIV Application Commentary
OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis
OBT Overtures to Biblical Theology
Or Orientalia
OTG Old Testament Guides
OTL Old Testament Library
OTM Old Testament Message
OtSt Oudtestamentische Studin
PAAJR Proceedings of the American Academy of Jewish Research
QD Quaestiones disputatae
RB Revue biblique
RevExp Review and Expositor
Abbreviations xviii
RevQ Revue de Qumran
RIDA Revue internationale des droits de lantiquit
RlA Erich Ebeling et al., eds. Reallexikon der Assyriologie. Berlin, 1928
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
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SCR Studies in Comparative Religion
SFSHJ South Florida Studies in the History of Judaism
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SJT Scottish Journal of Theology
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wissenschaftliche Klasse
SM Studia Moralia
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SR Studies in Religion
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SSN Studia Semitica Neerlandica
ST Studia Theologica
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Dictionary of the Old Testament. Trans. J. T. Willis, G. W. Bromiley,
and D. E. Green. Grand Rapids, 1974
THAT E. Jenni and C. Westermann, eds. Theologisches Handwrterbuch zum
Alten Testament. 2 vols. Munich, 197176
ThT Theologisch Tijdschrift
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TLOT E. Jenni and C. Westermann, eds. Theological Lexicon of the Old
Testament. Trans. M. E. Biddle. Peabody, Massachusetts, 1997
TMC The Torah: A Modern Commentary
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Testament. 2 vols. Chicago, 1980
TynBul Tyndale Bulletin
UBL Ugaritisch-biblische Literatur
UBSHS United Bible Societies Handbook Series
VT Vetus Testamentum
VTSup Vetus Testamentum, Supplements
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament
YOS Yale Oriental Series
ZABR Zeitschrift fr altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte
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lteren Kirche
ZTK Zeitschrift fr Theologie und Kirche
xix
Introduction
Through the swirling smoke of Aarons incense, and of scholarly theories,
the present volume steps toward the meaning enacted on coa c\, the
Day of Purgation, commonly known as Yom Kippur or the Day of Atone-
ment. Leviticus 16, which prescribes the rituals of the great Day, could be
termed the inner sanctum of the Torah. Here alone, at the heart of the
middle book of the Pentateuch, the high priest approaches the center of an-
cient Israelite religion: the deity Yhwh in his awesome Holy of Holies.
Leviticus 16 portrays the character of Yhwh, not by theological assertions,
narrative, or even poetry, but by instructions for cultic deeds to be performed
in his presence.
1
The effects of these rites on Yhwhs sanctuary and commu-
nity prole harmony between divine justice and kindness.
2
Yhwhs way of
dealing with imperfect people of various kinds of character demonstrates his
own holy character.
3
By treating moral evil both as relational/legal breach and as pollution, the
Israelite system of nxon rituals (purication offerings = so-called sin offer-
ings) addresses both the standing and the state of Yhwhs people. This sys-
tem shows the way not only to freedom from condemnation, but also to
healing of character, which is dened in terms of loyalty to Yhwh. Freedom
and healing come together on the Day of Atonement, when freedom from
condemnation previously granted is afrmed at Yhwhs sanctuary for those
who show themselves loyal to him. In the process, the Israelite cult character-
izes Yhwh as a just king.
1. H. Gese aptly describes cult as worship in ritual procedures (Essays on Bib-
lical Theology [trans. K. Crim; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981] 100).
2. See the observation of M. Douglas that she nds in Leviticus no conict be-
tween internal versus external religion, or justice versus ritual. As I read it, Leviticus
makes a truly brilliant synthesis of two equations: justice of people to people, and jus-
tice of people to God (Holy Joy: Rereading LeviticusThe Anthropologist and the
Believer, CJ 46 [1994] 10; cf. 1314; cf. F. Crsemann, The Torah: Theology and Social
History of Old Testament Law [trans. A. W. Mahnke; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996] 306).
3. Cf. Ps 77:14[13]qa O;a c"x , O God, your way is in holiness (or in
the sanctuary); 97:2\xoa \ao ooOo ;x , righteousness and justice are the foun-
dation of his throne.
Introduction xx
The present work has grown out of part of my 1992 University of California
at Berkeley Ph.D. dissertation entitled Ritual Dynamic Structure: Systems
Theory and Ritual Syntax Applied to Selected Ancient Israelite, Babylonian
and Hittite Festival Days. During my dissertation research regarding the Day
of Atonement, I discovered key evidence pointing to two major phases of sac-
ricial purgation (piel of oa) for each expiable sin, both of which are accom-
plished through nxon sacrices. The rst phase removes the sin from the
offerer (Lev 4, etc.), and the second removes the same sin from the sanctuary
on the Day of Atonement (ch. 16).
My understanding of the nxon is heavily indebted to Jacob Milgroms
monumental contribution, lavish citation of which is necessary in any serious
treatment of this topic. I accept as ineluctable his conclusion that this sacri-
ce belongs to a ritual system that was actually performed in preexilic times
and that reects profound theological and ethical principles. I also follow his
translation of nxon as purication offering and acknowledge delement of
the sanctuary from a distance in some cases of wanton sin. At the same time,
my two-phase interpretation of purication-offering function (= symbolic
meaning/purpose; see pp. 1218, esp. p. 13) signicantly departs from Mil-
groms now-famous general nxon theory, according to which all such sacri-
ces purge the sanctuary or parts thereof, so that only one phase of sacricial
expiation remedies any given sin.
During the decade following completion of my Ph.D., I have continued to
test, rene, and expand my interpretation of purication offerings and the
Day of Atonement. In addition to further ritual analysis, examination of He-
brew terminology, and interaction with scholarly literature, I have sought im-
plications for the character of Israels deity and religion: What difference does
it make whether there are one or two phases of purgation for a given sin? If a
second phase of oa follows forgiveness, what is its function? Does purging
the residence of Yhwh, the theocratic King, have meaning that goes beyond
maintaining his presence among his people?
My conclusions are derived from exegetical study of Hebrew ritual texts,
informed by controls to ritual analysis that I developed in the course of disser-
tation research through critical examination of existing ritual theories and by
adapting Brian Wilsons systems theory approach to human activity systems.
4
Although I am the rst, to my knowledge, to explicitly apply General Systems
4. R. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure: Systems Theory and Ritual Syntax Ap-
plied to Selected Ancient Israelite, Babylonian and Hittite Festival Days (Ph.D. diss.,
University of California at Berkeley, 1992); now idem, Ritual Dynamic Structure (Gor-
gias Dissertations 14, Religion 2; Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias, 2004).
Introduction xxi
Theory to the study of ritual activity systems in this way,
5
I do not regard this
as the dominant aspect of my methodology.
The present work rst identies the locus of meaning attached to ritual ac-
tivity systems in general and then applies this methodological basis to the an-
cient Israelite system of nxon rituals. Detailed consideration of purication
offerings performed throughout the year sheds light on the way in which they
remedy moral faults and physical ritual impurities by removing these from
the offerers. Analysis of the Day of Atonement rituals, including terms for the
evils that they purge, shows that they provide a second major phase of oa for
expiable moral faults. This phase constitutes a corporate judgment for the
community, through which Yhwh is cleared of judicial responsibility for hav-
ing forgiven guilty people. Yhwhs vindication results in moral clearing for
those who continue to demonstrate loyalty to him, but he rejects those who
are disloyal. These dynamics bring into focus the character of Yhwh, whose
approach to ensuring the loyalty of his people basically parallels that of some
Israelite monarchs and Mesopotamian deities. For a more detailed preview,
see the table of contents, which (at the risk of clarity!) lists my main points as
full sentences.
In the scope and trajectory of the purication-offering process, I have
found that the way Yhwhs cult relates to the imperfections of his people
shows concern for maintaining his justice when he pardons the loyal but con-
demns the disloyal. Thus my alternate nxon system ultimately afrms Mil-
groms seminal insight that theodicy is at the foundation of the Israelite
sacricial system. It is found not in utterances but in rituals, not in legal stat-
utes but in cultic proceduresspecically, in the rite with aat blood.
6
5. Others have applied systems theory concepts to relationships between cultic and
social/cultural systems. See, e.g., F. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and
Status in the Priestly Theology (JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990) 1415, 19,
22. Gorman does recognize that a ritual process can include several distinct seg-
ments, each of which completes one step of the process (p. 68 n. 1). He also acknowl-
edges that, within a sociocultural system, a ritual system is made up of a number of
distinct rituals that are related by similar forms, symbols, conceptual categories, and/
or purposes (p. 19). R. Payne points out an ascending hierarchy of systems: the par-
ticular ritual, the ritual tradition, the religious tradition, the religious culture and the
society (The Tantric Ritual of Japan: Feeding the Gods, the Shingon Fire Ritual [ata-
Piaka Series, Indo-Asian Literatures 365; Delhi: International Academy of Indian
Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1991] 198).
6. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 260; repr. from
Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray, RB 83 (1976) 397.
Introduction xxii
Part 1
Ritual, Meaning, and System
3
Chapter 1
The Locus of Ritual Meaning
Interpretation of the ancient Israelite ritual system is sufciently challeng-
ing to require methodology that is based on viable ritual theory.
1
Before be-
ginning to investigate the biblical text in order to discover the meaning/
1. On conceptual issues involved in theories regarding ritual and ritualization and
perspectives for analyzing them, see C. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992); idem, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997). Compare the cautions of G. Kirk regarding use of gen-
eralizing ritual theories (e.g., of Mary Douglas, Evans-Pritchard, Leach, Hubert and
Mauss) that do not account for many of the details found in rituals (Some Method-
ological Pitfalls in the Study of Ancient Greek Sacrice, in Le Sacrice dans lAntiq-
uit [ed. J. Rudhardt and O. Reverdin; EAC 27; Geneva: Vandoeuvres, 1981] 4190).
D. Wright points out that attempts to distinguish ritual from nonritual activities on the
basis of objective criteria, such as formality and connection with supernatural pow-
ers, fail by either overdening or underdening the phenomenon of ritual (Ritual in
Narrative: The Dynamics of Feasting, Mourning, and Retaliation Rites in the Ugaritic
Tale of Aqhat [Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2001] 9). The difculty of formu-
lating an adequate, comprehensive denition of everything that could be considered
ritual is compounded by the facts that there are degrees of ritual (R. Grimes, Ritual
Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory [SCR; Columbia, South
Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1990] 13), and the broad scope of ritual
studies reaches from ritualization among animals through ordinary interaction ritual
to highly differentiated religious liturgy. It includes all types of ritual: celebrations,
political ceremonies, funerals, weddings, initiations, and so on (p. 9). Rather than at-
tempting to dene ritual, Grimes prefers to deal with the nature of ritual by iden-
tifying its family characteristics, only some of which appear in specic instances.
These variable characteristics, none of which is unique to ritual and therefore den-
itive, include: performed, formalized, repetitive, collective, patterned, traditional,
highly valued, condensed, symbolic, perfected, dramatic, paradigmatic, mystical,
adaptive, and conscious. When these qualities begin to multiply, when an activity
becomes dense with them, it becomes increasingly proper to speak of it as ritualized,
if not a rite as such (p. 14; cf. 13, 15). Ritual is not a single kind of action. Rather,
it is a convergence of several kinds we normally think of as distinct. It is an impure
genre. Like opera, which includes other genresfor example, singing, drama, and
sometimes even dancinga ritual may include all these and more (p. 192; repr.
from Infelicitous Performances and Ritual Criticism, Semeia 41 [1988] 1045). On
methodological problems involved in theories regarding the sacricial category of
rituals, see A. Green, The Role of Human Sacrice in the Ancient Near East
(ASORDS 1; Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1975) 317.
Chapter 1 4
function of nxon rituals, including those performed on the Day of Atonement,
we must ask where the meaning of a ritual resides. Is it to be found in the physi-
cal activities themselves, as prescribed or described by the text, or in the inter-
pretations of these actions, cryptic as they may be, that the text provides?
Since rituals involve activity, the ideal way to study them is by direct obser-
vation. But our only access to ancient rituals is through texts, which only re-
ect rituals, without fully capturing the ritual experience. Since we must
view such rituals through the lter of texts, our quest for the locus of their rit-
ual meaning must take into account both the nature of ritual itself and the
nature of ritual text.
2
As R. Grimes points out, investigation of ritual as perfor-
mance should inform readings of ancient ritual texts even though usual
methods of eld study, which are difcult enough, are not possible, because
in all but the most bookish traditions, ritual texts exist to serve ritual enact-
ments, not the other way around.
3
Ritual actions have no inherent meaning
Examination of ritual actions alone cannot yield their meaning because
actions have no inherent meaning. F. Staal, a ritual theorist specializing in
Vedic rituals, demonstrates this by showing that a given ritual action can have
more than one meaning.
4
In the Israelite cult we can adduce an example of polyvalence that will
later play a pivotal role in our analysis of purication-offering function. In the
outer sanctum of the Israelite sanctuary, the high priest sprinkles blood seven
times before the veil as part of purication (nxon) offerings on behalf of
himself and of the community, respectively (Lev 4:6, 17). During the special
Day of Atonement purication offerings, he sprinkles blood seven times in
the inner sanctum (16:1415), the outer sanctum (v. 16babbreviated), and
on the altar in the courtyard (v. 19). Although 4:6 and 17 do not state the
meaning of their sevenfold sprinklings, 16:16a explains such aspersions in the
inner sanctum as effecting purgation (oa) of this area from the impurities
and moral faults of the Israelites. Later in the same ritual, however, v. 19
2. F. Gorman remarks that it would be helpful if J. Milgrom claried his under-
standing of the nature of ritual. For example, what constitutes a ritual or ritual activity?
Are rituals to be understood in terms of their performance and enactment or primarily
in terms of the ideas to which they point? (review of Leviticus 116: A New Transla-
tion with Introduction and Commentary, by Jacob Milgrom, JBL 112 [1993] 326).
3. Grimes, Ritual Criticism, 9.
4. F. Staal, Rules without Meaning: Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences (New
York: Peter Lang, 1989) 12729, 131, 134, 330.
The Locus of Ritual Meaning 5
attributes another meaning to the sevenfold sprinkling on the outer altar: to
(re)consecrate (O;) it.
5
Thus, the same activity carries two related but dis-
tinct functions in the same ritual.
6
Obviously this activity did not simply have
one inherent meaning. Thus T. Vriezen was inaccurate when he claimed that
the sevenfold sprinklings in Lev 4 and 16:1415 resemble each other so
much, that another conclusion cannot well be possible than this, namely:
these ceremonies have all the same meaning: they are a manner of hallowing
the blood.
7
F. Staal explains the variability of relationships between actions and mean-
ings: the activity itself has no inherent meaning, but it can carry meaning
that is assigned to it from a source such as culture or religious authority.
8
Ex-
amples of this principle are familiar to anyone who has experienced more
than one culture. The meaning (or lack of meaning) of a given gesture, such
as shaking the head from side to side or holding out the hand in a certain way,
depends on how it is interpreted within a given culture. M. Wilson refers to
cultural idioms, accepted forms of expression, which frequently recur, but
goes on to point out that, though one learns the symbolism of a culture as
one learns the language, and is aware that certain forms of expression are
common, one cannot predict with certainty what symbols will be used in a
ritual, any more than one can predict what symbols a poet will use.
9
Simi-
larly, B. Malina points out that sacrice is symbolic behavior, and symbols
are notorious for being polyvalent, fused, and multi-meaninged.
10
Recognizing that ritual actions have no inherent meaning aids ritual
analysis by sparing us the trouble of searching for some holy grail of essen-
tial meaning and by keeping us from unjustiably importing meaning from
5. A. Bchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First
Century (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1967) 266; J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New
York: Doubleday, 1991) 1033, 103738.
6. T. Vriezen regards the sprinkling in the inner sanctum as consecration and on
the outer altar as lustration (The Term Hizza: Lustration and Consecration, OtSt 7
[1950] 22833). F. Gorman recognizes that the function of sprinkling varies from one
ritual to another, but he takes the purpose of this act as purication both in Lev 16:14
and in 19 (Divine Presence and Community: A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus
[ITC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997] 9).
7. Vriezen, The Term Hizza, 232.
8. Staal, Rules without Meaning, 12729, 134, 137, 140, 330; cf. Milgrom, Leviti-
cus 116, 279: Ritual substances have no intrinsic force: they are powered by the will
of God.
9. M. Wilson, Nyakyusa Ritual and Symbolism, AA 56 (1954) 236; cf. 229, 237.
10. B. Malina, Mediterranean Sacrice: Dimensions of Domestic and Political
Religion, BTB 26 (1996) 37; cf. Wilson, Nyakyusa Ritual, 237.
Chapter 1 6
one context to another because we incorrectly assume that the function of
identical actions must be the same. For example, we should not import
the meaning of one sevenfold sprinkling of blood (Lev 16:1416) or another
(v. 19) from the special Day of Atonement context to Lev 4, assuming that in
the latter passage the same kind of activity must also purge or reconsecrate
part of the sanctuary.
11
In fact, we will nd that it serves another function
in Lev 4.
N. Kiuchi states at the outset of his investigation into the purication offer-
ing that we know little about the meaning of this ritual because the text sel-
dom refers explicitly to the meaning of its activities.
12
His solution is as
follows: Nevertheless, we shall endeavour to point out some hints in the text
itself. In the case of multiple interpretations the criterion for choice will be
whether a suggested interpretation can be coherently applied to the same acts
in other contexts.
13
This is a sensible and helpful procedure, provided that its
limitations are kept in mind. The danger is interpretive leveling by importing
meaning from one context to another. Kiuchi implies some kind of control
when he refers to the need for coherence, but scholars have produced differ-
ent kinds of coherence that imbue mutually exclusive interpretations with ap-
pearances of logic and heuristic effectiveness. How do we validly control
coherence? We will pursue this question below.
Ritual = activity + attached meaning
While I agree with Staal that actions, including ritual ones, have no inher-
ent meaning (see above), I part company with him when he goes on to argue
that, because activities are intrinsically meaningless and rituals consist simply
of rule-governed activities, rituals must be intrinsically meaningless.
14
Even
11. W. Gilders criticizes Milgrom: his work on ritual and sacrice lacks adequate
theoretical reection on the nature of ritual and its symbolic-communicative func-
tion. Milgrom seems, generally, to assume that ritual acts are univalent (Blood Ritual
in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2004] 34). Compare A. Schenkers response to Milgrom, who builds his general the-
ory of nxon sacrices on explicit indications of Lev 16 that special sacrices of this
class purge the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement (Interprtations rcentes et di-
mensions spciques du sacrice aat, Bib 75 [1994] 60; cf. 61). We will review
Milgroms approach in detail later in this volume.
12. N. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering in the Priestly Literature: Its Meaning and
Function (JSOTSup 56; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1987) 1718.
13. Ibid., 18.
14. Staal concludes: Ritual may be dened, in approximate terms, as a system of
acts and sounds, related to each other in accordance with rules without reference to
though in some cases it may be true that a ritual is performed only because it
is the tradition to do so,
15
all ritual has some kind of meaning or it is not rit-
ual.
16
Physical activities alone do not constitute ritual or set it apart from non-
ritual activity. Some kinds of nonritual activity systems, for example, games,
entertainment, music, and dance, can also involve lack of concern for practi-
cal results and be governed by rules. So it is not enough to know that ritual
activities are rule-governed and impractical.
17
I would contend that, even if a ritual is fossilized in the sense that its
meaning has been lost, the tradition of performing it as a ritual is remem-
bered because at some time in the past it was believed to do something over
and above the physical cause and effect of its activities. If an activity system
was never believed to have any kind of efcacy, whether religious, magical,
social, or otherwise, I would not regard it as a ritual, at least not in the full
sense of the word.
Without some kind of attached meaning, we would not know that ritual
activities constitute a cohesive activity system, let alone a ritual. Because ac-
tivities such as leaning one hand on the head of a sacricial animal (e.g.,
Lev 4:29) and applying its blood and suet to an altar (vv. 3031) do not con-
tribute to any recognizable practical goal, their presence in an activity system
cannot be justied on purely physical grounds. Physical activities alone are
inadequate for unifying and bounding activity systems that constitute rituals.
So rituals must consist of physical activities plus meaning that is attached to
them.
18
In this sense we can say that ritual consists of symbolic activity.
19
But in this context the term symbolic should not be taken to mean virtual
15. Staal, Rules without Meaning, 11516, 134. However, E. Vogt points out that,
although the most common response of a Mesoamerican native informant to a eld
researcher regarding the signicance of a ritual is its the custom, such informants
can take so much for granted that it does not occur to them to explicate ritual signif-
icance. In a particular case, Their response to further interviews were to the effect
that anyone in his right mind knows that! (Tortillas for the Gods: A Symbolic Anal-
ysis of Zinacanteco Rituals [Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1976] 1, 2, 4).
16. Cf. L. Grabbe, Leviticus (OTG; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1993) 43; cf. 75.
17. R. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure (Gorgias Dissertations 14, Religion 2; Pis-
cataway, New Jersey: Gorgias, 2004) 4345; cf. Kirk, Some Methodological Pitfalls,
5455.
18. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, 1823, 5060.
19. Cf. F. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the Priestly
Theology (JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990) 19, 2225.
meaning (Rules without Meaning, 433); cf. idem, The Meaninglessness of Ritual,
Numen 26 (1975) 222.
Chapter 1 8
unreality. As F. H. Gorman recognizes, when Aaron places the sins of the
people on Azazels goat (16:21), this
is not simply a symbolic act. The sins are ritually placed on the goat so that
it may carry them into the wilderness (certainly not a symbolic carrying,
which, if taken to extremes, might eventuate in a symbolic goat!). The high
priest actualizes or concretizes the sins through confession and puts them
on the goat, which carries them into the wilderness, away from the camp.
20
In other words, in ritual a nonmaterial entity (e.g., sin) can be treated as if it
belongs to the material domain, so that it can be subject to physical interac-
tion and manipulation.
A certain collection of activities makes up a purication offering because
the Israelite religious system has attached meaning to physical activities that
would otherwise be incoherent and meaningless. This concept has important
corollaries:
1. The religious system can assign different meanings to a given activity.
21

For example, aside from the different functions of blood aspersions in
Lev 16:1416, 19 (see above), the suet of a well-being offering is
presented to Yhwh as an Dx, food gift (3:35, 911, 1416), but the
suet of a purication offering is not (e.g., 4:810, 19, 26, 31, 35).
22
2. A given activity can carry more than one meaning at the same time. For
example, an ofciating priests privilege and duty of eating purication-
offering esh (6:19[26], 22[29]) can simultaneously function as
appropriation of his agents commission for carrying out a transaction
between Yhwh and the offerer (7:7) and contribute in some way to
expiation (10:17). It is not necessary to argue for one of these functions
to the exclusion of the other (see ch. 5 of the present work).
3. Different activities can carry the same meaning. Thus a grain offering
can function as a nxon sacrice (5:1113) in place of a living creature
(cf. vv. 610).
23
20. Gorman, Divine Presence, 97.
21. Cf. Staal, Rules without Meaning, 12729, 134, 330.
22. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 16162; R. Rendtorff, Leviticus (BKAT 3; Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1985) 1:65; cf. 3:188. For the idea that Dx refers to a
gift (cf. Ugaritic itt) rather than to a re offering (derived from Ox, re), which
does not account for the biblical range of usage, see J. Hoftijzer, Das Sogenannte
Feueropfer, Hebrische Wortforschung: Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag von Walter
Baumgartner (VTSup 16; Leiden: Brill, 1967) 11434; G. R. Driver, Ugaritic and
Hebrew Words, Ugaritica 6 (1969) 18184.
23. Regarding ritual placement of one or two hands on the head of an animal,
Kiuchi states a solid theoretical premise from which to begin investigation: the
4. We are as dependent on a ritual tradition to provide us with meanings
at every stage of development as we must rely on that tradition for rules
governing performance of activities. When it comes to the ancient
Israelite system of rituals, we have no viable choice but to accept
indications of meaning in our primary source of information: the
biblical text. From the perspective of the Pentateuch in its nal form,
the religious authority who xed the activities and meanings of the
Israelite ritual system was Yhwh himself, through the mediation of
Moses.
24
Applying blood to the altar had no inherent efcacy. Its oa
function derived solely from the authority of Yhwh.
25
Closely related to the concept just described, Yhwh was believed to have
assigned ritual roles to physical objects that have no inherent meaning. For
example, Yhwh established the function of the outer altar as an object to
which blood was applied (cf. Lev 17:11). This explains why the altar had to
be consecrated to him before this function could commence (Lev 8:11, 15).
Since meanings of the altar and blood derive not from their intrinsic qualities
but from Yhwhs mandate,
26
E. Gerstenberger is wrong when he asserts re-
garding Israelite animal sacrices: As is the case among other peoples, blood
is considered to be a magical substance efcacious in and of itself.
27
A structural approach is inadequate
for identifying ritual meaning
Advocating a structural approach, P. Jenson reacts against dynamistic rit-
ual interpretation that attributes the effectiveness of a ritual to the power of
the particular symbols and actions of which it is comprised:
28
24. Cf. R. Knierim, Text and Concept in Leviticus 1:19: A Case in Exegetical
Method (FAT 2; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1992) 6.
25. A. Rodrguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus (AUSDS 3; Berrien Springs,
Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979) 242.
26. Regarding the blood, compare A. Schenker, Vershnung und Shne (BibB 15;
Freiburg: Schweizerisches Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1981) 108.
27. E. Gerstenberger, Leviticus: A Commentary (trans. D. Stott; OTL; Louisville,
Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 5960.
28. P. Jenson, Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Conception of the World
(JSOTSup 106; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1992) 151.
difference in form as such does not necessarily imply a difference in the meaning of
the gesture (The Purication Offering, 113). In her study of African rituals, M. Wilson
found: Contrary to the commonly accepted idea that ritual is more stable than the in-
terpretation of it, we found the same conceptions expressed in varying ritual forms
(Nyakyusa Ritual, 229).
Chapter 1 10
Instead of an atomistic approach, it is preferable to begin with the move-
ment and structure of the sacricial ritual as a whole, since this larger con-
text should determine the primary signicance of the individual symbols.
The value of a structural approach is that it looks for patterns at the level of
the complete ritual. The symbols and actions will be combined in such a
way as to communicate the nature and purpose of the sacrice. Certain
meanings of a multivalent symbol will not be stressed in a ritual in which
they are unnecessary.
29
The advantage of such a structural methodology is that it takes into account
the fact that rituals are hierarchical systems of activity in which individual
activities are included and shaped by higher-level goals to which they are
intended to contribute (see below). Thus the full signicance of an individ-
ual ritual or ritual activity can only appear within the context of the ritual sys-
tem to which it belongs.
30
Jenson recognizes that the variety of functions/
meanings borne by many common ritual activities arises from the variety of
contexts in which they appear.
31
Therefore the analyst should begin from the
contextually conditioned top of the systems hierarchy rather than working
from the bottom up by starting with the individual activities.
While the structural approach is attractive, it is inadequate by itself. As
Staal has pointed out, actions have no inherent meaning. So whether you be-
gin from the top of a collection of activities or from the bottom, meaning will
not appear as the sum of the parts if these parts consist exclusively of physical
actions. In fact, because activity systems are dened by their goals, we may
not know that one constitutes a ritual system at all unless we have some clue
regarding its goal.
For example, suppose we observe a man washing his feet outside a reli-
gious shrine on a hot day. Is he (a) cooling himself, whether or not he enters
the shrine, (b) making sure that he will not soil the carpet in the shrine when
he enters, (c) ritually purifying himself preparatory to worship, or (d) engag-
ing in a core act of worship? Even if we continue to watch the mans subse-
quent behavior, without knowing how his actions t into his world view, we
will remain unsure whether his actions constitute a complete activity system
or belong to a larger activity system, let alone whether they are ritual in na-
29. Ibid., 152.
30. Wilson, Nyakyusa Ritual, 229; M. Douglas, Deciphering a Meal, Implicit
Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1975) 23151;
D. Wright suggests that such a structural or contextual approach should be applied to
the Israelite states/situations of impurity (Two Types of Impurity in the Priestly Writ-
ings of the Bible, Koroth 9 [1988] 192).
31. Jenson, Graded Holiness, 152.
ture and, if so, what they might mean. How can we even begin to employ a
structural approach, unless we import one or more a priori assumptions that
invalidate our analysis from the outset, when we do not know whether we are
looking at the top or the bottom of a ritual or nonritual activity hierarchy?
Jenson admits that a structural approach may not provide all the answers
and suggests that a historical approach may be better suited to dealing with
anomalies:
There is a conservative tendency in the cult to preserve actions and symbols
when their original function has ceased, although it is also the case that
the symbols can be reinterpreted in a way consistent to the new context.
Further, the meaning of individual symbols may transcend the specic pur-
poses of a ritual.
32
Granted that rituals can undergo fossilization and/or reinterpretation,
33
does
a diachronic perspective account for that which a structural approach can-
not? Returning to the above illustration, suppose we revisit the shrine after
ve years on another summer day and observe the same man performing the
same action, except that after he bathes his feet he also washes his hands. Will
this diachronic information shed light on the boundaries of the activity sys-
tem and its symbolic meaning, if there is any? No, because a change from
one unknown to another unknown does not yield something that is known.
If we know that a man washing part of his body is a practicing Hindu, Bud-
dhist, Muslim, Jew, or Christian, or something else, we may be able to narrow
down the options because he participates in the current phase of a living tra-
dition to which we have access. We can even test our results by asking the
man what he is doing. But how do we interpret an ancient ritual when we
cannot even physically observe its performance, let alone discuss its signi-
cance with someone who participates in the tradition to which it belongs?
D. Davies, who employs a structuralist anthropological approach, explic-
itly presupposes that the form, that is, symbolic patterning, of Israelite rituals
provides their meaning when they are viewed within their covenant con-
text.
34
Thus Davies acknowledges the need for a conceptual element (cove-
nant) provided by the Israelite world view. It is true that, within the Torah,
32. Ibid.
33. H. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality: The Ritual Purity System and Its Place in
Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 56.
34. D. Davies, An Interpretation of Sacrice in Leviticus, ZAW 89 (1977) 392. For
the idea that cultic expiation should be understood within the context of an interper-
sonal covenant between God and Israel, see L. Shelton, A Covenant Concept of
Atonement, WTJ 19 (1984) 9296.
Chapter 1 12
cult and covenant are inextricably linked.
35
The divine covenant with the
patriarchs and the nation of Israel provides background for the special mani-
festation of that relationship through the residence of Yhwh among the Israel-
ites at the tabernacle. Continuation of Yhwhs Presence there depends on
observance of his laws, including those that directly relate to the cultic center
by regulating the ritual system. However, unless the functions/meanings of
the ritual forms themselves are understood to a certain degree, such an over-
arching covenant context appears too general to supply adequate specicity
to our interpretation of the rituals.
The meaning/function of a ritual is the goal
assigned to its activity system
It almost goes without saying that a ritual is an activity system. But the fact
that rituals share properties with nonritual activity systems has profound im-
plications for ritual analysis.
In B. Wilsons study of nonritual human activity systems, he points out that
the goal/raison dtre for such a system is to accomplish a particular transfor-
mation through an activity process.
36
So it is not the activities that dene the
system but the goal that determines which activities are necessary to achieve
the desired change.
The concept just described applies to ritual activity systems, which are also
dynamic transformation processes.
37
For example, we found earlier that Lev
35. On the complex relationship between the Israelite covenant and cult, see, e.g.,
B. J. Schwartz, The Priestly Account of the Theophany and Lawgiving at Sinai, in
Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem Haran (ed. M. Fox et al.;
Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1996) 131; cf. 130, 13334.
36. B. Wilson, Systems: Concepts, Methodologies, and Applications (Chichester:
Wiley, 1984) 16, 26.
37. Cf. H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Sacrice: Its Nature and Function (trans. W. Halls;
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964; orig. 1898); A. van Gennep, The Rites of
Passage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); V. Turner, The Ritual Process:
Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1969); I. Gruenwald, Rituals and Ritual
Theory in Ancient Israel (BRLJ 10; Leiden: Brill, 2003) viiviii, 1417, 2526, 188, 198
201; Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 21527. Elsewhere Gorman builds upon van
Genneps work on rites of passage to suggest a general typology/taxonomy of priestly
rituals: (1) Rituals of founding, such as the consecration and inauguration of the sanc-
tuary described in Lev 89, create a normative state. (2) Rituals of maintenance, such
as those of the cultic calendar in Num 2829, maintain a preexisting order. (3) Rituals
of restoration, such as rituals of purication, accomplish restoration to the normative
state (Priestly Rituals of Founding: Time, Space, and Status, in History and In-
terpretation: Essays in Honour of John H. Hayes [ed. M. Graham, W. Brown, and
J. Kuan; JSOTSup 173; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1993] 4764). Cf. A. R. S. Kennedy
16:16 expresses the goal of special purication offerings: to purge the inner
sanctum from ritual impurities and moral faults. The goal is to effect transfor-
mation (purging) through activities, namely, by sprinkling blood (vv. 1415).
The goal denes the activities that are included and the way they are per-
formed. Achieving the goal constitutes the basic function/raison dtre of the
ritual, which is the same thing as the meaning assigned to it by religious au-
thority. There may be higher-level functions within the society, but this is the
basic function.
Like other human activity systems, rituals are contructed hierarchically,
with smaller systems constituting components of larger systems. Systems at
each level are dened by their goals, with subgoals dening subsystems.
Thus on the Day of Atonement, a pair of elaborate purication offerings have
the overall goal of purging from the entire sanctuary the impurities and
moral faults of the Israelite priesthood and laity (Lev 16; for summary, see
v. 33). These sacrices include subsystems that achieve the smaller goals of
purging the inner sanctum (v. 16a), the outer sanctum (v. 16b), and the outer
altar (vv. 1819).
Within each system, at each hierarchical level, activities can have different
relationships to achievement of the relevant goal. An activity may be prereq-
uisite to another activity that fullls the goal, or it may be postrequisite. For
instance, slaughtering an animal (4:29) is prerequisite to application of its
blood to the horns of the altar (v. 30a), following which pouring out the re-
maining blood at the base of the altar is postrequisite disposal (v. 30b).
Understanding the nature of ritual enhances our sensitivity to ritual
texts. A. Noordtzij says that Lev 16:2528, prescribing the burning of nxon
suet on the altar, disposal of carcasses, and personal purication of ritual as-
sistants on the Day of Atonement do not appear to preserve the chronologi-
cal order of the activities and takes this to indicate the composite character
of the chapter.
38
But he fails to understand that the activities in question are
simply postrequisite to the core procedures involved in purging the sanctu-
ary by blood and banishing moral evils from the camp to the wilderness on
a live goat (vv. 1422).
38. A. Noordtzij, Leviticus (trans. R. Togtman; BSC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1982) 170.
and J. Barr on the reparation (cOx; so-called guilt) offering: The occasion of the
sacrice may then reasonably be held to be restoration or reintegration to normality
after an offence (Sacrice and Offering, Dictionary of the Bible [ed. J. Hastings; rev.
ed. F. C. Grant and H. H. Rowley; New York: Scribners, 1963] 875).
Chapter 1 14
A ritual is an activity system with a special kind of goal
As is well known, denitions of ritual and rite are legion.
39
As a beginning
example, we can cite F. Gorman, who follows anthropological theory when
he denes ritual as a complex performance of symbolic acts, characterized
by its formality, order, and sequence, which tends to take place in specic sit-
uations, and has as one of its central goals the regulation of the social or-
der.
40
He explains: Ritual is a way of enacting meaning in ones existence in
this world. It is a way of construing, actualizing, realizing, and bringing into
being a world of meaning and ordered existence. Ritual is, thus, seen as a
means of enacting ones theology.
41
Working with Nyakyusa culture, M. Wilson distinguishes between cere-
monies and rituals, and in the process points out a crucial additional aspect
of ritual:
In short, a ceremony is an appropriate and elaborate form for the expression
of feeling, but a ritual is action believed to be efcacious. A ritual is often
emedded in ceremonial which is not held to be necessary to the efcacy of
the ritual but which is felt to be appropriate. Both ritual and ceremonial
have a function in rousing and canalizing emotion, but ritual, by relating
its symbols to some supposed transcendental reality, affects people more
deeply than a ceremony, which some will describe as mere play-acting.
42
So that which sets ritual apart is the fact that it is action believed to be ef-
cacious through symbolic relationship to some supposed transcendental
reality.
43
In my study of rituals as activity systems and analysis of complex ancient Is-
raelite, Babylonian, and Hittite religious rituals, I have found Wilsons deni-
tion of ritual to be conrmed.
44
I realize that in some kinds of ritual the
element of reference to some supposed transcendental reality may not have
to do with belief in one or more supernatural beings.
45
Nevertheless, even in
secular ritual there is some kind of transcendence. A ritualized version of an
39. For analysis of a wide variety of approaches, see Bell, Ritual Theory.
40. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 19.
41. Ibid., 232.
42. Wilson, Nyakyusa Ritual, 240; cf. B. Malina, Christian Origins and Cultural
Anthropology: Practical Models for Biblical Interpretation (Atlanta: John Knox, 1986)
13942.
43. See Turner, The Ritual Process, 106; cf. 105.
44. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure.
45. Wright, Ritual in Narrative, 911. As Grimes has shown, the Western idea that
ritual is inherently related to belief in supernatural beings or powers does not neces-
sarily apply in other cultures (Ritual Criticism, 12).
activity, such as a meal, may be similar and related to the mundane version of
the same activity. As C. Bell articulately puts it, the former can be distin-
guished as follows:
a way of acting that is designed and orchestrated to distinguish and privi-
lege what is being done in comparison to other, usually more quotidian, ac-
tivities. As such, ritualization is a matter of various culturally specic
strategies for setting some activities off from others, for creating and privi-
leging a qualitative distinction between the sacred and the profane, and
for ascribing such distinctions to realities thought to transcend the powers of
human actors.
46
[italics mine]
Ritual or ritualized activity does not merely communicate as a kind of sign
language. Rather, it is believed to do something that changes reality in a way
that goes beyond the constraints of cause and effect that operate in activities
belonging to the mundane physical world that are susceptible to manipula-
tion by the performers.
While I admit that my theory of ritual is undoubtedly shaped and limited
to a certain degree by the parameters of the ritual phenomena that I have an-
alyzed, which belong to the religious systems of certain ancient Near Eastern
cultures,
47
I offer my working general denition as a heuristic modern
abstraction to facilitate focused reection, at least within the ancient Near
Eastern context:
This denition draws most closely from M. Wilson, C. Bell, and my Ph.D. re-
search, in which I recognized that human rituals are human activity systems
that accomplish transformation processes.
48
46. Bell, Ritual Theory, 74; cf. 9091; cf. Wright, Ritual in Narrative, 1214.
47. On the effect of culture on recognition of ritual as such, see Bell, Ritual The-
ory, 2056.
48. In my dissertation I developed a tentative, working denition of an individual
ritual: An individual ritual is a formulaic activity system carrying out an individual,
complete cognitive task transformation process in which an inaccessible entity is in-
volved. With this I also presented a less-technical wording: An individual ritual is an
activity system of which the components/subsystems are xed in terms of their inclu-
sion, nature, and relative order, and that carries out an individual, complete transfor-
mation process in which interaction with one or more entities ordinarily inaccessible
to the material domain takes place (Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, 61). By formu-
laic or xed activity, I did not mean that every detail of performance is necessarily
A ritual is a privileged activity system that is believed to carry out a
transformation process involving interaction with a reality ordinarily
inaccessible to the material domain.
Chapter 1 16
A religious ritual is a ritual that involves belief in a deity. The ancient
Israelite sanctuary rituals investigated in the present volume obviously belong
to this type. In biblical religion, the deity Yhwh is ordinarily inaccessible, be-
yond reach of the earthly material domain (cf. Job 11:7), unless he chooses to
make himself accessible (e.g., Gen 18). Therefore, scientic investigation of
phenomena such as rituals should take into account what M. Douglas refers
to as the non-Newtonian physics upon which religion rests:
Spiritual beings are so-called just because they are non-corporeal, and so
enjoy the powers of ubiquity, invisibility and knowledge of what will hap-
pen at a later time. They can also confer these powers on their adepts. This
dimension has to be accepted by the anthropologist if there is going to be
any understanding by explanations, excuses and accusation.
Anthropologists are not happy about using the word supernatural to de-
scribe religious beliefs which defy the way we see the laws of nature. For
one thing, we should not use a vocabulary which assumes that ghosts and
angels are not natural.
49
A sacrice is a religious ritual in which something of value is ritually trans-
ferred to the sacred realm for utilization by a deity. This is close to V. Valeris
description of sacrice as any ritual action that includes the consecration of
an offering to a deity.
50
See also B. Malinas denition: sacrice is a ritual
in which a deity or deities is/are offered some form of inducement, rendered
humanly irretrievable, with a view to some life-effect for the offerer(s).
51
49. M. Douglas, Holy Joy: Rereading LeviticusThe Anthropologist and the Be-
liever, CJ 46 (1994) 7.
50. V. Valeri, Kingship and Sacrice: Ritual and Society in Ancient Hawaii (trans.
P. Wissing; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) 37.
51. Malina, Mediterranean Sacrice, 37; cf. 3839 for implications of this deni-
tion. J. van Baal distinguishes between offering and sacrice: I call an offering
any act of presenting something to a supernatural being, a sacrice an offering accom-
panied by the ritual killing of the object of the offering (Offering, Sacrice and
Gift, Numen 23 [1976] 161; cf. 177). But this denition of sacrice raises a problem.
specied but simply that activities are specied at least to some extent, to varying lev-
els of detail. The very existence of ritual prescriptions and descriptions indicates this
factor, without which there would be no limits to the kinds of activity that could ac-
complish a given efcacy. Neither did I intend my use of the term formulaic to im-
ply formality, by contrast with informal activity. Notice that both in my dissertation
and in the present volume I use the term ritual with reference to specic enactments,
which are what Grimes would call rites when he distinguishes between rite, rit-
ual, and ritualizing: A rite is a specic enactment; ritual is the general idea of
which a rite is a specic instance, and ritualizing is the process of cultivating rites
from activities that can be viewed as potential ritual (Ritual Criticism, 910).
I agree with Gorman that the relationship between the biblical ritual texts
and the system of belief behind them is complex, so that a ritual enactment
may be believed to affect the interrelated states of an individual, society, the
cosmos, and the deity.
52
But I would emphasize that the ritual effects are be-
lieved to result from interaction with the supramundane. This kind of inter-
action explains why a ritual packs such an evocative punch: not only is its
meaning acted out as potent dramatic expression, it is also believed to result
in transformation that nonritual activity cannot achieve.
53
Returning to our illustration of the Day of Atonement purication offer-
ings that purge the Israelite sanctuary, we see that, unlike nonritual activity
systems, the ritual goal is not achieved as a natural physical result of its activi-
ties. Slaughtering an animal, putting its blood on various parts of a dwelling
and its furniture, and then burning the suet and carcass (Lev 16:1128) do
not accomplish any kind of cleansing in physical terms. To the contrary, these
activities create a mess and are impractical and wasteful, transforming a live,
valuable animal into bloodstains, smoke, and ashes, none of which are put to
practical use. Nevertheless, the text informs us that the goal of another trans-
formation is achieved at a higher level: nonphysical pollution, consisting of
ritual impurities and moral faults, is purged from the sanctuary of supramun-
dane Yhwh on behalf of the Israelites (vv. 16, 1819, 33). While the activities
themselves do not produce this goal through physical cause and effect, as they
would be expected to in ordinary life, they serve as a vehicle for transforma-
tion that takes place on the level of symbolic meaning.
The symbolic meaning involved in achieving the goal of the special puri-
cation offerings was part of a conceptual system that called for belief. To ac-
cept the rules and efcacy of the rituals, the priest and his people would need
53. Cf. E. Leach regarding religious ritual: the purpose of religious performance
is to provide a bridge, or channel of communication, through which the power of the
gods may be made available to otherwise impotent men (The Logic of Sacrice, in
Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament [ed. B. Lang; Philadelphia: Fortress,
1985] 137; cf. H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Sacrice: Its Nature and Function [trans.
W. Halls; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964; orig. 1898] 97).
In Lev 5:1113, an offering of grain explicitly serves as a nxon, which is the functional
equivalent of a nxon sacrice consisting of a sheep or goat (v. 6). So the grain serves
as a sacrice, but obviously it is not subject to ritual killing. True, part of it is burned
on the altar (v. 12), but any attempt to regard this destruction as equivalent to slaughter
founders on the fact that part of a nxon goat or sheep is also burned on the altar (4:31,
35) subsequent to slaughter (vv. 29, 33, respectively). So sacrice involves ritual trans-
fer to a deity for his/her utilization, whether killing is needed or not.
Chapter 1 18
to believe in the existence of Yhwh, the reality of the pollution that needed
to be removed, and the effectiveness of the prescribed ritual actions required
to carry out the desired transformation.
Systems theory concepts can aid interpretation of
Israelite rituals
As mentioned in the introduction, my 1992 Ph.D. dissertation developed a
controlled methodology of ritual analysis that incorporated an adaptation of
B. Wilsons systems theory approach to human activity systems.
54
The pri-
mary usefulness of applied systems theory for this kind of study is to highlight
properties of rituals, many of which have been recognized by scholars such as
R. Knierim,
55
in light of known properties of nonritual human activity sys-
tems. I do not hereby import an alien methodology in an attempt to ll gaps
in our understanding of ancient Israelite rituals.
56
Rather, I simply recognize
that the category of human activity systems includes human rituals and there-
fore contend, with C. Bell, that the latter should not be treated as isolated
phenomena:
When returned to the context of human activity in general, so-called ritual
acts must be seen rst in terms of what they share with all activity, then in
terms of how they set themselves off from other practices. . . . ritual acts
must be understood within a semantic framework whereby the signicance
of an action is dependent upon its place and relationship within a context
of all other ways of acting: what it echoes, what it inverts, what it alludes to,
what it denies.
57
While the present work includes only a fraction of the explicit theoretical
and methodological detail and technical language contained in my disserta-
54. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure; cf. Wilson, Systems.
55. R. Knierim, Text and Concept in Leviticus 1:19: A Case in Exegetical Method
(FAT 2; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck] 1992).
56. So I do not plead guilty to charges leveled by N. Lemche, On the Use of
System Theory, Macro Theories and Evolutionistic Thinking in Modern OT Re-
search and Biblical Archaeology, SJOT 2 (1990) 7388. C. Queen concludes his ex-
tensive critique of systems theory: The contribution of systems theory in religious
studies, both in its experiments and applications to date, and in its heuristic potential
for future development, lies in its unique ability to integrate the ndings of many dis-
ciplines, to respect the worlds of meaning which they purvey, and to place all of this
in a non-dogmatic, but irreducible Context that is the source of religious experience
(Systems Theory in Religious Studies: A Methodological Critique [Ph.D. diss.,
Boston University, 1986] 294).
57. Bell, Ritual Theory, 220; cf. 221.
tion, prominent properties of ritual activity systems and their goals, which
have already been introduced in earlier sections of this chapter, implicitly in-
form all of my ritual analyses:
1. Achieving its goal of carrying out a given transformation constitutes the
function of a given ritual, which is the same thing as its meaning.
58
So
by telling us the goal, the text supplies the function/meaning. There
may be higher-level social functions, but this is the basic function.
2. The goal denes the ritual and its boundaries because activities
included in the ritual are those that contribute to its goal.
59
3. Like other human activity systems, a ritual accomplishes physical
transformation.
60
However, carrying out such transformation does not
achieve the goal of the ritual as a natural physical result. Rather, ritual
activities serve as a vehicle to accomplish a higher-level
transformation.
61
4. Acceptance of the efcacy and rules of an Israelite ritual requires
religious belief in harmony with a conceptual system, of which the
ritual serves as an expression. As presented in the Bible, the Israelite
ritual system is an open system in the sense that it interfaces with the
cultural environment of the Israelite community. This environment
includes the suprasystem constituted by the Israelite religion of
Yhwh, of which the ritual system is a part.
62
5. Like systems in general, rituals are structured hierarchically, with
smaller systems constituting wholes embedded in larger systems.
63
At
each level, a whole possesses distinctive emergent properties
properties not possessed by the parts comprising the whole.
64
In the
Israelite system of rituals the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its
58. See Gruenwald, Rituals, 19899: Meaning is created in relation to, and as a
result of, transformation.
59. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, 3032, 5253, 7982. Regarding the dening
role of goals in nonritual activity systems, see Wilson, Systems, 2631.
60. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, 2942; Wilson, Systems, 1516, 2542.
61. On ritual activity as a vehicle for interpreted function, see my Ritual Dynamic
Structure, 5153.
62. For an explanation of such systems concepts from a (nonritual) social-systems
perspective, see J. Norlin and W. Chess, Human Behavior and the Social Environment:
Social Systems Theory (3rd ed.; Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997) 3133.
63. Staal, Rules without Meaning, 101. Regarding systems hierarchy in general, see,
for example, J. van Gigch, Applied General Systems Theory (2nd ed.; New York:
Harper & Row, 1978) 66.
64. Norlin and Chess, Human Behavior, 31.
Chapter 1 20
parts. A ritual or ritual complex achieves its goal only if it is performed
in its entirety, with its activities in the proper order.
65
6. Like a higher system, a subsystem is dened by its goal, which is carried
out by a transformation process.
66
Activities that bring subgoals to
completion, which could be termed goal-activities, are more
signicant than other tasks that are prerequisite or postrequisite to
them. But such tasks also belong to subsystems because they make
necessary contributions to their goals.
67
In the service of ritual theory that informs exegesis, systems theory can aid
us in grasping implications of terminology in ritual texts. For instance, in Lev
16:25, the high priest is to burn the suet of the purication offering
(nxon), singular, on the altar. Scholars have been confused by the fact that
this verse mentions only one purication offering in spite of the fact that ch.
16 elsewhere prescribes two such sacrices to purge the sanctuary on the Day
of Atonement: a bull on behalf of the priests and a goat for the laity. The sin-
gular purication offering here does not need to indicate confusion in the
text
68
or an earlier stage of diachronic development, at which only one nxon
sacrice was performed.
69
Rather, nxon is collective, referring to the com-
plex consisting of both sacrices, which are interwoven and then merged
when their bloods are simultaneously applied to the outer altar (vv. 1819).
So the singular simply acknowledges unity at a higher level of systems hierar-
chy, as in Exod 30:10 and Num 29:11, where the same complex is called
coa nxon, purication offering (sing.) of purgation.
65. See, for example, Lev 10:1618, where Moses was concerned that the inaugu-
ral purication offering on behalf of the community was invalidated because the
priests had not eaten the esh. Cf. m. Yoma 5:7, where performance of Day of Atone-
ment procedures that violates their stipulated order accomplishes nothing at all.
66. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, 3334, 3742; Wilson, Systems, 3135.
67. I agree with Knierim that in Lev 1 sacricial actions differ in function, but I do
not see a qualitative differentiation between sacricial acts proper and supporting,
practical acts necessary for the procedure (Text and Concept, 55; cf. 54, 56). Knierim
recognizes that in terms of moving forward to fulllment of the goal of the ritual,
none of the prescribed steps may be missing. Each is equally important. And more
are not necessary (p. 89). So we can say that all of the acts are properly sacricial
because they all contribute to the activity system, which is a sacrice.
68. M. Noth introduces confusion when he notes: In v. 25 a missing remark about
the sin offering of vv. 3ba, 6, 1114 is subsequently brought in. As this now means only
one sin offering, the sin-offering goat of vv. 9, 15 is ignored. Contrast vv. 27, 28, where
something more is said about the parts left over from both sin-offering animals
(Leviticus [OTL; London: SCM, 1965] 126).
69. K. Elliger, Leviticus (HAT 4; Tbingen: Mohr, 1966) 216.
spread is 6 points short
The biblical text provides instructions for physical performance
and interpretations of activities
D. Baker points out that ritual texts belong to the linguistic category of pro-
cedural texts, which are goal oriented.
70
As G. Anderson recognizes, biblical
texts provide two kinds of information regarding ritual procedures: instruc-
tions for physical performance of activities and interpreted goals of these ac-
tivities.
71
To interpret an ancient Israelite ritual properly, we must distinguish
between the two levels of information.
For example, in Lev 4 a common Israelite who realizes that he has inad-
vertently violated a divine command is required to offer a female goat as a pu-
rication offering (v. 28). Verses 2931a stipulate a series of physical activities
to be performed in the courtyard of the sanctuary: the sinner lays one hand
on the head of the victim and then slaughters it. The priest puts some of its
blood on the horns of the altar and pours out the rest of the blood at the base
of the altar. The suet is removed from the carcass and the priest burns it on
the altar. Verse 31b states the goal of all this, not on the level of physical cause
and effect, but on the higher level of interpreted meaning: Thus the priest
shall effect purgation on his behalf, that he may be forgiven.
72
Notice that
the text does not explain each action individually. Rather, it provides the over-
all conceptual framework for the activity system as a whole, to which the
individual actions contribute.
Among ritual texts, B. Levine and W. W. Hallo have distinguished between
prescriptive texts, which tell how rituals should be done, and descriptive texts,
which describe how ritual performances were actually carried out on par-
ticular occasions.
73
The language of a ritual text reveals its prescriptive or
descriptive nature. For example, Lev 4:2235 is clearly prescriptive because its
sections begin with conditional clauses (Ox . . . , When . . . [v. 22]; cx\ . . . ,
If . . . [vv. 27, 32]) and continue with clauses governed by perfect consecu-
tive or imperfect verbs, which provide instructions for a purication-offering
70. D. Baker, Leviticus 17 and the Punic Tariffs: A Form Critical Comparison,
ZAW 99 (1987) 19293; cf. R. Longacre, An Anatomy of Speech Notions (Lisse: Peter
de Ridder, 1976) 199206.
71. G. Anderson, Sacrice and Sacricial Offerings: Old Testament, ABD 5:883.
72. Translation by J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1722 (AB 3A; New York: Doubleday,
2000) 1272; cf. idem, Leviticus 116, 227.
73. B. Levine, Ugaritic Descriptive Rituals, JCS 17 (1963) 10511; idem, The
Descriptive Tabernacle Texts of the Pentateuch, JAOS 85 (1965) 30718; idem and
W. W. Hallo, Offerings to the Temple Gates at Ur, HUCA 38 (1967) 1758; cf.
Baker, Leviticus 17, 193; A. Rainey, The Order of Sacrices in Old Testament Rit-
ual Texts, Bib 51 (1970) 48598, but Rainey refers to Lev 17 as descriptive (48687).
Chapter 1 22
pattern/paradigm that governs any number of specic performances. The de-
scription in 9:821, on the other hand, has imperfect consecutive or perfect
verbs, referring to a sequence of activities that Aaron and his sons did (Ov)
at a one-time cultic event: inauguration of the sanctuary.
74
Although Leviticus does not provide sufcient detail to serve as a hand-
book for priests that guides every detail of performance,
75
Knierim has shown
that biblical ritual prescriptions are presented in the procedural law sub-
genre of case law and have the purpose of standardizing the essential steps
of legitimate performance so that rituals can accomplish the purposes for
which they are intended.
76
The structure of such a text is determined by its
focus on the goal of the completed ritual itself.
77
Specication of ritual actions in prescriptive texts is loose in four ways:
78
1. Prescriptive texts do not include all actions that must, of practical
necessity, be performed. The texts presentation is selective and serves
its interpretation of activities, according to its perspective. For example,
Lev 16 does not tell us when the high priest retrieves from the inner
sanctum the pan of burning coals and incense that he takes there
before performing blood manipulations on and before the ark cover
(vv. 1213; but see m. Yoma 7:4).
2. They control activities at various levels of detail, often sketching ows
of activities with broad strokes, without providing ner points of
performance at the lowest hierarchical levels. Thus while 16:14
precisely indicates how the high priest is to sprinkle blood in the inner
74. Ibid., 495. Milgrom provides a rule of thumb: It is important to realize that the
descriptive ritual always uses the verb a and the prescriptive ritual uses a different
verb (The Two Pericopes on the Purication Offering, in The Word of the Lord
Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honor of David Noel Freedman in Celebration of His Sixtieth
Birthday [ed. C. Meyers and M. OConnor; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns,
1983] 212). However, Num 15:24 exceptionally uses Ov in a prescriptive context. Le-
vine points out that, whereas Ugaritic, Assyrian, Hittite, and postbiblical Jewish ritual
descriptions had the purpose of preserving reports of rituals that could guide subse-
quent cultic performance, Lev 8 and 9 record the unique events involved in com-
mencement of the Israelite cult (The Descriptive Tabernacle Texts, 31314; cf.
Rainey, The Order of Sacrices, 485, 49697).
75. Grabbe, Leviticus, 38; cf. 74.
76. Knierim, Text and Concept, 31, 65, 9497, 98106; cf. Gorman, The Ideology of
Ritual, 2527. For R. Rendtorff the function of the texts for ensuring proper perfor-
mance explains why they say little about the meanings of the sacrices (The Old Tes-
tament: An Introduction [trans. John Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985] 98).
77. Knierim, Text and Concept, 89; cf. 6467, 90.
78. Cf. ibid., 2527, 4654, 6061, 8788.
sanctum, v. 8 does not say exactly how he is to cast lots over two goats to
select their respective ritual roles.
3. The order in which activities are presented in a ritual prescription does
not always indicate the chronological sequence of their performance.
For instance, on the Day of Atonement the high priest and his assistants
can perform some tasks simultaneously (16:21b28).
4. A ritual activity paradigm may be subject to adaptation in different
contexts. While noncalendric/private burnt offerings require the
gesture of leaning one hand on the head of the victim before slaughter
(Lev 1:4), calendric burnt offerings performed on behalf of the priests
and laity on the Day of Atonement (16:24) most likely do not need such
identication of transferring ownership.
When the biblical text provides the overall goal of a ritual (e.g., Lev 4:31b;
see above), gaps in our knowledge regarding details of physical actions, such
as the precise manner of slaughter or removal of suet, do not pose a serious
problem for interpretation of the overall function/meaning of the ritual, pro-
vided that we are content with the meaning supplied by the text. G. Anderson
suggests:
Perhaps what is biblical about biblical sacrice is not only the historical
realia presumed by the texts, but also the interpretation of sacrice in the
present canonical form of the texts themselves. After all, it is this canonical
form which presented itself to the earliest interpreters of the Bible.
79
I agree with Anderson, except that I would delete the initial perhaps.
Knierim adopts the same attitude toward Lev 1: We speak about the writ-
ers transformation of a concept into a text, not into an action, and interpret
the concept of an observed text, not of an observed performance.
80
He un-
derlines an interpretive distancing of the biblical texts from actual perfor-
mance: the prescription of a ritual in a text is not identical with the
description of an observed ritual, let alone with a performed ritual itself.
81
Unless we recognize and respect our limitation in this regard, we will invari-
ably contaminate analysis by importing a priori elements from our own world
view into our interpretation of ritual meaning.
If we have a prescription or description of ritual activities but no extant in-
dication of the meaning attached to them, we are stuck with a major prob-
lem. In such a case we may guess on the basis of analogies with similar
79. Anderson, Sacrice, 883.
80. Knierim, Text and Concept, 17; cf. 18.
81. Ibid., 1920.
Chapter 1 24
activities for which interpretations are available, but we should acknowledge
that we are guessing and that such a tentative interpretation necessarily im-
ports elements that are to a greater or lesser extent foreign to the ritual context
in question. This is not to say that analogical guessing is unscientic. Similar
logic is necessary and rigorously applied in laboratories and hospitals when
critical decisions must be made in spite of insufcient evidence. But over-
looking holes in evidence or treating guesses as solid is unscientic. Some-
times the most denitive conclusion is: We dont know.
Conclusion
The present chapter has outlined the theoretical framework informing my
approach to analysis of ancient Israelite rituals. On this basis, my quest for
meanings of purication offerings and Day of Atonement rituals will espe-
cially focus on isolating and closely examining the language of goals that are
indicated by the biblical text.
25
Chapter 2
The System of tafj Rituals
Before exploring the function of the nxon system of rituals, including
those of the Day of Atonement, we must address the question of whether these
rituals were intended to function as a system at all. For many scholars, differ-
ences within Lev 16, where the Day of Atonement procedures are prescribed,
and between this chapter and the rest of Leviticus have prevented considera-
tion of complementary ritual function.
1
They maintain that the texts record-
ing the rituals of the Day of Atonement and of other days were written by
different authors belonging to variant ritual traditions, and therefore, the ritu-
als that they reect would not have operated together within the same system.
Because our discussion will encounter the PH factor, throughout the
present work my references to P and H facilitate citation of relevant in-
terpretations of other scholars who use these conventions with reference to
priestly and holiness documents, sources, traditions, schools, or redac-
tions. While my work is likely to have implications for pentateuchal criticism,
my intention is to understand the theological meaning of the rites under
discussion rather than to enter the ongoing debate regarding the existence,
nature, and extent of P and H.
2
In the nal form of the biblical text, the Day of Atonement
rituals function within the larger system of Israelite rituals
While critics agree that Lev 116 is P material and acknowledge that in
its nal form these chapters present an integrated system of rituals,
3
they
identify diachronic layers of P authorship within this block. This approach
1. Cf. N. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering in the Priestly Literature: Its Meaning
and Function (JSOTSup 56; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1987) 144. In his comment on Lev
16:18, N. Snaith admits: We cannot marshal all the statements concerning altars and
sacrices and holy places into one coherent scheme (Leviticus and Numbers [CB,
new ed.; London: Nelson, 1967] 115).
2. For a similarly noncommital approach, see L. Grabbe, Leviticus (OTG; Shef-
eld: JSOT Press, 1993) 18.
3. See, e.g., R. Knierim, Text and Concept in Leviticus 1:19: A Case in Exegetical
Method (FAT 2; Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1992) 103.
Chapter 2 26
impedes consideration of complementary function because it is assumed that
rituals prescribed/described by different authors would not originally be in-
tended to work together as a system.
For example, J. Wellhausen regarded all of Exod 25Lev 16 as Priester-
codex, but not all of it as Q, the original source of P. He argued that Q did not
know an incense altar, and so he regarded Lev 16, where it is not mentioned,
as belonging to Q. But he assigned passages such as Exod 30:110 and Lev
4:321, where the incense altar appears, to later, secondary material. Accord-
ing to this inuential view, the Day of Atonement as legislated in Lev 16 did
not include purication of the incense altar, and it could not have had a
function complementary to the kind of purication offering that appears in
4:321 because the latter ritual form was not yet known.
4
I. Knohl supports
Wellhausens approach by stressing that, whereas Lev 9 and 16 refer to the
altar of burnt offering with the nonspecic term the altar, Lev 4 carefully
distinguishes between the two altars.
5
Wellhausen did not take into account the possibility that Lev 9 does not
need to mention the incense altar because it is not part of the ritual, and
4. J. Wellhausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bcher des
Alten Testaments (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963; orig. 1885) 13639, 14749; cf. idem, Pro-
legomena to the History of Ancient Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1994; repr. of 1885)
6566; A. Kuenen, An Historico-Critical Inquiry into the Origin and Composition of
the Hexateuch (trans. Wicksteed; London: Macmillan, 1886) 87 n. 23, 312; P. Hei-
nisch, Das Buch Leviticus (HSAT 1; Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1935) 77; cf. 7475;
Snaith, Leviticus and Numbers, 115. J. Porter maintains that the sprinkling of blood on
the ark cover corresponds to the rite of 4:7 and in later times the altar of incense also
gured in the ceremonial of the Day of Atonement (cp. Exod. 30:10) (Leviticus
[CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976] 130).
5. I. Knohl, The Sin Offering Law in the Holiness School [Numbers 15.2231],
in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel (ed. G. Anderson and S. Olyan; JSOTSup 125;
Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1991) 19597. Knohl also regards Exod 30:10 and Num 15, in-
cluding the purication offering law in vv. 2231, as belonging to H (for him HS =
Holiness School), which he places later than P (The Sin Offering Law, 197203).
On Exod 30:10 he explains: Verse 10 seems to have been added by HS editors, who
were attempting to add the incense altar to the list of appurtenances that are puried
in purication rites, described in Leviticus 16. This altar is not mentioned among
the ritual objects that must be puried. Support for this hypothesis comes from the
phrase once a year, common to our verse and the HS editorial addition in Lev 16:34
(The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School [Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1995] 29). Important for Knohls exclusion of the incense altar from the Day
of Atonement sacrices is his identication of the altar referred to in Lev 16 as the altar
for burnt offerings (with Ibn Ezra on v. 18 and Kuenen, An Historico-Critical Inquiry,
87 n. 23), against the view of the sages that it is the incense altar (Knohl, The Sanctu-
ary of Silence, 29 n. 62; cf. idem, The Priestly Torah versus the Holiness School: Sab-
bath and the Festivals, HUCA 58 [1987] 8788 n. 66).
The System of tafj Rituals 27
ch. 16 does not explicitly name it simply because v. 16:16b abbreviates the
prescription for the procedure in the outer sanctum: and thus he shall do for
the Tent of Meeting. So his diachronic argument was from silence. In an-
swer to Knohl, it could be that, since Lev 9 and 16 do not need to speak ex-
plicitly of the incense altar, their language lacks an adequate reason to
differentiate between the two altars.
C. Meyers argues against Wellhausens view that the prescription for the
incense altar in Exod 30:110 is secondary to and therefore later than the con-
ceptualization of the tabernacle in chs. 2529. She points out that archaeo-
logical materials and biblical passages external to P indicate that the incense
altar would have been part of the tabernacle/temple cult.
6
Therefore, place-
ment of 30:110 outside chs. 2529 is to be explained not in terms of the late-
ness of a legitimate incense altar, but because of the function of the incense
altar in relation to the inner logic of the tabernacle texts. Whereas the other
tabernacle furnishings are carefully placed in their respective zones of sanc-
tity, the incense altar in the middle of the sanctuary has functions relating not
only to the outer sanctum, where it is located, but also to the other zones: the
holy of holies and the outer altar in the court. Therefore, separate placement
of the prescription for the incense altar, rather than with instructions for the
table and lampstand in the outer sanctum, helps to preserve the graded co-
herence of the tabernacle according to bounded realms of sanctity.
7
6. C. Meyers, Realms of Sanctity: The Case of the Misplaced Incense Altar in
the Tabernacle Texts of Exodus, in Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Mena-
hem Haran (ed. M. Fox et al.; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1996) 37; contra
J. Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1994; repr. of 1885) 6567. Also contra Wellhausen, R. Rendtorff holds that Exod
30:10 must be seen together with Lev 16:1819 (Leviticus [BKAT 3; Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1985] 3:163, 213); cf. D. Hoffmann, who refers to 1 Kgs
6:22 and 7:48 as proof that there was a golden altar in Solomons temple (Das Buch Le-
viticus [Berlin: Poppelauer, 19056] 453). A. Finns argument against the idea that the
incense altar was a later addition was not as sophisticated as that of Meyers: he suggest-
ed that, if this object were of secondary importance, placement of the instructions for
its manufacture in Exod 30, along with other necessary items such as the laver, would
have been appropriate. Cases in which incense was burned on pans or censers (Lev
10:1; 16:12; Num 16:6, 7) were exceptional and do not prove that there was no altar for
the regular burning of incense (Notes and Studies: The Tabernacle Chapters, JTS
16 [1915] 47176).
7. Meyers, Realms of Sanctity, 3746. Meyerss argument is strengthened by a
correct understanding of Heb 9:4, which she misunderstands (with the nrsv and
many others) to mean that the incense altar is inside the Holy of Holies (p. 45). The
rsv accurately reects the Greek here: Behind the second curtain stood a tent
called the Holy of Holies, having (e cousa) the golden altar of incense and the ark of
the covenant (Heb 9:34; emphasis and Greek mine). This passage simply reects
Chapter 2 28
It is well known that Lev 16 employs some unusual terminology, most
prominently O; (vv. 2, 3, 16, 17, 20, 23, 27) and O; O;o (v. 33) with ref-
erence to the holy of holies, which is elsewhere called cO; O; (e.g.,
Exod 26:3334).
8
On the basis of such differences, critics have regarded at
least part of this chapter as produced by a phase of authorship distinct from
the phase that generated other parts of Lev 116.
9
J. Milgrom recognizes the uniqueness of Lev 16 but contends that its com-
bination of ritual purging and expulsion of evil is preexilic in origin, as con-
rmed by early attestation of the purgation-expulsion nexus in the ancient
Near East. He maintains that the Day of Atonement procedures are intended
by the biblical text to be functionally integrated with the other P rituals in a
dynamic system.
10
An important part of his support is to demonstrate how the
nxon sacrices can work together as a system: two kinds of purication offer-
ings outlined in Lev 4, which include applications of blood on the outer altar
and in the outer sanctum, functionally complement the special nxon sacri-
ces of the Day of Atonement, which extend blood applications all the way
into the inner sanctum (Lev 16).
11
8. E.g., M. Noth, Leviticus (trans. J. Anderson; OTL; London: SCM, 1965) 120,
126; K. Aartun, Studien zum Gesetz ber den grossen Vershnungstag Lv 16 mit
Varianten: Ein ritualgeschichtlicher Beitrag, ST 34 (1980) 7677.
9. Because the inner sanctum is simply O; in Lev 16:228, Milgrom holds that
this terminological anomaly is one of the many reasons for regarding vv 228 as com-
prising a discrete literary unit that was not originally composed by the author or redac-
tor of P (Leviticus 116 [AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991] 1013); cf., e.g., Noth,
Leviticus, 118; cf. 117, 119; Snaith, Leviticus and Numbers, 115.
10. See Milgroms massive study in Leviticus 116, esp. on Lev 4 and 16; cf. idem,
Day of Atonement as Annual Day of Purgation in Temple Times, EncJud 5:138486.
11. Idem, Leviticus 116, 25758; cf. idem, Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly Pic-
ture of Dorian Gray, RB 83 (1976) 39099. For other treatments of the nxon sacri-
ces, including those of the Day of Atonement, as a coherent system, see, for example,
Rendtorff, Leviticus, 3:21920; Kiuchi, The Purication Offering; D. Wright, The Dis-
posal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian
Literature (SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987); A. Marx, Sacrice pour les
pches ou rite de passage? Quelques rexions sur la fonction du aat, RB 96
(1989) 2748; F. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the
Priestly Theology (JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990); A. Schenker, Inter-
prtations rcentes et dimensions spciques du sacrice aat, Bib 75 (1994) 59
70; idem, Recht und Kult im Alten Testament (OBO 172; Freiburg: Universittsverlag /
Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000) 11322, repr. from Keine Vershnung
1 Kgs 6:22b: zI ox z"Ox naIo"a\ , even the whole altar that belonged to
the inner sanctuary he overlaid with gold. Here it is emphasized that the incense altar
has a function that pertains to the inner sanctum, even though it is located in the
outer sanctum. This supports Meyerss point: among the tabernacle furnishings, the
incense altar was unique in that its function transcended its bounded location.
spread is 12 points long
In further support of the functional integration of the Day of Atonement
rituals is the fact that instructions regarding them depend on information
found elsewhere.
12
For one thing, these instructions presuppose a fully oper-
ational sanctuary and corps of cultic personnel, as described elsewhere in the
Pentateuch. M. Rooker comments on Lev 16:
The literary dependence on the previous revelation given to Moses is, how-
ever, everywhere apparent. The chapter presumes the content of the previ-
ous section, Leviticus 1115, particularly 15:31, where uncleanness deles
the sanctuary. The Day of Atonement sacrices purify the sanctuary from
this delement. As will be shown, one of the main accomplishments of the
Day of Atonement is the purication of the tabernacle (16:1519). But
more than this, the Day of Atonement presumes the laws for sacrice (Lev
17) and the role of the priesthood (Lev 810); laws from both of these sec-
tions are critical for the execution of the Day of Atonement rituals.
13
Following are more specic ways in which the Day of Atonement prescrip-
tions in Lev 16 depend on other pentateuchal passages in the nal form of
the text:
1. Leviticus 16:1 introduces the Day of Atonement within a narrative
context by mentioning the death of Aarons sons, which occurred
during the inauguration of the sanctuary (10:12). So at least in the
nal form of the text, the overall narrative framework of Leviticus
embraces the complex of rituals that purge the sanctuary.
14
2. Leviticus 16:2 refers to God appearing in a cloud upon the ark cover.
This theophanic cloud is described more fully in Exod 40:3438 and
Num 9:1522.
12. Cf. B. Baentsch, who lists a number of connections between Lev 16 and
other P passages (Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri [HKAT; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1903] 37980).
13. M. Rooker, Leviticus (NAC 3A; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000) 212.
14. While Lev 16:1, referring to the death of Aarons sons, links the law-giving of
ch. 16 to the narrative of ch. 10, the appropriateness of the present placement of the
regulations regarding purities in chs. 1115 before those of the Day of Atonement in
ch. 16 has long been recognized by critics (e.g., Kuenen, An Historico-Critical Inquiry,
148; S. R. Driver, An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament [ITL; New
York: Scribners, 1897] 46; Noth, Leviticus, 14). J. Watts explains the placement of the
Day of Atonement prescriptions within the arrangement of Leviticus, which follows
topical logic: the days ceremonies presuppose both the sacricial instructions of Le-
viticus 17 and the purity regulations of chs. 1115, and they form a climactic conclu-
sion to the entire complex of cultic law. So the logic of list overrides the chronology of
story (Reading Law: The Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch [BSem 59; Shefeld:
Shefeld Academic Press, 1999] 87).
ohne Anerkennung der Haftung fr verursachten Schaden: Die Rolle von Haftung
und Intentionalitt in den Opfern nxon und cOx, ZABR 3 (1997) 16473.
Chapter 2 30
3. Leviticus 16:16b abbreviates the prescription for blood manipulations
in the outer sanctum by referring to the procedure followed in the
inner sanctum, where blood is applied once to the ark cover (noa) and
seven times in front of this object (vv. 1415). However, the outer
sanctum has no ark cover. So where should the blood go? Exodus 30:10
species the altar of incense in the outer sanctum as the recipient of
blood from the purication offering of purgation (coa nxon),
which is to be performed once a year.
15
4. Leviticus 16:16 and 21 assume knowledge of various kinds of evil that
affect the sanctuary, that is, n\xoo, impurities (cf. chs. 1115), n\xon,
sins (cf. chs. 45), and n\:\v, culpabilities (e.g., 5:1, 17).
5. Leviticus 16:24 (cf. vv. 3, 5) requires burnt offerings, without specifying
their procedure. The instructions in ch. 1 regarding this class of
sacrices must be assumed. Notice also the close association between
purication and burnt offerings on behalf of the priests and laity in
ch. 16, in harmony with the frequent combination of these kinds of
sacrices elsewhere (5:710; 9:716; 12:6, 8; 14:1920, 31; 15:15, 30;
Num 6:11; 8:12; 15:2425).
6. Leviticus 16:27 states that the carcasses of nxon animals are to be
incinerated outside the camp. Leviticus 4:12 species the precise
location of these disposals.
References or allusions to the Day of Atonement outside Lev 16 reinforce
the concept that its solemn rites belong to the larger system of Israelite cultic
practices.
1. As mentioned above, Exod 30:10 says that the incense altar is to be
purged once per year with blood from the purication offering of
purgation. This refers to the nxon procedure prescribed in Lev 16.
2. Leviticus 20:3 and Num 19:13, 20 indicate that some serious violations
of cultic laws, including through wanton neglect, dele Yhwhs
sanctuary when they are committed. These verses do not explain how
the sanctuary is cleansed from such pollution, but the rituals of the Day
of Atonement are an obvious solution.
16
15. For the rendering the purication offering of purgation, see Milgrom,
Leviticus 116, 1059.
16. Ibid., 25758. A. Rodrguez and A. Treiyer have argued that the delement of
the sanctuary referred to in Lev 20:3 and Num 19:13, 20 does not need to be purged
from the sanctuary through the Day of Atonement rituals because it is cleansed by the
destruction of the sinners themselves (A. Rodrguez, Transfer of Sin in Leviticus, in
3. In the context of instructions for Israelite festivals, Lev 23:2732
emphasizes the Day of Atonement requirements for the Israelites to
practice self-denial and abstain from work (cf. 16:29, 31), adds penalties
for noncompliance (23:2930), labels the tenth day of the seventh
month as coa c\, the Day of Atonement (v. 27; cf. v. 28), and
mentions the reason for the requirements: purgation (oa) on behalf of
the Israelites (v. 28b). This echoes 16:30, which states the same motive.
However, the oa procedure appears only in 16:1128.
17
4. In Lev 25:9, the Jubilee year begins on the tenth day of the seventh
month, on the Day of Atonement.
18
5. Numbers 29:711 includes the tenth day of the seventh month, that is,
the Day of Atonement (cf. Lev 16:29), in a calendar of festival days on
which sacrices supplementing the regular burnt offering are to be
performed on behalf of the community. On this day the people are to
practice self-denial (Num 29:7; cf. 16:29, 31), and a nxon goat is to be
offered in addition to the purication offering of purgation (v. 11; cf.
Exod 30:10; Lev 16:1128).
19
Challenges to the unity of Leviticus 16 do not prevent
consideration of the Day of Atonement rituals as a system
In 1876, H. Oort made the rst systematic attempt to separate the legisla-
tion of Lev 16 into different strata. He took the original law to consist of the
17. Cf. Kuenen, An Historico-Critical Inquiry, 312.
18. Cf. ibid.
19. Cf. ibid.; Rendtorff, Leviticus, 3:214. D. Baker suggests that coa nxon , the
purication offering of purgation, in Num 29:11 could be the full name of the non-
calendric nxon sacrice prescribed in Lev 4, since that is the function of the sacrice
there (Leviticus 17 and the Punic Tariffs: A Form Critical Comparison, ZAW 99
[1987] 195 n. 31). This idea could be supported by comparison with Num 5:8, where
coa "x , the ram of atonement, refers to an cOx, reparation offering, also a non-
calendric expiatory sacrice, which is prescribed in Lev 5:1426[6:7]; 7:17. However,
because the cultic calendar of Num 2829 deals with calendric rituals, coa nxon
in 29:11 does not refer to a noncalendric sacrice, in agreement with Exod 30:10,
where coa nxon purges the horns of the incense altar only once per year. So this
must be the special, annual nxon prescribed in Lev 16.
The Seventy Weeks, Leviticus, and the Nature of Prophecy [ed. F. Holbrook; DARCOM
3; Washington, D.C.: Biblical Research Institute, 1986] 169, 17477; A. Treiyer, The
Day of Atonement as Related to the Contamination and Purication of the Sanctu-
ary, in The Seventy Weeks, 19899, 2046). It is true that some kinds of serious sins
that dele the land or the community are purged by the deaths of the sinners who
have lived there (Num 35:33; Deut 17:7; 32:43). But there is no evidence that the
sanctuary is cleansed in this way.
Chapter 2 32
material dealing with purgation of the sanctuary (vv. 14, 11b14, 16, 18a, 19,
23, 24a, 25a, and 29a). This would have been expanded by incorporation of
other legislation regarding expiation for the people.
20
Subsequent attempts to
isolate the original nucleus of the chapter and trace the diachronic develop-
ment of its character began with those of B. Stade, I. Benzinger, N. Messel,
and S. Landersdorfer.
21
Implications of the composite approach for ritual analysis are profound: If
Lev 16 evolved through such literary synthesis of originally independent tra-
ditions and accretion of layers,
22
its rituals would not have been intended to
function together as a cohesive system complementing cultic procedures
elsewhere in Leviticus.
While the idea that Lev 16 is composite has been inuential, it has not
proven to be denitive. Already A. Kuenen responded to Oort:
In my opinion the cleansing of the sanctuary and that of the people
which surely belong to each other, since the uncleanness of the people
pollutes the sanctuary (cf. Ezek. xlv. 1820)were alike dealt with by the
20. H. Oort, De Groote Verzoendag, ThT 10 (1876) 14265.
21. B. Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (1888) 2:258; I. Benzinger, Das Gesetz
ber den Grossen Vershnungstag Lev. XVI, ZAW 9 (1889) 6589; N. Messel, Die
Komposition von Lev. 16, ZAW 27 (1907) 115; S. Landersdorfer, Studien zum bibli-
schen Vershnungstag (ATA 10; Mnster: Aschendorff, 1924) 14. In the introduction to
his own critical investigation of Lev 16, K. Aartun provides a helpful, brief sketch of
research history (Studien zum Gesetz ber den grossen Vershnungstag Lv 16 mit
Varianten: Ein ritualgeschichtlicher Beitrag, ST 34 [1980] 7476). Among critical
theories, A. Treiyer identies eleven kinds of divergent conclusions regarding the liter-
ary development of Lev 16 [The Day of Atonement and the Heavenly Judgment from
the Pentateuch to Revelation (Siloam Springs, Arkansas: Creation Enterprises, 1992]
10810).
22. R. de Vaux, for example, maintains that the text of Lev 16 was worked over sev-
eral times and combines rituals that differ in origin: An expiation for the sins of the
priesthood and the people is linked, apparently articially, with an expiation for the
sanctuary. To this combined levitical ritual is added the ancient custom of Azazels
goat, which has been exorcised so that its efcacy is due to Yhwh, before whom it is
initially presented (Les Sacrices de lAncien Testament [CahRB 1; Paris: Gabalda,
1964] 8687); cf. Heinisch, Das Buch Leviticus, 7780; T. Vriezen, The Term Hizza:
Lustration and Consecration, OtSt 7 (1950) 22331; H. Cazelles, Le Lvitique (La
Sainte Bible; 2nd ed.; Paris: Cerf, 1958) 7879; K. Elliger, Leviticus (HAT 4; Tbingen:
Mohr, 1966) 14, 200217; Snaith, Leviticus and Numbers, 10910, 115; Aartun, Stu-
dien, 73109; B. Janowski, Shne als Heilsgeschehen: Studien zur Suhnetheologie der
Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament
(WMANT 55; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982) 26671. A. Rodrguez
supplies bibliography for and against the unity of Lev 16 (Substitution in the Hebrew
Cultus [AUSDS 3; Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979] 112
nn. 23).
original lawgiver himself. The attempt to separate the two has accordingly
failed. . . . The order of the ceremony in Lev. xvi. answers, mutatis mutan-
dis, to Lev. ix.; while Lev. xiv. 6, 7, 52, 53 are analogous to Lev. xvi. 20
b
22,
the sending away of the goat for Azazel; so that from this point of view
likewise we nd nothing to militate against the unity and originality of
Lev. xvi.
23
S. R. Driver also reacted:
though the proposed analysis is very suggestive, it may be doubted whether
the stages through which the ritual passed are fully represented by it: v. 33
(cf. 23:28b) appears to presuppose more special rites than the nucleus of
the ch., as thus dened, makes provision for.
24
M. Noth found that, because of the complexity of the material, all attempts
hitherto at factual and literary analysis have not led to at all convincing re-
sults. But the fact itself, that the chapter came into being through an elabo-
rate process of growth, is generally recognized and accepted.
25
J. Porter identies a coherent literary structure in Lev 16: vv. 110 are con-
cerned with preliminaries, vv. 1128 detail the principal ceremonies, and
vv. 2934 comprise a nal systematizing summary.
26
The idea that the chap-
ter comprises an introduction, body, and conclusion explains at least some of
its repetitions and discontinuities. At the same time, Porter sees in the content
of Lev 16 a combination of three distinct ritual concerns, each of which
23. Kuenen, An Historico-Critical Inquiry, 86 n. 23; cf. 82.
24. Driver, An Introduction, 47; cf. S. R. Driver and H. White, The Book of Leviti-
cus (SBONT 3; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1898) 7980. A. Chapman and A. Streane
concluded a review of attempts by critics such as Oort, Benzinger, Bertholet, Stade,
and Messel to trace the redactional development of Lev 16: it will be noticed that
what to one critic appears primary is secondary in the estimation of another, and that
a group of verses which is treated as a whole by one is disintegrated by others. It should
be also remembered that keen and competent critics (e.g., Kuenen) were content to
leave the chapter as a whole. From these facts it seems that two inferences may fairly
be drawn: (1) that the ceremonial here prescribed is put forward in a developed form
as suitable for a single occasion; and (2) that an examination of the existing text does
not supply a sufciently rm basis for tracing the steps of its development (The Book
of Leviticus [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914] 166). Compare B. Eerd-
mans, except that he regarded Lev 16:2933, directed to the Israelites rather than just
to the high priest, as not originally belonging to Lev 16 (Das Buch Leviticus [ATS 4;
Giessen: Alfred Tpelmann, 1912] 7376). While A. Noordtzij does not believe that
the nal form of Lev 16 was put together all at once, he nds insufcient evidence
for dating literary layers to different times (Leviticus [trans. R. Togtman; BSC; Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1982] 164, 170, 172; cf. 6).
25. Noth, Leviticus, 117.
26. Porter, Leviticus, 124. While Porter has a solid grasp of the structure of Lev 16,
Noth is confused (Leviticus, 121; cf. 12324).
Chapter 2 34
originally had its own background and signicance: rules for the high priest
to enter the inner sanctum, rituals of purication, and the ritual of Azazels
goat that carries away the sins of the people.
27
While N. Kiuchi does not attempt to deny the theory that Lev 16 is a com-
posite literary structure, he holds that the atonement theology expressed
through the ritual in Lev 16 is far more coherent than has hitherto been
thought.
28
Critics commonly regard vv. 2934 as a later appendix/insertion because
these verses (1) shift from third-person to second-person plural address,
(2) employ some unusual language, such as O; O;o for the inner sanc-
tum in v. 33 rather than O;, which appears in vv. 2, 3, 16, 17, 23, 27, and
(3) parallel 23:2632 in that they x the Day of Atonement to a particular
date and require self-denial and rest from work.
29
W. Kornfeld holds that
vv. 2934 took these elements (calendric placement, self-denial, rest) from
the Holiness Code (23:2632).
30
According to Milgrom, purgation of the
whole sanctuary (vv. 128) was originally an emergency measure from an
older P source, rather than an annual event with a xed date,
31
and 16:29
34a (plus Exod 30:10) is tacked on from H, whom he believes (with I. Knohl)
to be the nal redactor of P.
32
To sum up, an ancient rite for purging the
sanctuary was restructured by Israel to include the purging of the nations
sins, then xed as an annual observance for the Tenth of Tishri and, -
nallyafter the Exilesupplemented by prescriptions for self-denial.
33
For Knohl, the original PT (= Priestly Torah) version of Lev 16 covered
the full prescription for purication rites (vv. 128), without establishing a
specic date for the procedures.
34
Quite similarly to Kornfeld and Milgrom,
he concludes that the end of the chapter was added by editors belonging to
27. Porter, Leviticus, 124.
28. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 143; cf. 162.
29. See, e.g., Noth, Leviticus, 117, 126; Elliger, Leviticus, 14, 201, 207, 209, 217;
A. Ehrlich, Randglossen zur Hebrischen Bibel: Textkritisches, Sprachliches und Sach-
liches (Hildesheim: Olms, 1968) 2:58; Aartun, Studien, 9899.
30. W. Kornfeld, Levitikus (NEchtB 6; Wrzburg: Echter, 1983) 66.
31. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 106163; idem, Leviticus 1722 (AB 3A; New York:
Doubleday, 2000) 1347; cf. A. Dillmann, who identied an initial emergency: desecra-
tion of the sanctuary by Nadab and Abihu (Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus [Leipzig:
Hirzel, 1897] 571).
32. J. Milgrom, Atonement, Day of, IDBSup, 83; idem, Day of Atonement as
Annual Day of Purgation, 138687; idem, Leviticus 116, 6263, 105354; 106265;
idem, Leviticus 1722, 1343; cf. D. Wright, Day of Atonement, ABD 2:7475; Knohl,
The Sanctuary of Silence.
33. Milgrom, Day of Atonement as Annual Day of Purgation, 1387.
34. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 28; cf. idem, The Priestly Torah, 87.
what he calls the Holiness School (HS). He attributes this passage to HS on
the basis of similarities with the wording of portions of the Day of Atonement
passage in ch. 23 that he ascribes to HS, the fact that in 16:29 the sojourner is
enjoined to observe the law, as elsewhere in HS material, and use of ter-
minology distinct from terminology used earlier in the chapter (e.g., O;o
O; in v. 33).
35
The HS editors bracketed their addition with the resump-
tive repetition of the phrase, And this shall be to you a law for all time (v. 29a,
and almost identically in v. 34aa).
36
F. Gorman acknowledges that vv. 2934 are usually considered a later ad-
dition because of their shift to second-person plural address. But he views the
summary in these verses as an important level of tradition that would be sig-
nicant for understanding the chapters structure of meaning even if ele-
ments of the present text were originally separate.
37
Whatever the actual history of the Day of Atonement procedure and text
prescribing it may be, there is no doubt that this is one of the most complex
rituals to have reached us from any ancient society.
38
But the fact that some
other ancient Near Eastern ritual texts reect highly elaborate cultic perfor-
mances
39
recommends caution before we assume that such a ritual could
only develop by literary accretion.
Supporting the unity of the text at least in its nal form, W. Warning has
found that a tenfold distribution of the verb x\z, come, enhances the
structural cohesion of Lev 16:228.
40
More signicantly, he identies a chias-
tically arranged sevenfold structure involving repetition of the noun z, gar-
ment (vv. 4, 23, 24, 26, 28, 32ba, 32bb), which crosses the boundary between
vv. 128 and 2934.
41
In a paper presented at the 2001 annual meeting of the Society of Biblical
Literature in Denver,
42
B. Schwartz grappled with a number of key textual
issues and thereby made a compelling case for the unity of Lev 16 and the rit-
uals that it prescribes. His main points are as follows:
35. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 2728, 105; cf. idem, The Priestly Torah,
8692.
36. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 28; cf. idem, The Priestly Torah, 87.
37. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 63, 6667, 7173.
38. B. Levine, Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publica-
tion Society, 1989) 99. My detailed analysis of the Day of Atonement ritual complex
in comparison with elaborate Babylonian and Hittite festival days supports Levines as-
sessment (R. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure [Gorgias Dissertations 14, Religion 2;
Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias, 2004] 288326.
39. See, e.g., ibid., 229323, 36068, 391423.
40. W. Warning, Literary Artistry in Leviticus (BIS 35; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 12426.
41. Ibid., 8788.
42. Paper title: The Literary and Ritual Unity of Leviticus 16.
Chapter 2 36
1. Contra the popular view that the Day of Atonement ceremony (ch. 16)
somehow has the purpose of remedying evil brought about by the tragic de-
mise of Nadab and Abihu (ch. 10), Schwartz argues against a strong concep-
tual connection between chs. 10 and 16. In 16:1 the words after the death of
the two sons of Aaron . . . are spoken by the narrator, rather than by God to
Moses and/or Aaron. So rather than warning the priests on the basis of tragic
precedent, these words merely indicate that the instructions in ch. 16 were
given after Nadab and Abihu died. The words when they drew near only de-
scribe, but do not explain, the circumstances of their death. They did not die
because they came near to Yhwh, and neither would the priests die if they
approached him to minister in the tabernacle.
2. Since v. 1 only provides the narrators explanation of the sequence in
which the laws were givench. 10, followed by ch. 16, and then chs. 1115
to explain the impurities that would be cleansed by the sanctuarythey pro-
vide no evidence for stages of textual development. Therefore, Schwartz con-
cludes that the arrangment of material is that of the original priestly author.
3. Against the idea that the Day of Atonement ceremonies were originally
an entrance ritual, by which the high priest could gain access to the place
where Yhwh was enshrined, Schwartz contends that the priest would not de-
sire to make such a dangerous approach but was required to do so for the nec-
essary task of purifying the inner sanctum so that Yhwhs residence there
could continue.
4. Against the theory that vv. 2934a, specifying an annual date and requir-
ing self-denial and rest, are later than the rest of Lev 16 and stem from H,
Schwartz dismisses alleged terminological and stylistic inconsistencies with P
in these verses as inconclusive, shows that P often gives instructions before ex-
plaining their purpose (cf. esp. Num 19), and points out that active participa-
tion of those whose impurities and sins are being ritually purged by a nxon
sacrice would be essential for P.
Even if a composite prehistory of Lev 16 and/or the rituals that it reects
were proved, which it is not, the fact that the nal form of the biblical text
presents the Day of Atonement rituals together as a system that is functionally
integrated within the larger system of Israelite rituals would justify synchronic
study at this stage of literary presentation.
43
As R. Knierim observes, Old Tes-
43. Cf. Rendtorff, Leviticus, 2:160; 3:21920; idem, How to Approach Leviticus,
Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division A: The Bible and
Its World (ed. D. Assaf; Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1990) 16; Kiuchi,
The Purication Offering, 14445; Jenson, Graded Holiness, 197. Commenting on the
tament scholarship has recognized the need for taking the nal text seriously
in its own right, regardless whether one claims for it an author, a redactor, or
a composer.
44
An investigation into the meaning/function of a ritual at a stage for which
evidence is extant need not be crippled by lack of a solid prehistory any more
than semantic study of a word should be fatally awed by insufcient etymo-
logical background. Linguists have demonstrated that the way in which a
word is used in a given period determines its meaning during that period.
While etymology is interesting and important, it is not a safe guide to mean-
ing.
45
Similarly, the origin of a ritual does not determine some kind of invari-
able essential meaning but, rather, the meaning of a given ritual activity
resides in the way it is used and understood by a particular group of people
according to the system of concepts that belongs to their cultural system.
46
Normative ritual meaning can be xed by a religious authority, including one
believed to be a deity, such as Yhwh. But although this meaning may be held
to originate from a source outside of or transcending the culture in which the
ritual operates, it nevertheless functions within the cultural context.
47
Scholars present diverse interpretations regarding the role of
the special Day of Atonement services
Among those who interpret the Day of Atonement services within the func-
tional context of the Israelite ritual system, there is a bewildering variety of
44. R. Knierim, Review of The Book of Leviticus. By Gordon J. Wenham,
Encounter 44 (1983) 308.
45. See, e.g., J. Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (London: SCM / Phila-
delphia: Trinity, 1961) 10760.
46. R. Hendel, Sacrice as a Cultural System: The Ritual Symbolism of Exodus
24,38, ZAW 101 (1989) 36970, 389; cf. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, esp. 1419.
47. Glenn Hartelius (Santa Rosa, California) suggests that ritual is between culture
and the transcendent (personal communication).
fact that Milgroms Leviticus commentary deals with the level of meaning found in
the texts nal form, G. Anderson approves: Perhaps nowhere more than in the Book
of Leviticus could such a methodological presupposition be better founded, for no-
where else in the Bible has source criticism been more controversial and harder to em-
ploy than here (Review of Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 116: A New Translation with
Introduction and Commentary, CBQ 55 [1993] 762). Along similar lines, F. Crse-
mann

says that the text should rst be interpreted, even in its details, in conjunction
with the entire P system (The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament
Law [trans. A. Mahnke; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996] 313 n. 186), and Watts contends
that methodologically the text must be read sympathetically (i.e., described as it
stands) before historical questions and evidence can be adduced from it (Reading
Law, 132).
Chapter 2 38
opinion. J. Calvin viewed the Day as providing simply a yearly reafrmation
on the corporate level of expiation that has already been granted to individual
Israelites throughout the year.
48
However, many scholars have understood its
unique procedures to serve as a dynamic complement to the other sacrices
by providing one or more aspects of expiation that have not already been
received.
Of the latter group, some see the role of the Day of Atonement rituals as
removal of imperfections that have not already been remedied by expiatory
sacrices,
49
whether (1) because these evils have not been recognized,
50
or
(2) because they are too serious to remove through other sacrices (e.g.,
m. Yoma 8:8; t. Yoma 4.7). Emphasizing the latter reason, Milgrom explains
the nxon sacrices of the Day of Atonement as uniquely purging from the
sanctuary pollution that has been caused by the aerial penetration of wan-
ton, unrepented sin all the way into the inner sanctum, thereby complement-
ing the function of purication offerings throughout the year that remedy
lesser penetrations of inadvertent offenses to the outer altar or outer sanc-
tum.
51
Similarly, R. Rendtorff holds that on the Day of Atonement the sanc-
tuary is cleansed from the impurity caused by all the happenings for which
atonement could not be made,
52
that is, from the kinds of evil for which the
48. J. Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form
of a Harmony (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996) 1:31314.
49. G. Bush, Notes, Critical and Practical, on the Book of Leviticus (New York: Ivi-
son & Phinney, 1857) 164; Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri, 385; A. Clamer, Lvi-
tique, Nombres, Deutronome (La Sainte Bible 2; Paris: Letouzey et An, 1946) 127.
50. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952 [orig. 1874]) 2:39495; C. Feinberg, The Scapegoat of
Leviticus Sixteen, BSac 115 (1958) 320; A. Schenker, Interprtations rcentes, 67.
Schenker places the function of the Day of Atonement rituals within the context of
his proposal for the ways in which the Israelite expiatory system deals comprehensive-
ly with various categories of sin, including intentional sin (burnt offering), inadvertent
sins of commission (purication offering), and inadvertent sins of commission that
remain undetected for a long time (reparation offering; Der Unterschied zwischen
Sndopfer chaat und Schuldopfer ascham im Licht von Lv 5,1719 und 5,16,
Pentateuchal and Deuteronomistic Studies: Papers Read at the XIIIth IOSOT Con-
gress, Leuven 1989 [ed. C. Brekelmans and J. Lust; BETL 94; Leuven: Leuven Uni-
versity Press, 1990] 12123). C. Ginsburg believes that the Day of Atonement is an
annual supplement and completion of the other cultic practices in that it atones for
imperfections and sins that have been mixed up with and have tainted even the sa-
cred worship throughout the year (Leviticus [ed. C. Ellicott; LHC; Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1961] 146).
51. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 25758; cf. idem, Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly
Picture of Dorian Gray.
52. R. Rendtorff, The Old Testament: An Introduction (trans. John Bowden; Phila-
delphia: Fortress, 1985) 146.
offender is condemned to extirpation or death, without an opportunity to re-
ceive the benet of sacricial expiation.
M. M. Kalisch emphasized a general kind of imperfection, which would
be difcult to recognize and remedy in a tidy way: the Day of Atonement is
essentially the institution of sin-offerings concentrated and intensied,
53
but
unlike those sacrices, its expiation did not concern special offences, but the
human weakness in general which cannot be admitted into a communion of
God except by an act of grace and mercy.
54
Recognizing the comprehensive language of Lev 16:16 (cnxon "a, all
their sins; cf. vv. 212) and unique usage of o for moral cleansing in v. 30,
some have held that the Day of Atonement remedies all sins with which the
Israelites soil themselves during the course of the previous year.
55
Along
these lines, F. Crsemann nds that the reiteration of all ("a) in this chap-
ter (vv. 16, 17, 21, 30, 34) in connection with a variety of important terms for
sin emphasizes the comprehensiveness of the atonement and elimination of
the nations sins.
Of course, the restrictions of Lev 4:2 or 4:13 have been overcome. We are
no longer dealing exclusively with sins committed unintentionally, this
means all sin. There can be no doubt, on the basis of the overall view of
priestly theology, that an annual, complete cleansing of the entire nation is
what is intended.
56
Similarly, A. Schenker believes that the blood applications of the special
sacrices of the Day of Atonement have the same function for forgiveness as
in other nxon sacrices, but without limitation in coverage of guilt.
57
At the
same time, the blood puries the cult, signifying that God himself must heal
it from damage done to it through human fallibility.

In this way Yhwh restores
the integrity of his relationship with Israel at the beginning of each year.
58
53. M. M. Kalisch, A Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testament,
with a New Translation: Leviticus (2 vols.; London: Longman, Green, Reader, and
Dyer, 186772) 2:174.
54. Ibid., 1:173. Cf. E. Gerstenberger: Through transgressions against the com-
mandments, the community of faith was continually heaping guilt upon itself; and
because God dwelled in his house in the midst of this awed and guilt-ridden people,
some portion of the substance of that sin was also bound to come into contact with
and taint the sanctuary despite all cautionary measures (Leviticus: A Commentary
[trans. D. Stott; OTL; Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 1996] 218).
55. See rabbinic sources cited by A. Bchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the
Rabbinic Literature of the First Century (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1967) 302.
56. Crsemann, The Torah, 314.
57. A. Schenker, Vershnung und Shne (BibB 15; Freiburg: Katholisches Bibel-
werk, 1981) 114.
58. Ibid., 114, 116; cf. 113.
Chapter 2 40
Some scholars have argued that the Day of Atonement rituals provide a
second stage of atonement (oa) with regard to all or at least some of the same
imperfections for which a rst stage has already been accomplished through
individual expiatory sacrices. Thus A. Rodrguez summarizes with regard to
the nxon sacrice: Through the ritual sin is brought to the sanctuary. There
it is kept until its nal removal on the Day of Atonement.
59
J. H. Kurtz found
the language of Lev 16:16 to indicate that the Day of Atonement ceremony
remedies all the sins of the whole nation without exception, known or un-
known, atoned for or not atoned for.
60
Similarly, S. Kellogg included in the
scope of the Day of Atonement both sins that have already been handled by
ordinary nxon sacrices and those that have been overlooked.
61
In Kiuchis understanding, the instructions in Lev 45 enable the Israelites
to attain forgiveness for their individual sins during the time between one Day
of Atonement and another, but the basic yearly purication from all their sins
(16:30, 34) is connected with the crucial purication of the sanctuary.
62
He
maintains that all the sins over a certain period of time are envisaged as being
atoned for again on the day of Atonement by the most potent blood manipu-
lation.
63
For him this is not only repetition, but completion of a process:
it is possible to hold that by purifying sancta Aaron bears the guilt associ-
ated with uncleanness, and that he lays it on the head of the Azazel goat
when he confesses the sins of all the Israelites. On this interpretation the
Azazel-goat ritual can be seen to meet the demand in Lev 10.1620 that the
guilt Aaron bears as the head of the house must be removed.
64
According to Kiuchi, the high priests blood manipulations in the outer
sanctum for his own sin or that of the community (Lev 4) serve as a provi-
Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979) 136; cf. 219, 3057; cf. G. F. Hasel, Studies
in Biblical Atonement I: Continual Sacrice, Delement / / Cleansing and Sanctuary,
The Sanctuary and the Atonement: Biblical, Historical, and Theological Studies (ed.
A. Wallenkampf; Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1981) 93107; idem, Studies
in Biblical Atonement II: The Day of Atonement, The Sanctuary and the Atonement,
11525; Treiyer, The Day of Atonement and the Heavenly Judgment, 147212.
60. J. H. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship of the Old Testament (trans. J. Martin; Minne-
apolis: Klock & Klock, 1980; repr. of 1863) 386.
61. S. Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus (EB; New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900) 257,
259.
62. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 15659; cf. Rendtorff, Leviticus, 3:222.
63. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 159.
64. Ibid., 163. Cf. the less-complicated interpretation of G. Knight that, after all the
sacrices for specic sins and impurities, the once-per-year sacrice of Yhwhs goat as-
sures the Israelites that God indeed forgives sins, and the ritual with Azazels goat deals
sional, temporary measure, foreshadowing full elimination of their grave sins
that requires the special purication offerings of the Day of Atonement.
65
The conclusion of the instructions for the purication offering on behalf of
the high priest (4:1012) lacks a notice that he receives expiation (oa), such
as appears at the end of other prescriptive units (vv. 20, 26, 31, 35). So his
need for expiation, foreshadowed by sprinkling blood in the outer sanctum as
close to the inner sanctum as possible (v. 6), is fullled on the Day of Atone-
ment, when he receives oa by bringing blood into the inner sanctum to the
ark cover (16:14; cf. vv. 6, 11).
66
Thus the high priests case is unique in that
his sin is treated twice by nxon sacrices, but he receives expiation only
once, on the Day of Atonement.
The view of C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch is a sort of hybrid that combines
different interpretations. They regarded the single applications of blood from
the bull and goat upon the ark cover, the incense altar, and the outer altar on
the Day of Atonement as expiating the sins of the priests and laity corpo-
rately, just as nxon sacrices throughout the year expiate for individuals. On
the Day of Atonement the expiation is greater in that blood is taken into the
inner sanctum, the throne room of Yhwh, to obtain true reconciliation
with him in his direct presence. However, Keil and Delitzsch assigned an-
other kind of meaning to the sevenfold sprinklings in the two apartments and
on the outer altar: to expiate these parts of the sanctuary from the sins of the
Israelites.
67
B. Baentsch had a different hybrid. The blood manipulations of the nxon
bull on behalf of the priests purify the priests themselves, but the blood of the
goat for the people purges the sanctuary (16:1519), which has been infected
during the course of the year by the sins and impurities of the surrounding
Israelites to the extent that these evils have not already been remedied by ex-
piatory sacrices in the course of the year. He views the ritual of Azazels goat
65. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 129; cf. Rendtorff, Leviticus, 3:16263.
66. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 12630; cf. Rendtorff, Leviticus, 2:15960; cf.
3:173, 221, 224.
67. Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary, 399402. They saw the cleansing of
the sanctuary as expiation in the sense that the sin-destroying virtue of the blood
works on objects in the same way that it works upon persons and identied the un-
cleanness of the Israelites that is purged from the sanctuary as the ideal efuence of
their sins, which had been transferred to the objects in question (p. 402). For the idea
that Day of Atonement expiation is greater because blood is brought closer to Yhwh,
cf. Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus, 264; Gerstenberger, Leviticus, 215.
with the effect of sins that remains after forgiveness (Leviticus [DSB; Edinburgh: Saint
Andrew / Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981] 92; cf. 88, 91).
Chapter 2 42
(vv. 2022) as purifying the people from all the sins (not only the cultic ones)
that they have committed in the last year.
68
Conclusion
Whatever the prehistory of the pentateuchal cultic legislation may have
been, the nal form of the biblical text presents its rituals throughout the year
and on the Day of Atonement as a functionally integrated system. Amid on-
going debates regarding the authorship/redaction of passages such as Lev 4
and 16 and diachronic relationships between them, we can justify a syn-
chronic approach that investigates the meanings of the rituals as the nal text,
our primary source of data, presents them.
The vast array of scholarly opinions regarding the special role of the Day
of Atonement services reveals the vexing complexity of this topic, which is
crucial for understanding the nature of ancient Israelite religion. We are left
with major questions: Do the Day of Atonement procedures duplicate or
complete the oa process accomplished by expiatory sacrices earlier in the
year? If the latter, does this completion treat only evils that have not already
been remedied, or does it deal with at least some of the same sins a second
time to provide a kind of oa that goes beyond forgiveness? In the remainder
of this book, I will relentlessly pursue solid answers to these questions.
68. Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri, 381, 38385.
Part 2
Purication Offerings Performed
throughout the Year
45
Chapter 3
Outer-Altar Purication Offerings
Throughout the year, two basic kinds of purication offering were re-
quired to remedy inadvertent sins when the sinners realized what they had
done.
1
If the anointed priest, that is, high priest,
2
or the entire community
had sinned (Lev 4:312, 1321, respectively), the sacricial blood was to be
manipulated in the outer sanctum of the Sacred Tent (vv. 67, 1718).
3
On
the other hand, if a chieftain or commoner had sinned (vv. 2226, 2735,
1. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 26164; cf. idem,
Two Kinds of aat, VT 26 (1976) 33337.
2. It is true that anointing oil was applied to ordinary priests (Exod 29:21; 40:1415;
Lev 8:30). But Aaron, the rst high priest, had a special anointing (Exod 29:7; Lev
8:12), and in Lev 6:15[22] it is clear that the anointed priest is the high priest in
Aarons line of succession (cf. Exod 29:2930).
3. On the basis of Exod 29:12 and Lev 9:9, 15, where Aaron performs outer altar
rather than outer sanctum purication offerings on behalf of himself and the com-
munity, N. Messel claimed that at an earlier time the purication offering of the high
priest and the community did not involve blood applications inside the Sacred Tent
(Die Komposition von Lev. 16, ZAW 27 [1907] 9; cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 581,
63637; B. Janowski, Shne als Heilsgeschehen: Studien zur Shnetheologie der Pries-
terschrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament [WMANT 55;
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982] 22728). However, the rituals in
Exod 29 and Lev 9 are required for their contribution to the unique processes of initial
consecration and inauguration of the cult (cf. F. Gorman, Divine Presence and Com-
munity: A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus [ITC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1997] 62; N. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering in the Priestly Literature: Its Meaning
and Function [JSOTSup 56; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1987] 4446). It is true that else-
where the requirement for performance of a purication offering is generated by an
occasion of sin, when that sin becomes known to the offerer. So it is difcult to argue
that the consecration and inauguration purication offerings are only for suspected
sins (Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 581). However, like calendric purication offerings per-
formed at festivals (Num 28:15, 22; 29:5, 11, etc.), the time when the consecration and
inauguration sacrices were performed was preset by Yhwh rather than being deter-
mined on an ad hoc basis by the offerer(s) in response to the requirement for remedy-
ing a specic sin. So perhaps we can understand the difference in the loci of blood
applications in terms of ritual function, without resorting to a diachronic resolution
and/or a theory of differing authorship (for such a source theory, see of course, J. Well-
hausen, Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bcher des Alten Testa-
ments [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963; orig. 1885] 13637).
Chapter 3 46
respectively), blood was to be applied to the outer altar of burnt offering in
the courtyard (vv. 25, 30, 34). Thus we can refer to the two kinds of nxon sac-
rices as outer-sanctum and outer-altar purication offerings.
Not performed throughout the year was a third kind of purication offer-
ing, reserved only for the Day of Atonement, during which the high priest ap-
plied blood in the inner sanctum, as well as the outer sanctum, and to the
outer altar (Lev 16:1419). While this special sacrice is termed coa nxon,
the purication offering of atonement (Exod 30:10; Num 29:11), for conve-
nience we can label it the inner-sanctum purication offering.
For now we will focus on the offerings performed throughout the year.
Further differentiating the outer-altar and outer-sanctum kinds was the fact
that an ofciating priest was to eat the remainder of an outer-altar offering
(Lev 6:19[26], 22[29]) unless the sacrice was on behalf of himself (9:811).
But an outer-sanctum offering was never to be eaten by the ofciant, in this
case the high priest (6:23[30]).
Our task in this chapter and the next is to investigate the way in which
the two kinds of purication offering carried meaning in the form of goals
assigned to their activities. Since the blood applications of the outer-altar
offering are simpler, I will begin with analysis of this type.
The prescriptive paradigm for noncalendric outer-altar purication offer-
ings appears three times in Lev 4:2235 to allow for variations with regard to
the offerer and the animal victim. A chieftain was to offer a male goat (vv. 22
26), but a commoner was to bring either a female goat (vv. 2731) or a female
sheep (vv. 3235). Since the meaning and activities performed in each case
are the same, we can focus on the sacrice of the chieftain and refer to that
of the commoner as necessary.
Below is Jacob Milgroms translation of Lev 4:2226, with instructions for
ritual activities shown in italics and indications of meaning attached to these
activities in bold type. Note that following preliminary conveyance of the ani-
mal to the sanctuary, where it is undoubtedly examined by cultic functionar-
ies to determine that it is unblemished (4:23; cf. 22:1825) and therefore t
for its ritual function, activities belonging to the ritual proper begin in v. 24.
4
22
When the chieftain does wrong by violating any of Yhwhs prohibitive
commandments inadvertently, and he feels guilt
23
or he is informed of the
wrong he committed, he shall bring as his offering a male goat without
4. Unlike W. Kaiser (The Book of Leviticus, NIB 1:1010), I do not nd in the text
a (formal) presentation of the victim before hand-leaning as the initial component of
a sacricial ritual.
Outer-Altar Purication Offerings 47
blemish.
24
He shall lean his hand upon the goats head, and it shall be
slaughtered at the spot where the burnt offering is slaughtered, before Yhwh:
it is a purication offering.
25
The priest shall take some of the blood of the
purication offering with his nger and put it on the horns of the altar of
burnt offering; and (the rest of) its blood he shall pour out at the base of the
altar of burnt offering.
26
All of its suet he shall turn into smoke on the altar,
like the suet of the well-being offering. Thus shall the priest effect purgation
on his behalf for his wrong, that he may be forgiven.
5
mentioned in the text and others that are not
Reconstructing the activity procedure begins with ritual activities explic-
itly mentioned in the text. In Lev 4:2226 these include:
lean hand on head of animal
slay animal
put some blood on horns of outer altar
pour remaining blood at base of altar
burn suet on altar
Verse 26 abbreviates by referring to the well-being (co"O) offering for speci-
cation of the suet parts of the chieftains goat to be turned into smoke on the
altar.
6
This refers to 3:14b15, which details the suet of well-being offering
goats:
14
. . . the suet that covers the entrails and all the suet that is around the en-
trails;
15
the two kidneys and the suet that is around them on the sinews; and
the caudate lobe on the liver, which he shall remove with the kidneys.
7
In addition to the activities explicitly prescribed in Lev 4:2226, the following
must be included in the chieftains purication offering:
8
5. Translation by J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1722 (AB 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000)
1272; cf. idem, Leviticus 116, 227.
6. M. Noth mistakenly takes the economy of abbreviations referring to the well-
being offering procedure that recur in the context of instructions for purication offer-
ings (Lev 4:10, 26, 31, 35) to indicate that the purication offering is a special kind of
well-being offering (Leviticus [trans. J. E. Anderson; OTL; London: SCM, 1965] 37).
7. Translatation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1270; cf. idem, Leviticus 116, 203.
8. Leviticus 2:13b requires salt with every offering. However, the addition of salt is
not included in the procedural paradigm of any pentateuchal ritual, suggesting that
the activity is preliminary to the commencement proper of a given ritual. This is sup-
ported by Ezek 43:24, where two animals are presented before Yhwh, that is, brought
to the court of the temple, priests throw salt on them, and then they are sacriced as a
burnt offering. In m. Tamid 4:3, Ezekiels procedure is not followed: the regular burnt
offering and its cereal accompaniment are salted after the animal is cut up into pieces.
Chapter 3 48
1. Collecting/receiving the blood from the animal at the time of slaughter
is necessary before the priest can apply it to the altar. Although the
Pentateuch never explicitly refers to this activity, it does appear in
connection with burnt offerings in 2 Chr 29:22.
2. The fact that the suet is burned on the altar implies that it is rst
removed from the animal. Leviticus 4:31 and 35 prescribe such
removal in the context of purication offerings on behalf of commoners
(cf. vv. 89, 19 and 3:4, 9, 15).
3. The priest must present (hipil of z;) the blood, that is, formally
convey it, to the altar before he applies it there (cf. 1:5).
9
4. The priest must present the suet to the altar before he burns it there
(cf. 1:13).
5. The ofciating priest must eat the meat of the outer-altar purication
offering (6:19[26], 22[29]).
The fuller list of activities included in the outer-altar purication offering
is as follows:
slay animal
collect blood
present blood to outer altar
put some blood on horns of altar
remove suet
present suet to altar
burn suet on altar
eat meat
In terms of mere physical cause and effect, the collection of activities just
listed is an inefcient way to feed a priest: leaning one hand on the head of
an animal and applying its blood and suet to an altar have no practical func-
tion in the mundane sphere. Such impracticality is common in ritual be-
cause the goal of a ritual transcends what can be achieved through ordinary
physical means alone.
10
There is an important sense in which a ritual goal
may be regarded as practical, but this involves a higher level of practicality,
9. On the hipil of z; for cultic conveyance/presentation, see R. Gane and
J. Milgrom, z; qarab, TDOT 13:14243.
cataway, New Jersey: Gorgias, 2004) 4344, 55, 58; cf. F. Staal, Rules without Meaning:
Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences (New York: Peter Lang, 1989) 132.
spread 6 points long
such as reestablishing good relations with a deity in order to receive his bless-
ings instead of punishment.
11
The overall goal/meaning of an outer-altar purication
prerequisite to forgiveness
In Lev 4:24, 26 we nd indications of the goal/meaning (bold type) attached
to the activities (italics) that belong to the chieftains purication offering:
24
He shall lean his hand upon the goats head, and it shall be slaughtered at
the spot where the burnt offering is slaughtered, before Yhwh: it is a puri-
cation offering.
26
All of its suet he shall turn into smoke on the altar, like the suet of the well-
being offering. Thus shall the priest effect purgation on his behalf for his
wrong, that he may be forgiven.
12
The goal of the ritual is to offer a purication offering to Yhwh that accom-
plishes purgation on behalf of the chieftain, who has committed a wrong, so
that he may receive forgiveness. In v. 26 the concluding formula has two parts:
\nxono a \"v oa\ , Thus shall the priest effect purgation on his behalf
for his wrong,
\" n"o:\ , that he may be forgiven.
13
11. Although an Israelite could bring a well-being offering for the primary practical
purpose of providing himself with meat, this ritual also involved the higher level of in-
teraction with Yhwh, and it had some elements that are impractical from a mundane
point of view, including hand-leaning and the requirement that the animal must be
slaughtered at the sanctuary, where the blood must be dashed against the sides of the
altar and the fat must be burned on the altar (Lev 3; cf. 17:19). Because ritual can
have a higher level of practicality and it does rather than simply expresses, R. Wuth-
nows distinction between ritual expressive activity and nonritual instrumental activity
(Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis [Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1987] 99109) does not work. See the critique of Wuthnows view by
D. Wright (Ritual in Narrative: The Dynamics of Feasting, Mourning, and Retaliation
Rites in the Ugaritic Tale of Aqhat [Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2001] 1011)
and the critique of the noninstrumental element in V. Turners denition of ritual, by
R. Grimes (Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory [SCR;
Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1990] 13).
12. Translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1272; cf. idem, Leviticus 116, 227.
13. On the two-part structure of such concluding formulas, see B. Janowski (Shne,
25054) and R. Rendtorff, who points out that the nal element \" n"o:\ appears only
in Lev 45 and Num 15:2231 for the purication offering and in Lev 19:2022 for the
reparation (cOx) offering (Leviticus [BKAT 3; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlag, 1985] 3:176, 216).
Chapter 3 50
So in this case, which deals with a moral fault, purgation (oa) is prerequisite
to forgiveness (n"o).
14
Basically the same oa n"o goal appears in the concluding formulas of
the subsequent prescriptions for outer-altar purication offerings of common-
ers, whether the victims are female goats (v. 31) or sheep (v. 35). The only dif-
ference between the goals of the rituals for the chieftain and the commoner
is the status of the beneciary: chieftain versus commoner. This difference
has a very minor impact on the ritual, affecting only the kind of victimmale
goat versus female goat or sheepbut not the physical activities performed,
except that the physical nature of a sheep also requires removal, presentation,
and burning of its fat tail along with other suet portions (4:35; cf. 3:9). Here
Leviticus makes an important statement: however exalted a chieftain may be
in his society, in terms of his cultic status before Yhwh he is only slightly
above a commoner.
Outer-altar (but not outer-sanctum) purication offerings, coupled with
burnt offerings, are also required for severe physical ritual impurities, which
are not moral faults (e.g., Lev 12:68; 14:1920, 22, 3031; 15:1415, 2930).
As a result of such sacrices, offerers receive purity rather than purgation
prerequisite to forgiveness. For example, in Lev 12:7 the goal formula for the
parturients ritual is: o ;oo no\ "v oa\ , which Milgrom renders:
and effect expiation on her behalf, and then she shall be pure from her
source of blood.
15
Because the nxon sacrice is used for purication from physical impuri-
ties as well as sins, in accordance with the fact that the piel of the root xon
can be employed in the privative sense of un-sin for physical ritual puri-
cation, in which moral faults could not possibly be in view (Lev 14:49, 52
purication of a house),
16
it is clear that nxon as a designation for a kind of
sacrice has taken on the broader meaning purication offering (i.e., puri-
cation from sins or physical ritual impurities). It does not mean simply sin
offering, a common translation that is misleading. Translating the word as
14. On cultic oa performed by the priest as prerequisite to (but not causing) for-
giveness granted by God, see, for example, Rendtorff, Leviticus, 3:17980, 218, 223;
B. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms in
Ancient Israel (SJLA 5; Leiden: Brill, 1974) 6566; idem, Leviticus (JPS Torah Com-
mentary: Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989) 23.
16. B. Levine explains the piel: The noun aat itself is based on the Piel stem
of the verb --, which means to err, betray, offend. Quite often, the Piel stem con-
notes the undoing of what the simple stem conveys. On this basis, aat means re-
moval of sinfulness, purication (Leviticus, Book of, ABD 4:314).
sin offering implies that the nxon deals only with sin and is the only sacri-
ce to do so.
17
In ch. 6 I will investigate further the oa formulas in cases of sin and physi-
cal ritual impurity to settle a debated question that is crucial for understand-
ing the function of the nxon sacrice, especially regarding the relationship
between purication offerings performed throughout the year and those of
the Day of Atonement. The question is: when the priest carries out the goal
of a purication offering by effecting purgation (piel of oa) on the offerers
behalf, what does he purge? Does he remove evil from the altar to which he
applies the blood or from the offerer who has sinned or has been in a state of
physical ritual impurity?
For now we will move on to the second part of the chieftains goal for-
mula. In Lev 4:26 the passive expression that he may be forgiven (nipal of
n"o) does not explicitly identify the one who grants forgiveness.
18
However,
since the case involves violation of one of Yhwhs commandments (v. 22), the
implied forgiver must be Yhwh himself. As Yhwhs representative, the priest
effects purgation by performing the ritual, but he has no authority to forgive
the chieftain. This accords with use of the verb n"o, forgive, elsewhere: it
never has a human subject but always refers to pardon granted directly by
God,
19
a kind of forgiveness that only God can give.
20
By providing for forgiveness through sacrice, Yhwh mercifully opened
the way for pardon even before the sinner recognized his offense.
21
However,
17. A. R. S. Kennedy and J. Barr, Sacrice and Offering, Dictionary of the Bible
(ed. J. Hastings; rev. ed. F. C. Grant and H. H. Rowley; New York: Scribners, 1963)
874; J. Milgrom, Sin-Offering or Purication-Offering? VT 21 (1971) 23739; idem,
Leviticus 116, 25354; Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 161.
18. Cf. 4:20, 31, 35; 5:10, 13; Num 15:25, 26, 28.
19. Cf. BDB 699; HALOT 1:757; P. Bovati, Re-Establishing Justice: Legal Terms,
Concepts and Procedures in the Hebrew Bible (JSOTSup 105; Shefeld: JSOT Press,
1994) 14344 n. 48; S. R. Driver, Propitiation, A Dictionary of the Bible (ed. J. Has-
tings; New York: Scribners, 1911) 4:128; J. Hausmann, n"o sala, TDOT 10:259;
D. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus (Berlin: Poppelauer, 19056) 186; K. Koch, Shne
und Sndenvergebung um die Wende von der exilischen zur nachexilischen Zeit,
EvT 26 (1966) 226, 331; C. Macholz, Das Passivum divinum, seine Anfnge im Al-
ten Testament und der Hofstil, ZNW 81 (1990) 24753, esp. 248; M. Noth, Leviticus
(trans. J. E. Anderson; OTL; London: SCM, 1965) 41; Rendtorff, Leviticus, 3:176.
20. Macholz points out that n"o is like xz, create, in that it takes only the deity
as subject (ibid.). At the end of his study of xO: in relation to other terms for forgive-
ness, including n"o, G. Olaffson concludes that forgiveness is much more than re-
moval of guilt and the barrier that exists between God and man (The Use of n in
the Pentateuch and Its Contribution to the Concept of Forgiveness [Ph.D. diss., An-
drews University, 1992] 301; cf. 3027).
21. Cf. Bovati, Re-Establishing Justice, 15860.
Chapter 3 52
unlike the purity that inevitably results from acceptable (i.e., properly per-
formed) rites provided for by Yhwh to remedy physical ritual impurities (e.g.,
Lev 12:7, 8), forgiveness for moral faults did not automatically result from the
priests activities; only God determines their efcacy.
22
Therefore it is im-
plied that forgiveness was conditional, as we may suppose would be under-
stood by the more spiritual Israelites, on the penitence of the offerer.
23
Although we naturally tend to think of forgiveness in legal terms, another
metaphor may stand behind n"o.
24
The Akkadian cognate salahu refers to
sprinkling water or other substances for puricatory or apotropaic purposes, or
to moisten, wet, saturate a dressing.
25
Although Biblical Hebrew uses the root
only in an extended sense that has to do with restoration of the divine-human
relationship, the original basic idea may have been washing away sin.
26
Activity components contribute to the overall goal
Now that we have a basic sense of the overall goal of the chieftains puri-
cation offering that unites the activity system and denes its boundaries, we
are ready to consider component parts of the sacrice. Subsystems cluster
around treatment of the blood and suet. In each of these subsystems, activities
progress to complete a subgoal. On the level of activity alone, these subgoals
are merely to apply blood and suet, respectively, to the altar. However, we will
nd that goals of activity components contribute to the overall ritual goal of
purgation, which transcends the ordinary physical effect of the activities
alone.
We can outline the chieftains sacrice as a hierarchical activity system
(see gure, p. 53). Notice that within the apply blood to altar subsystem, the
goal is achieved by the penultimate activity: put some blood on horns of al-
tar. We can call this the goal activity. The last activity of the same sub-
system, pour remaining blood at base of altar, is postrequisite disposal (see
below). In the burn suet on altar subsystem, the goal activity is the nal
one: burn suet on altar.
22. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 245 on Lev 4:20; cf. idem, Numbers (JPS Torah Com-
mentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990) 12324; A. Bchler, Studies
in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century (LBS; New York:
KTAV, 1967) 461; E. Jacob, Theology of the Old Testament (trans. A. Heathcote and
P. Allcock; New York: Harper, 1958) 29596.
23. S. R. Driver, Propitiation, 131; cf. Jacob, Theology, 289; A. Schenker, Versh-
nung und Shne (BibB 15; Freiburg: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1981) 110.
24. L. Grabbe recognizes that more than one metaphor for removing sin appears to
be operating (Leviticus [OTG; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1993] 42).
25. CAD 15:8586.
26. Cf. Levine, Leviticus, 24; J. Stamm, n"o sl to Forgive, TLOT 2:79798.
How do leaning one hand on the head of the animal, slaying the animal,
applying blood to the altar, applying suet to the altar, and eating the remain-
ing meat contribute to achieving the overall goal of the ritual, which is to
purge inadvertent sin on behalf of the chieftain? We will consider each of
these activities/subsystems in order.
Leaning hand on head of animal
In the Israelite sacricial system, the cases in which the biblical text spec-
ies leaning one hand
27
on the head of a victim are those in which the iden-
tity of the offerer, to whom ownership of the victim is attributed and therefore
to whom the benets of the sacrice accrue, needs to be indicated.
28
The
gesture is required for noncalendric offerings of herd and ock animals,
whether the offerer is an individual (e.g., burnt offeringLev 1:4; well-being
offering3:2, 8, 13; purication offering4:4, 24, 29, 33), a group within the
community (burnt offeringExod 29:15; Lev 8:18; Num 8:12; purication
offeringExod 29:10; Lev 8:14; Num 8:12), or the community as a whole
(purication offeringLev 4:15; cf. 2 Chr 29:23).
27. Not two hands; against m. Mena. 9:8.
28. For the identication of ownership theory as opposed to other views, see,
for example, D. Wright, The Gesture of Hand Placement in the Hebrew Bible
and in Hittite Literature, JAOS 106 (1986) 43346; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 151
53; cf. Schenker, Vershnung und Shne, 105; R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life
and Institutions (trans. John McHugh; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans / Livonia, Michi-
gan: Dove, 1961) 416; idem, Les Sacrices de lAncien Testament (CahRB 1; Paris:
Gabalda, 1964) 29.
Outer-Altar Purication Offering
slay animal
apply blood to outer altar
collect blood
present blood to outer altar
put some blood on horns of altar
burn suet on altar
remove suet
burn suet on altar
eat remaining meat
Chapter 3 54
The ownership view of sacricial hand-leaning is supported by the word-
ing of Lev 1:4, the only place where the text interprets the gesture with one
hand: He shall lean his hand on the head of the burnt offering, that it may
be acceptable on his behalf, to expiate for him.
29
Here in the context of the
burnt offering, acceptance of the offering on behalf of the offerer rather than
someone else depends on the performance of hand-leaning. Even if another
person leads the animal into the sanctuary courtyard, the gesture eliminates
any possible doubt regarding the identity of the owner/offerer.
When an offering is not a herd or ock animal but a bird or a grain item,
no leaning of the hand is specied (e.g., Lev 1:1415; 2:2, 8), even in puri-
cation offerings for sin (5:713). This correlates with the fact that carrying
such a small offering in the hand and then handing it directly to the priest
would allow for no ambiguity regarding the identity of the offerer.
30
The prescription for the reparation (cOx) offering in Lev 7:17 does not
specify hand-leaning, perhaps because this sacrice of a ram could be con-
verted into a money payment (5:15, 18, 25[6:6])
31
that was handed directly to
the priest.
32
However, it appears that hand-leaning should have been per-
formed if a ram was offered.
I have found no evidence that hand-leaning is required in calendric sacri-
ces. It is true that most prescriptions for such sacrices are severely abbrevi-
ated (e.g., Lev 23; Num 2829), which seems to allow for the possibility that
hand-leaning was performed, even though it is not mentioned. But in the de-
tailed prescription for unique inner-sanctum purication offerings on the
Day of Atonement, no hand-leaning is mentioned (Lev 16:11, 15), so it is not
a required part of the ritual procedures.
33
There would be no potential ambi-
guity regarding the identity of the community of offerer(s) in such calendric
cases because the offerer(s) and their victims would have appointments
with Yhwh.
34
29. Translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1268; cf. idem, Leviticus 116, 133;
italics supplied for emphasis.
30. Wright, The Gesture of Hand Placement, 439.
31. J. Milgrom, Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of
Repentance (SJLA 18; Leiden: Brill, 1976) 15.
32. Wright, The Gesture of Hand Placement, 439 n. 34; Milgrom, Leviticus 1
16, 151, 32627.
33. So, against Rendtorff (Leviticus, 1:32), it is not true that all detailed rituals for
animal sacrices in Exod 25Num 10 begin with hand-leaning.
34. According to m. Mena. 9:7, hand-leaning is not included in community/pub-
lic rituals, except in the cases of the outer-sanctum purication offering of a bull on
behalf of the community (Lev 4:15) and the goat that is sent away to Azazel on the
Day of Atonement (16:21). The latter is not an exception with respect to leaning one
The ownership theory applies to occurrences of hand-leaning in all
kinds of sacrices, including well-being offerings (Lev 3:2, 8, 13), which are
not mandated for expiation (piel of oa) of sins or impurities.
35
It also
agrees with the fact that persons with severe physical ritual impurities
undergo preliminary cleansing through agents such as the passage of time
(12:46; 15:28), time + ablutions (15:13), or time + ablutions + additional
ritual activities (14:49) before performing their sacrices.
36
So the conta-
gion of physical ritual impurity is already removed before sacricial hand-
leaning is performed, which makes it difcult to maintain that this gesture
deles animals by physical contact in the same way that people dele
objects and other people while their sources of impurity are active (cf. Lev
15:412, 2627).
35. J. Matthes, Der Shnegedanke bei den Sndopfern, ZAW 23 (1903) 11819;
Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 15153; idem, The Modus Operandi of the aat: A
Rejoinder, JBL 109 (1990) 112; Wright, The Gesture of Hand Placement, 43839.
36. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 254; S. Rattray, cited by Milgrom, The Modus Ope-
randi of the aat, 113.
hand because in this case two hands are used. The former, on the other hand, is such
an exception: when the elders of the community lean their hands on the head of the
bull (4:15), they presumably use one hand each (R. Pter-Contesse and J. Ellington,
A Handbook on Leviticus [UBSHS; New York: United Bible Societies, 1990] 54). So
this exception to the community/public rule of thumb calls into question the ade-
quacy of a distinction between public and private for this purpose. Milgrom deals with
the communitys bull as follows: the former can hardly be called public: it is brought
for the aggregate sins committed by the individual members of the community. The
rabbinic tradition may, however, be perfectly right in connection with the xed offer-
ings of the calendar, which, representing no individual(s) in particular, would not
have required hand-leaning (Leviticus 116, 153). A simpler solution would be to dis-
tinguish between noncalendric sacrices that require hand-leaning (e.g., the commu-
nitys bull) and calendric sacrices that do not require hand-leaning (see, e.g., Num
2829). Hand-leaning is omitted in the Lev 9 description of the cultic inauguration.
Perhaps it was actually performed but not included in the description because Lev 9
focuses on activities that are connected with the altar (Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 571).
On the other hand, perhaps hand-leaning was not performed because the inaugu-
ration ceremonies were calendric in the sense that they took place at a time set by
Yhwh, even though they constituted a one-time event. In 2 Chr 29:22 lack of hand-
leaning in noncalendric burnt offerings on behalf of the community that were part of
a special complex of sacrices ordered by Hezekiah to meet a special need is strange
(pointed out to me by J. Milgrom). This omission does not appear to be simply an ab-
breviation in the text because the next verse explicitly mentions hand-leaning as part
of the purication offerings that followed (v. 23). We could suggest that hand-leaning
is noted in connection with the purication offerings because in this case the gesture
was performed by representatives of the community, as in Lev 4:15, due to the speci-
city of the expiation (cf. Rendtorff, Leviticus, 1:39). Hand-leaning in the burnt offer-
ings would be less worthy of mention if they were simply performed by the priests.
Chapter 3 56
There is more to hand-leaning than simple identication of ownership.
The owner is the giving party in a transaction.
37
Thus hand-leaning signies
the end of ownership.
38
From this point on, the animal is dedicated to Yhwh,
as shown by the fact that his specied procedure, which begins with hand-
leaning, allows for no turning back: the next activity must be the slaughter of
the animal, and so on. So between hand-leaning and slaughter, a legal trans-
fer of ownership from the offerer to Yhwh takes place.
39
Whether or not hand-leaning is required in a particular sacrice, it is the
giving over of the offering as a whole through proper performance of the rit-
ual in its entirety that accomplishes the transaction (i.e., transfer of value)
with Yhwh (see, e.g., Lev 1:9; 4:20, 26, 31, 35).
40
To use systems terminology,
the property of efcacy only emerges at the hierarchical level of the whole ac-
tivity system, not at the level of its components.
41
We can summarize thus far: when hand-leaning is performed, it identi-
es the offerer/owner of the victim, to whom the benets of the sacrice ac-
crue, within the context of transferring the offering material from the offerer
to the deity.
Some have argued that in the context of a purication offering, hand-
leaning transfers delement or guilt from the offerer to the animal.
42
Accord-
Theology (JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990) 12122; Schenker, Vershnung
und Shne, 105.
38. A modern analogy would be the signature that an automobile owner places on
the title for his vehicle as part of the transaction by which he sells the car. The signa-
ture alone does not transfer the vehicle, but by legally identifying the one who has the
right to give up this property in exchange for money, the signature contributes to the
transfer process by directing and legitimating it.
39. Cf. R. Knierim, Text and Concept in Leviticus 1:19: A Case in Exegetical
Method (FAT 2; Tbingen: Mohr, 1992) 3640, 80. The fact that the offerer may per-
form one or more subsequent ritual actions does not contradict this. Once the animal
is the property of the deity, a participating offerer must deliver it to Yhwh for his utili-
zation according to his rules.
40. H. C. Brichto, On Slaughter and Sacrice, Blood and Atonement, HUCA 47
(1976) 3135. R. Knierim basically agrees but distinguishes between the act of the
animals legal transpropriation through the dedication to its sacricial death, symbol-
ized by the rm pressing down of the hand, and the subsequent implementation of
this legal transpropriation through the animals physical transfer to Yahweh (Text and
Concept, 80). For the idea of hand-leaning as dedication for the sacricial role that in-
volves death, see J. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship of the Old Testament (trans. J. Martin;
Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1980; repr. of 1863) 95, 102.
41. Compare the rabbinic view that performing ritual actions properly and in the
correct order is essential to their validity (e.g., m. Zeba. 4:2; m. Yoma 5:7).
42. E.g., E. Gerstenberger, Leviticus: A Commentary (trans. D. Stott; OTL; Lou-
isville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 73; M. Noth, Leviticus (trans. J. E.
Anderson; OTL; London: SCM, 1965) 3839; A. Rodrguez, Transfer of Sin in
ing to J. Porter, commenting on lay his hand on its head in Lev 4:4, this
view is supported by vv. 1112, in the context of the outer-sanctum purica-
tion offering. Here the sin-laden animal is unclean and thus must be taken
outside the camp to avoid contamination and destroyed. Only the blood and
the fat which, because of the life-force in them, are immune to the dele-
ment of sin, can be offered to God.
43
Porters interpretation does not adequately account for several factors: the
carcass of the outer-sanctum purication offering must be disposed of in a
pure place (Lev 4:12), the one who incinerates it requires no subsequent
purication (contrast 16:28, on the Day of Atonement), the esh of the outer-
altar purication offering is most holy and is to be eaten in a holy place by the
consecrated priest rather than incinerated (6:19[26], 22[29]),
44
and purica-
tion offerings of birds and grain are expiatory but require no hand-leaning
(5:713). Furthermore, hand-leaning is required in the burnt offering of herd
animals (1:4), which is wholly consumed on Yhwhs altar (vv. 89) except for
the hide (7:8), and the gesture is also required for the well-being offering (3:2,
8, 13), which is not expiatory in the usual sense (no piel of oa in Lev 3;
but cf. 17:11) and which is eaten by the offerer (7:1521).
Leviticus 16:21 is the strongest and most common support for the transfer
theory. Here the high priest leans his hands on Azazels goat in order to transfer
all the moral faults of the Israelites to it.
45
However, Ibn Ezra (on 1:4) already
pointed out that this use of two hands on the goat that is sent away differs from
the sacricial form of the gesture, which uses one hand.
46
So the nonsacricial
case of Azazels goat is not a reliable guide to the function of sacricial hand-
leaning. R. Pter emphasizes the difference between sacricial use of one
hand (= one per person in 4:15), expressing identication of the offerer, and
use of two hands for transfer in nonsacricial contexts.
47
43. J. Porter, Leviticus (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 38;
cf. Gerstenberger, Leviticus, 73.
44. Missing this point, Gerstenberger assumes that, after the description in v. 11,
the three following paragraphs more or less silently presuppose this concluding ritual
(vv. 21, 26, 35) (Leviticus, 73). His inclusion of v. 21, which explicitly prescribes
(rather than silently presupposes) incineration of the carcass, is inexplicable.
45. P. Patterson uses this as evidence for penal substitution (Reections on the
Atonement, Criswell Theological Review 3 [1989] 31718).
46. Against the traditional view that both hands were used in sacrices (m. Mena.
9:8).
47. R. Pter, Limposition des mains dans lAncien Testament, VT 27 (1977) 48
55; cf. Janowski, Shne, 20910, 21521; Schenker, Vershnung und Shne, 115.
Leviticus, The Seventy Weeks, Leviticus, and the Nature of Prophecy (DARCOM 3;
Washington, D.C.: Biblical Research Institute, 1986) 18083, 188.
Chapter 3 58
To defend the transfer theory in order to support a substitutionary interpre-
tation of atonement, W. Kaiser argues that in the original consonantal text, \
in Lev 1:4 and elsewhere could have represented a dual form (\), referring
to two hands, even though the MT invariably vocalizes this form as singular
(\).
48
However, he does not give adequate weight to the fact that only in
16:21 does the text unambiguously specify two hands on a ritual animal by
using the numeral nO, two of his hands. This unique specication in a
unique ritual indicates that the ritual of Azazels goat is unique in requiring
two hands.
A. Dillmann pointed out a problem with the idea that sin and guilt are
transferred to purication offerings by means of hand-leaning in the same
way that evil is transferred to Azazels goat: If that were true, purication of-
ferings would be impure as is Azazels goat (cf. Lev 16:26), but the fact is that
their esh is most holy (6:22[29]), which accords with the fact that their suet
is placed on the altar.
49
Dillmanns observation also has relevance to Porters
view of 4:1112 (see above).
J. Kurtz found that only Lev 16:21 requires hand-leaning to be accompa-
nied by simultaneous confession. He takes this to indicate that here, and no-
where else, the imposition of hands was to be regarded as a laying on of sin.
50
Granted that 5:5 (cf. Num 5:7) also stipulates verbal confession in connection
with a purication offering, but J. Milgrom explains that this confession pre-
cedes bringing the sacrice to the sanctuary (cf. Lev 5:6).
51
Somewhat differ-
ently from Kurtz, H. Gese and B. Levine understand the transfer of sins in
16:21 as accomplished by the confession alone.
52
In any case, the transfer to
Azazels goat is not accomplished by leaning two hands alone; the high
priests confession is necessary for this.
53

It appears that each form of the hand-leaning gesture, that is, with one or
two hands, participates in some form of transfer by designating an animal to
have a particular ritual function with respect to one or more persons. Azazels
goat may need two hands for a quantitative reason: this identication is greater
48. Kaiser, The Book of Leviticus, 1:1011.
49. A. Dillmann, Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897) 459.
50. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 99.
51. J. Milgrom, The Priestly Doctrine of Repentance, RB 82 (1975) 194; idem,
Cult and Conscience, 108; idem, Leviticus 116, 302.
52. H. Gese, Essays on Biblical Theology [trans. K. Crim; Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1981] 1056; B. Levine, c\oa, ErIsr 9 (Albright Volume; 1969) 94.
53. Cf. Dillmann, Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus, 580; Hoffmann, Das Buch Le-
viticus, 456; Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 118; Milgrom, The Priestly Doctrine
of Repentance, 195 n. 32.
in that it is involved in transfer of the collective moral faults of all Israelites
54
and/or perhaps because Azazels goat is identied in a special way with the
sins of the Israelites.
55
However, the transfers to which the two forms of hand-
leaning contribute are qualitatively different:
56
In sacrice the transfer moves
ownership from the offerer to Yhwh. By contrast, leaning two hands on the
head of Azazels goat does not identify departing ownership of the animal. It
has already been transferred from the Israelite community that provided it
(Lev 16:5) to Azazel through manipulation of lots, the result of which is sig-
nied by placing the lot belonging to Azazel on the animal (vv. 8, 10).
57
In
this case the transfer only moves the sins of the people to the goat (v. 21).
For Christians the stakes involved in the interpretation of hand-leaning are
lower than some (e.g., Kaiser) have thought. For one thing, hand-leaning as
identication of ownership does not rule out the idea that this identication
contributes to transfer of the sacrice as a whole to Yhwh. For another, in the
book of Hebrews Christs substitution is based on the fusion of two cultic roles
in him: as priest he takes the sins of others upon himself and as victim he dies
for those sins (Heb 7:2328; 9:1114, 2328; 10:114).
Slaying an animal
In the famous abstract scheme of sacrice published by H. Hubert and
M. Mauss in 1898, slaughter of the victim is viewed as releasing its spirit
from the profane world. Thus slaughter is identied as the culminating point
of the ceremony, the supreme act, the highest point of sacralization.
58
The theory of Hubert and Mauss may apply to Hindu sacrice, which
formed the primary basis for their study, and to sacrices belonging to some
54. N. Snaith interpreted leaning two hands quantitatively in another sense: to
make doubly sure of the transference of the sin (Leviticus and Numbers [CB, new ed.;
London: Nelson, 1967] 115).
55. Cf. M. M. Kalisch, A Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testa-
ment, with a New Translation: Leviticus (2 vols.; London: Longman, Green, Reader,
and Dyer, 186772) 2:212.
56. Surveying the various theories of hand-leaning, K. Mattingly argues that the
meaning of this gesture of status change is contextually conditioned, cannot be ex-
plained by one theory alone, and can carry more than one kind of meaning in a given
situation (The Laying on of Hands on Joshua: An Exegetical Study of Numbers
27:1223 and Deuteronomy 34:9 [Ph.D. diss., Andrews University, 1997] 14672).
57. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 101920.
58. H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Sacrice: Its Nature and Function (trans. W. D. Halls;
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964 [orig. 1898]) 19, 3233, 35, 4445. A. van
Gennep has found the scheme of Hubert and Mauss, which includes entry, ascent,
and descent, to be similar to that of a rite of passage (The Rites of Passage [Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1960] 184).
Chapter 3 60
other ritual traditions.
59
But it does not accurately reect ancient Israelite
sacrice, even though Hubert and Mauss used this ritual system extensively
to illustrate their scheme.
60
In an Israelite sacrice, the animal must be slain
so that its blood and body can be utilized, but slaughter is a relatively low
point in terms of sanctity: it involves no contact with the most holy altar and
thus can be performed by a layperson (e.g., Lev 1:5, 11; 3:2, 8, 13; 4:24, 29,
33). By contrast, the application of blood and placing of animal pieces on the
altar re, which occur later, must always be performed by a consecrated
priest. As S. R. Driver and H. White noted (coincidentally also in 1898),
more importance is given to the sprinkling of the blood than to the killing
of the victim.
61
The fact that slaughter is not the dening element of Israelite sacrice is
conrmed by the fact that in this ritual tradition a sacrice does not neces-
sarily include slaughter at all and, on the other hand, a nonsacricial ritual
can include killing a victim. Therefore, the presence or absence of slaugh-
ter is not a valid criterion for determining whether or not an Israelite ritual
is a sacrice. The following paragraphs present the evidence behind this
conclusion.
An offering of grain, which is not slaughtered, can be a purication offer-
ing that serves as the functional equivalent of an animal sacrice (Lev 5:11
13). Hubert and Mauss included vegetable (including grain) offerings among
sacrices, but only when at least part is destroyed.
62
In order to count such an
offering as the functional equivalent of a victim, they regarded destruction
as the equivalent of slaughter.
63
In the context of Israelite sacrice, there are
two difculties with this approach.
1. While placing all or part of an Israelite grain offering on the altar re
(Lev 2:2, 9; 6:1516) results in destruction of the material, this is not the func-
59. R. Payne has applied the scheme to the goma sacrice belonging to the Japanese
Tantric Buddhist tradition and found it to be generally suitable, although with some
reservations (The Tantric Ritual of Japan: Feeding the Gods, the Shingon Fire Ritual
[ata-Piaka Series, Indo-Asian Literatures 365; Delhi: International Academy of Indian
Culture and Aditya Prakashan, 1991] 19293).
60. See my critique of Hubert and Mauss in Ritual Dynamic Structure, 33945.
Nor does the scheme apply to the African rituals investigated by L. de Heusch (Sacri-
ce in Africa: A Structuralist Approach [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985]
34, 67); compare criticism of the theoretical centrality of sacralization by J. van
Baal, who refers to ethnographic research in simpler societies (Offering, Sacrice and
Gift, Numen 23 [1976] 161).
61. S. R. Driver and H. White, The Book of Leviticus (SBONT 3; New York: Dodd,
Mead, 1898) 66.
62. Hubert and Mauss, Sacrice, 12.
63. Ibid., 34.
tional equivalent of slaughter in an animal sacrice. An animal is slaughtered
(1:5, 11; 3:2, 8, 13, etc.) and later in the ritual it is placed on the altar re
(1:89, 1213; 3:5, 11, 16, etc.). Placing an offering on the re, whether it
consists of animal parts or grain, constitutes an act of delivery to the deity that
is separate from slaughter.
2. The bread of the presence is clearly a sacrice, that is, an offering ritual.
The bread (cn") plus its accompanying frankincense is designated \" Dx,
a food gift to Yhwh (Lev 24:7), and is given over to the sacred domain. Like
animal sacrices at the outer altar, the bread is cn", food of God (21:8, 17,
21, 22; 22:25; cf. Num. 28:2).
64
However, the bread of the presence is a pre-
sentation offering: it simply rests on the golden table inside the sanctuary, after
which it is eaten by the priests (Lev 24:59).
65
None of it is destroyed. It is true
that the frankincense functions as a memorial (v. 7), which presumably
means that it is burned when the bread is taken from the table.
66
But only the
incense is burned, and it is difcult to imagine how this could be viewed as a
victim.
An Israelite ritual that involves the killing of an animal is not necessarily a
sacrice. In Deut 21:19 an unsolved murder calls for a ritual in which a
heifers neck is broken in a wady and elders of the city located closest to the
murder victim wash their hands over the carcass, addressing Yhwh with a
denial of their guilt and a prayer that he not hold Israel guilty. But although
Yhwh is involved, the ritual does not involve transfer of the animal to him.
There is not even a gesture in the direction of his sanctuary, such as there is
in the red cow ritual (Num 19:4). So the Deut 21 killing ritual cannot be
a sacrice.
67
It is a nonsacricial elimination rite having the goal of removing
moral culpability.
68
Reinforcing its nonsacricial nature is the mode of
64. Cf. R. Gane, Bread of the Presence and Creator-in-Residence, VT 42 (1992)
18182.
65. Presentation offerings are well attested elsewhere in the ancient Near East.
See, e.g., ANET 208, 325, 34344; COS 1:218, 42736, 44243; A. Blackman, The
Sequence of the Episodes in the Egyptian Daily Temple Liturgy, Journal of the
Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society (191819) 2753; A. L. Oppenheim, An-
cient Mesopotamia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964) 18893. Note that,
when a presentation offering included meat, slaughter was obviously prerequisite.
66. Gane, Bread of the Presence, 196.
67. J. van Baal explains that his denition of sacrice does not permit the use of
the term sacrice for killing rituals (a term introduced by Jensen, 1951) that are nei-
ther preceded nor followed by the presentation of the object of the rite to a supernat-
ural being (Offering, Sacrice and Gift, 161).
68. D. Wright, Deuteronomy 21:19 as a Rite of Elimination, CBQ 49 (1987)
387403.
Chapter 3 62
slaughter: breaking the animals neck (v. 4) rather than sacricial slaughter
that produces blood.
69
While slaughter of a victim is not a dening element in Israelite sacrice,
there is no question that this activity is important. At the moment of slaughter
the blood drains away, carrying away with it the life by which oa on the altar
is accomplished (cf. Lev 17:11). Slaughter is also prerequisite to burning the
suet on the altar and priestly consumption of the meat, which carry subsidiary
meanings (see below). So slaughter is basic to an animal sacrice and its
meaning is realized through subsequent activities.
Applying blood to the outer altar
The purication offering is the sacrice in which blood plays the most im-
portant role. By contrast with other sacrices, in which blood is dashed on
the sides of the outer altar (Lev 1:5; 3:2; 7:2, etc.), the blood of a purication
offering is applied to the horns of an altar, whether the outer altar in the case
of an outer-altar offering (4:25, 30, 34), the incense altar in the outer-sanctum
offering (vv. 7, 18), or both in the inner-sanctum offering (16:16b, 18). Since
horns are the highest parts of an altar, applying blood there makes the blood
prominent in a vertical direction, in which smoke of sacrices or incense
goes up toward the deity in heaven (cf. Ps 11:4).
70
Because a purication of-
fering uniquely emphasizes blood in this way, and application of blood to an
altar signies expiation (piel of oa; cf. Lev 17:11), it is clear that a purica-
tion offering emphasizes the expiatory value of blood.
71
That purication offerings are notable for their expiatory power is shown
by the fact that, in the cultic calendar of Num 2829, the words ca"v oa" ,
69. Ibid., 391. On sacricial slaughter as slitting the throat, see Milgrom, Leviticus
116, 15455.
70. Cf. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 216; C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch deny this con-
cept, holding that the reason for placement on the horns is because the signi-
cance of the altar, as the scene of the manifestation of the divine grace and
salvation, culminated in the horns, as the symbols of power and might (Biblical
Commentary on the Old Testament [trans. J. Martin; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1952; orig. 1874] 2:304). Since both ideas appear to have merit, I see them as com-
plementary rather than mutually exclusive. On the signicance of upward move-
ment in the burnt offering, see Knierim, Text and Concept, 83. Inspired by Knierim,
Milgrom observes: The structure of the sanctuary as well as the corresponding
movement of the sacricial procedure is upward. This stands in contrast to the wor-
ship of chthonic deities where the movement is conversely downwards (J. Mil-
grom, review of Text and Concept in Leviticus 1:19: A Case in Exegetical
Method, by Rolf P. Knierim, HS 35 [1994] 170).
71. Cf. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 175; de Vaux, Les Sacrices, 83.
to effect purgation for you, appear only with regard to the goats sacriced
as purication offerings (28:22, 30; 29:5, etc.), not with the additional burnt
offerings.
72
While the blood is part of the sacrice, in that it comes under the own-
ership of Yhwh along with the rest of the animal, it is not delivered to him
in the form of smoke.
73
This likely has something to do with the dietary law
that prohibits consuming blood with meat (Lev 17:10, 12; Deut 12:16, 23
25). The basis for this prohibition is stated in Lev 17:11: For the life of the
esh is in the blood (cf. v. 14; Gen 9:46). The fact that the blood is
drained out of a sacricial victim before it is burned on the altar implies that
the concept of life in the blood operates in sacrices. It would make sense
that, as the Creator of life, only Yhwh has a priori control over life-bearing
72. The nature of the expiation provided by purication offerings for the commu-
nity on new moons and festivals is not clear from Num 2829. Rabbinic views regard-
ing the efcacy of these sacrices concentrate on oa for impurity, such as for
delement of the temple and its sancta (m. Sebu. 1:45; t. Sebu. 1.3; cf. Bchler,
Studies, 428 n. 1). Some modern scholars have suggested that these purication offer-
ings may remedy human faultiness in general rather than applying to specic cases
(A. Bonar, A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus, Expository and Practical [5th ed.;
London: Nisbet, 1875] 301; Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 59; A. Rodrguez, Sub-
stitution in the Hebrew Cultus [AUSDS 3; Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews Uni-
versity Press, 1979] 108). Along somewhat similar lines, P. Jenson suggests that in cases
such as Lev 8:1417; 9:8; and Num 8:8, where purication offerings do not seem to
deal with specic sin or impurity, they may be part of a comprehensive ritual to in-
sure that purication is complete or fully assured (Graded Holiness: A Key to the
Priestly Conception of the World [JSOTSup 106; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1992] 157; cf.
156). However, in view of the fact that other purication offerings deal with specic
sins rather than sin in general (cf. Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary, 2:3023),
Kurtz has argued that the festival purication offerings were to expiate certain sins
that had not been expiated because they were not known (Sacricial Worship, 212).
73. Leviticus 3:16b17 is sensitive to this: All suet is the Lords . . . you must not
eat any suet or any blood. The text does not say: All suet and all blood are the Lords.
While there is a sense in which sacricial blood is the Lords, suet and blood belong
to him in different ways, as shown by their respective ritual treatments: suet is used as
a food gift for Yhwh when it is burned on his altar (Lev 3:35, 911, 1416a), but blood
is never burned on the altar (cf. R. Hendel, Sacrice as a Cultural System: The Ritual
Symbolism of Exodus 24,38, ZAW 101 [1989] 383). Because Kaiser misses the dis-
tinction between parts of a sacrice in terms of use, he assumes that because the blood
of a burnt offering was part of the sacrice, part of it was thrown on the altar round
about or on all sides (The Book of Leviticus, 1:1012). For other examples of sac-
ricial portions not used by Yhwh, see the bread of the Presence (Lev 24:9) and
compare the three-party apportionment of the well-being offering between Yhwh, the
priest, and the offerer (Lev 3:16; 7:1536; cf. Gane, Bread of the Presence, 198).
spread one pica short
Chapter 3 64
blood.
74
But by excluding the blood from the part of the sacrice that he
utilizes,
75
Yhwh sets an example of respect for life.
76
Making a sacrice kosher in the biblical sense would require only the
draining and disposal of the blood (cf. Deut 12:16). Disposal of excess puri-
cation-offering blood is accomplished by pouring it out at the base of the
outer altar (Lev 4:7, 18, 25, 30, 34).
77
However, blood is applied to the outer
altar (vv. 25, 30, 34) or to the outer sanctum and the incense altar (vv. 67, 17
18) before disposal of the remainder takes place. So it follows that application
of the blood serves a goal over and above mere disposal.
74. Cf. Knierim, Text and Concept, 57; A. Schenker, Das Zeichen des Blutes
und die Gewissheit der Vergebung im Alten Testament, MTZ 34 (1983) 200202.
D. McCarthy concludes that the reservation of blood to God because it was life
appears to be uniquely Israelite (The Symbolism of Blood and Sacrice, JBL 88
[1969] 176).
75. Cf. Schenker, Das Zeichen des Blutes, 21113.
76. Cf. y. Ros Has. 1.3: Said Rabbi Eleazar: for the king the law is unwritten.
Customarily, a king of esh and blood issues a decree. If he wants, he observes it; if
he wants, others observe it. But the Holy One Blessed be He is not thus, rather He
issues a decree and observes it rst. What is the proof? They shall keep my precept . . .
I am the Lord (Leviticus 22:9). I am He who kept the precepts of Torah rst (trans.
E. Goldman; The Talmud of the Land of Israel: A Preliminary Translation and Expla-
nation [ed. J. Neusner, W. S. Green, and C. Goldscheider; CSHJ 16; Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1988] 43).
77. Noth, Leviticus, 39; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 238. F. Gorman argues that in the
consecration purication offering the blood placed on the horns of the altar purges
the altar and the blood poured out at the base of the altar (re-)consecrates it (Lev 8:15).
He then attempts to explain 16:19 similarly but acknowledges the problem that here
the high priest does not pour out the blood at the base of the altar. His solution is to
make the sevenfold sprinkling before the ark cover (16:14) the functional equivalent
of pouring blood at the base of the altar (The Ideology of Ritual, 8689). However, in
8:15 \O; \ , thus/then he consecrated it most likely refers to consecration with
anointing oil (cf. Exod 29:36), possibly as a summary statement recalling Lev 8:11
(Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 52324). Furthermore, Gorman does not account for the
fact that 16:16, explaining the blood manipulations prescribed in vv. 1415, refers only
to purgation (oa), not to (re-)consecration. Nor does he consider that v. 16b implies a
sevenfold sprinkling in the area of the outer sanctum, with the same effect. Whereas
the ark cover and incense altar (cf. Exod 30:10) receive one application of blood each,
the outer altar receives two, and it is precisely here that both purgation and (re-)conse-
cration are mentioned, corresponding to both the placement of blood on the horns
and the sevenfold sprinkling on the altar itself (Lev 16:1819; Milgrom, Leviticus 1
16, 1037). Possibly explaining the lack of pouring blood at the base of the altar here is
the fact that there are many more blood manipulations in the Day of Atonement ritual
than in the normal purication offering, so there may not be any remaining blood that
requires disposal. Gorman wants to see more than disposal in pouring the blood at the
base of the altar because the priests would not include this action in the context
of ritual prescriptions if it did not have ritual signicance (Divine Presence and
Leviticus 17:11 conrms that blood application is more than disposal.
Here Yhwh states that he has assigned the sacricial blood on the altar some
kind of expiatory (oa) function. While the primary focus in Lev 17 is on
well-being offerings, the only class of sacrices from which offerers are per-
mitted to eat the meat (cf. vv. 36),
78
the role of blood as agent of oa in
v. 11 suggests that blood in the context of other sacrices also makes a special
contribution to oa. We have already found this to be true for purication of-
ferings (see above). The nature of the oa in a given sacrice depends, of
course, on the goal of that ritual. In the case of the chieftains outer-altar pu-
rication offering, the oa goal is stated in 4:26: \nxono a \"v oa\ ,
Thus shall the priest effect purgation on his behalf for his wrong. Our fur-
ther investigation of this goal in ch. 6 will shed additional light on the role of
the blood in this ritual.
Burning suet on the altar
In a purication offering, as in a well-being or reparation offering, only the
suet is burned on the altar. The suet is transferred to Yhwh in the form of
smoke, as indicated by the facts that the smoke is a pleasing aroma (nn: n)
to Yhwh (Lev 4:31) and all suet belongs to him (Lev 3:16).
Although the suet portions of a well-being offering constitute an Dx,
food gift (Lev 3:911, 1416), the suet of a purication offering does not.
No purication offering is called an Dx.
79
If the suet of a purication offering is food that is transferred to Yhwh, but
it is not a gift, what is its function? Milgrom comments on Lev 4:35: The
logic is clear: the Lord is surely pleased with the offering of the repentant
wrongdoer (v 31), but it is not a gift; it is his humble expiation.
80
While a pu-
rication offering could be regarded as a gift in the broader sense that it is
78. J. Milgrom, A Prolegomenon to Leviticus 17:11, JBL 90 (1971) 15253;
H. C. Brichto, On Slaughter and Sacrice, Blood and Atonement, HUCA 47
(1976) 27. Rendtorff regards the declaration of a oa function of the blood in Lev
17:11 as providing a reinforced interpretation of the reason for the prohibition of
eating blood (Leviticus, 3:169).
79. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 16162, 253.
80. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 253; cf. Bchler, Studies, 452; Rendtorff, Leviticus,
1:65.
Community: A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus [ITC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1997] 36). This is a problematic assumption. For one thing, what do we mean by rit-
ual signicance? It would be difcult to sustain the notion that every prescribed cul-
tic action carries some kind of theological freight. For example, what about the
removal and disposal of ashes from the outer altar (Lev 6:34[1011]), which has the
practical function of enabling the altar to keep burning (cf. v. 5[12])?
Chapter 3 66
something given to Yhwh, it is not a gift in the more common sense, because
it is not voluntary. Rather, it is a mandatory payment of an obligation or
debt to Yhwh,
81
whose order has been violated.
82
This explains why a puri-
cation offering belonging to the same ritual complex as a burnt offering
must be performed before the latter (see, e.g., Lev 9:716):
83
a debt must be
paid before a gift can be accepted.
84
The interpretation just presented appears to be contradicted by the fact
that the suet of a mandatory reparation offering (cOx) is called an Dx, food
gift (Lev 7:5). However, reparation offerings are distinguished from purica-
tion offerings in that the former are required in cases of offenses that create lit-
eral/quantiable debt, which calls for literal restitution if possible.
85
This
81. Cf. G. B. Gray, Sacrice in the Old Testament: Its Theory and Practice (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1925) 58. Kurtz also refers to debt and obligation but takes this to apply in
all sacrices (Sacricial Worship, 97).
82. On the question of harm to the deity, who is duty-bound to uphold the
moral order of the universe, see R. Cover, Sin, Sinners: Old Testament, ABD 6:38.
83. On the difference between the procedural order, in which the purication of-
fering is actually performed rst (e.g., Lev 9), and the administrative order, in which
the burnt offering is listed rst (e.g., Num 2829), see A. Rainey, The Order of Sacri-
ces in Old Testament Ritual Texts, Bib 51 (1970) 49498; Milgrom, Leviticus 116,
488. Notice that, although Lev 16 is prescriptive, its order is procedural, with the inner-
sanctum purication offerings on behalf of the priests and lay community, respectively
(vv. 1119), preceding the burnt offerings on behalf of the same offerers (v. 24).
84. Cf. t. Parah 1.1; Kennedy and Barr, Sacrice and Offering, 875. G. A. Ander-
son echoes Milgroms approach to the purication offering when he claims that this
sacrice comes rst because it cleanses the sacred appurtenances so that they are able
to receive the subsequent sacrices (Sacrice and Sacricial Offerings: Old Testa-
ment, ABD 5:880). Kurtz explained the order on the basis of the relative placement
of the climax activities within the respective rituals: the high point of the purication
offering is application of blood, which comes earlier in the ritual than the high point
of the burnt offering, which is the (nal) act of burning (Sacricial Worship, 17475).
85. Cf. Rashi on Lev 5:4; M. Rooker, Leviticus (NAC 3A; Nashville: Broadman &
Holman, 2000) 122. Pter-Contesse and Ellington refer to these sacrices as repay-
ment offerings (A Handbook on Leviticus, 70); K. C. Hanson renders this culpability
offering (Sin, Purication, and Group Process, in Problems in Biblical Theology: Es-
says in Honor of Rolf Knierim [ed. H. T. C. Sun et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997]
175), but if Knierim is right that the basic idea of the root cOx is the obligation, the
duty, the liability, that results from incurring guilt (cOx asam Guilt, TLOT 1:193),
the translation liability offering would be more accurate. More specically dening
the liability for which the cOx sacrice makes reparation, Milgrom distinguishes be-
tween the purication and reparation offerings as follows: The aat expiates for the
contamination of the sanctuary and its sancta by both severe impurities and moral
transgressions. The asam expiates for the desecration of the sanctuary and its sancta
(including Gods personal sanctumhis name) (Leviticus 2327 [AB 3B; New York:
Doubleday, 2001] 2450). Note that in Lev 5:1719, even though a debt is incurred, res-
titution is not possible because the offender does not know how much it is.
reparation occurs before the reparation offering is performed (5:16, 24[6:5]).
Since reparation offerings follow debt payments, their suet can be called
food gifts. Purication offerings, on the other hand, constitute rather than
follow payment of debt.
86
They are required for violations of divine com-
mandments or serious ritual impurities, evils for which no restitution can be
made in money or in kind. Therefore, their expiatory power is necessarily
greater than that of reparation offerings. This difference between the two
kinds of sacrices correlates with the distinction between their blood manip-
ulations: whereas purication-offering blood is placed on altar horns, repara-
tion-offering blood is dashed on the sides of the altar (7:2), as in burnt
offerings (1:5, 11).
87
Earlier we found that in a purication offering an activity emphasis on
blood corresponds to a goal emphasis on expiation (oa). Now we see that suet
constitutes a kind of mandatory payment to Yhwh resulting from debt in-
curred by the evil that requires expiation. So the function of the suet com-
plements that of the blood. While the blood plays a special role in achieving
the overall goal of a purication offering, as emphasized by the explicit con-
nection between blood manipulations and oa in some passages (e.g., Lev
6:23[30]; cf. 8:15; 16:1420, 27), it is the entire ritual, including the suet debt
payment, that is necessary for achieving oa, as shown by other passages in
which oa formulas summarize effects of entire rituals (e.g., 4:20, 26, 31, 35).
88
A. Schenker elevates the importance of purication-offering suet by sug-
gesting that the original point of departure, and therefore the essential activ-
ity, of the nxon sacrice is the symbol of a gift offered as a sign of reparation,
compensation, and appeasement. His reasons are that in 1 Sam 26:19 a rite
for appeasing Yhwh is called a n:o, gift, and in Lev 5:1113 a n:o (grain
offering) serves as a nxon sacrice.
For Schenker the application of blood to the altar in a private nxon can-
not signify purication because the blood is not placed in contact with the
offerer. Rather, the blood manipulation supplements the sacrice proper as
86. Cf. A. Mdebielle, Le symbolism du sacrice expiatoire en Isral, Bib 2
(1921) 300301.
87. A. Rodrguez, Substitution, 19091.
88. Cf. Brichto, On Slaughter and Sacrice, 3033, 35; P. Garnet, Atonement
Constructions in the Old Testament and the Qumran Scrolls, EvQ 46 (1974) 145;
Rendtorff, Leviticus, 1:37. This point is missed by Kaiser, who states regarding the burnt
offering: The atoning work is completed in the sprinkling of the blood (The Book
of Leviticus, 1:1012). While Christians who interpret Leviticus in light of the New
Testament tend to emphasize Christs blood, Jesus spoke of his atoning sacrice in
terms of both his esh and his blood (Matt 26:2629; John 6:5358; 1 Cor 11:2326).
Chapter 3 68
an illustration of what the sacrice accomplishes, in the same way that the
banishment of Azazels goat in Lev 16 illustrates the function of the two spe-
cial nxon sacrices performed on the Day of Atonement.
According to Schenker the fact that the nxon sacrice deals with both sins
and ritual impurities is due to a factor that these evils share in common: both
are incompatible with Yhwh and therefore require reparation in the form of
a rite of absolution or of purication. The same word nxon, sin, refers to
two negative realities: sin and, by analogy, pollution; and to two ritual reali-
ties: pardon from sin and, by analogy, purication from impurity. In this way
Schenker argues for the traditional translation of nxon as sin offering,
against Milgroms purication offering.
89
Schenker presents a coherent explanation for the fact that the word nxon
refers both to sin and to a ritual that remedies either sin or ritual impurity,
both of which are, indeed, incompatible with Yhwh. But there are a number
of problems with his approach:
1. It is methodologically risky to put too much weight on nontechnical,
narrative use of a term (n:o in 1 Sam 26:19) for interpretation of the techni-
cal usage that appears in ritual law.
2. Leviticus 5:1112 emphasizes by repetition that the nxon offering of
grain is a nxon expiation, not a n:o gift, although it is n:oa, like the
n:o, in that the remainder belongs to the priest (v. 13). The fact that the sac-
rice consists of grain, the usual material of the n:o, does not make it a
n:o. So this is not a case in which a n:o functions as a nxon, as Schenker
would have it. He has overlooked a fundamental principle of ritual theory:
the function of a given ritual object is assigned by the ritual authority rather
than being inherent in its physical nature.
3. Schenkers assertion that the blood cannot purify the offerer because it
is not brought into direct physical contact with him/her is based on the same
idea that leads Milgrom to the conclusion that the nxon sacrice puries the
object(s) to which its blood is directly applied.
90
Schenker does not reckon
with the fact that ritual is not subject to constraints operating in the material
world.
4. The notion that the blood manipulation is a tacked-on illustration like
the ritual of Azazels goat
91
fails to do justice to the elevated attention paid to
89. A. Schenker, Recht und Kult im Alten Testament (OBO 172; Freiburg: Univer-
sittsverlag / Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000) 1220.
90. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 25458.
91. On the ritual of Azazels goat as an illustration, see Schenker, Vershnung und
Shne, 11516.
blood in the activities belonging to nxon sacrices and misrepresents the
complementary function of the ritual of Azazels goat, which we will explore
in ch. 11.
5. Even if it were conclusively established on linguistic grounds that the
nxon sacrice should be rendered sin offering, its ritual function is to
purge/purify, as shown by the piel of xon, un-sin/purify, in explanations of
nxon sacrices (Exod 29:36; Lev 8:15; Num 19:19rehydrated ashes of the
red cow nxon).
92
In ch. 6 we will nd stronger evidence: the privative prepo-
sition o following oa in core goal-formulas of purication offerings (e.g.,
Lev 4:26; 5:6, 10; cf. 16:16) shows that these rituals accomplish oa from sin
or ritual impurity. The rst instance is in the goal formula for the chieftains
purication offering (4:26), which the njpsv renders: Thus the priest shall
make expiation on his behalf for (o) his sin, and he shall be forgiven. The
niv, nrsv, and Milgrom also translate o as for.
93
The nkjv and nasb express
the same idea with concerning and in regard to, respectively. The njb,
however, has a different rendering: to free him from (o) his sin (emphasis
mine). We will nd that this interpretation is correct. So I agree with Mil-
grom that the primary function of a purication offering is some kind of re-
moval, although I differ with him regarding the object of this purication.
For me, at least, the rendering of nxon as purication offering does not
mean that purication from physical ritual impurity is primary but that in
each case some kind of evil is removed/puried, whether this evil consists of
or results from a moral fault or a physical ritual impurity. Therefore, I prefer
to retain Milgroms purication offering, which avoids the implication of
sin offering that physical ritual impurities remedied by such sacrices are
moral faults.
In my response to Schenker I do not discount the fact that the suet as
debt payment is an integral and important part of the ritual meaning. But I
place this concept within the framework of removing evil, which is especially
signied by manipulation of the blood.
Eating the remaining meat
Each Israelite sacrice as a whole is transferred to Yhwh. However, when
a priest ofciates on behalf of someone else, there is a secondary transaction
in which Yhwh transfers to the priest(s) a prebend/perquisite that constitutes
an agents commission for carrying out the primary transaction between
93. For Milgroms translation, see above, referring to his Leviticus 1722, 1272; cf.
idem, Leviticus 116, 227.
Chapter 3 70
Yhwh and the offerer (cf. 7:34).
94
In a burnt offering, the prebend is the hide
of the animal (7:8). In a grain offering it is everything except a handful that
is burned on the altar as a memorial portion (2:23, 910; 7:910). In a well-
being offering it is the breast and right thigh (7:3135). In a purication or
reparation offering, it is the remaining meat (6:19[26], 22[29]; 7:67). The
fact that the remaining meat of a purication offering functions as a prebend
is conrmed by 7:7, where this portion is mentioned among prebends of
other sacrices (vv. 710). So priestly consumption of the remaining meat is
not simply to get rid of it. Consequently, it is not functionally equivalent to
disposal of purication-offering carcasses by incineration when a priest of-
ciates on behalf of himself or a group in which he is included (cf. 4:1112,
21; 8:17).
95
In outer-altar purication offerings for sin, the remaining meat is more
than a prebend. The priests privilege and duty of eating the esh (Lev
6:19[26], 22[29]) simultaneously functions as appropriation of his agents
commission and as contributing in some way to expiation (10:17).
96
It is not
necessary to argue for one of these functions to the exclusion of the other. We
will devote ch. 5 to this debate.
Conclusion
Thus far we have found that an outer-altar purication offering carries
out the goal of removing evil (sin or ritual impurity) on behalf of the of-
ferer through activities that identify the offerer as the party transferring the
victim to Yhwh (hand-leaning), effect purgation (blood), make a debt pay-
ment to Yhwh (suet), and award an agents commission to the ofciating
priest (meat).
94. Compare the three-party apportionment of the well-being offering among
Yhwh, the priest, and the offerer (Lev 7:1536; Gane, Bread of the Presence, 198).
95. Cf. D. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and
in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars, 1987) 132.
Against N. Snaith, who argues that a priest involved either personally or corpo-
rately in the sin for which the sacrice is brought does not eat the meat because he
cannot consume (i.e., dispose of ) his own sin (The Sin-Offering and the Guilt-
Offering, VT 15 [1965] 7475).
96. B. Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri (HKAT; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1903) 325, 337, 35253; Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus, 213, 298; Milgrom,
Leviticus 116, 62225, 63639; cf. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 133 n. 22.
71
Chapter 4
Outer-Sanctum Purication Offerings
In the purication offering of a bull on behalf of the high priest (Lev 4:3
12) or the entire community (vv. 1321), the high priest applies blood in the
outer sanctum of the Sacred Tent, and the remainder of the animal is dis-
posed of by incineration. Such an outer-sanctum purication offering is re-
quired only when the high priest or the community inadvertently violate a
divine command (v. 2). The ritual paradigms for these offerers are the same,
with the qualication that in the sacrice for the community the representa-
tive elders rather than the high priest perform the hand-leaning (v. 15).
The outer-sanctum purication offering differs from the outer-altar type in
several respects. First, the victim is a bull, the most expensive sacricial ani-
mal. Second, the high priest must ofciate the ritual. Third, and most impor-
tant, the blood is sprinkled seven times before the veil in the outer sanctum
and daubed on the horns of the incense altar rather than on the horns of the
outer altar. Fourth, the remaining meat is incinerated rather than eaten by
the ofciating priest.
mentioned in the text and others that are not
We will focus on the high priests purication offering and refer to that of
the community as necessary. Activities explicitly prescribed in Lev 4:312 for
the high priests sacrice include:
slay animal
bring some blood into outer sanctum
dip nger in blood and sprinkle blood seven times in front of (inner) veil
put some blood on horns of incense altar
pour remaining blood at base of outer altar
remove suet
burn suet on altar
carry remainder of animal to clean place outside camp
incinerate remainder of animal
Chapter 4 72
Two additional activities must be included by practical necessity: as in the
outer-altar type, the blood must be collected before it can be applied, and the
suet must be presented/conveyed to the altar so that it can be burned there.
The fuller list of activities performed in the outer-sanctum purication offer-
ing is as follows:
slay animal
collect blood
dip nger in blood and sprinkle blood seven times in front of (inner) veil
remove suet
burn suet on altar
The sevenfold sprinkling of blood before the veil is performed
in front (east) of the incense altar
The location of the sevenfold sprinkling of blood O; nao :onx , be-
fore the veil of the holy (place) (Lev 4:6), or simply nao :o nx, before the
veil (v. 17), is not immediately apparent. The combination :o()nx, which I
have translated before, appears only here with the hipil of I:, sprinkle,
and nao, veil. Consequently, it is not surprising to nd some differences of
interpretation as early as the Mishnah and Talmud. Applying the instructions
in Lev 4:6 and 17 to the context of the Day of Atonement, the Mishnah reads
on ("v) the veil (m. Yoma 5:4). But the Babylonian Talmud records the view
that the sprinkling was meant to be toward (:a) the veil rather than on it, al-
though no harm would be done if the blood reached the veil (b. Yoma 57a).
Some modern scholars have sided with b. Yoma 57a and others with
m. Yoma 5:4. For example, B. Baentsch held that the blood should be sprin-
kled in the area before the veil.
1
J. Kurtz argued against this position because
it implies that the most holy blood would be trodden beneath the feet of the
priests, thereby becoming profaned.
2
His objection is weakened by the facts
1. B. Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri (HKAT; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 1903) 323.
2. J. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship of the Old Testament (trans. J. Martin; Minneapolis:
Klock & Klock, 1980; repr. of 1863) 215 n. 1.
Outer-Sanctum Purication Offerings 73
that the entire area of the sanctuary was holy (8:10), including its earth oor
(Num 5:17), and the priests were consecrated (Lev 8:30), with their feet in-
cluded in the ordination ceremony (8:2324pars pro toto). Furthermore,
compare Num 19:4, where the priest sprinkles purication-offering blood (of
the red cow) seven times toward the sanctuary from a location outside the
camp, with no concern that the blood would necessarily gravitate to unconse-
crated ground, where it could subsequently be trodden by any man or beast.
Since the location of the sevenfold sprinkling is potentially important for
the meaning of the activity and the relationship between the outer-sanctum
purication offering and the special purication offerings performed only on
the Day of Atonement, we must enter the debate. In Biblical Hebrew, nx can
be combined with :o, the construct form of c:o, face, surface, front, etc.,
in either of two ways: (1) nx can function as the direct object marker, with
c:o as object;
3
(2) nx can mean cv, with, in the prepositional combination
:o()nx, literally, with the face of, which is roughly equivalent to :o", be-
fore.
4
In the majority of instances, prepositional objects of :o()nx are the
deity or various persons.
5
In only three instances other than Lev 4:6 and 17,
the verses in question, prepositional objects are inanimate things: a city (Gen
33:18), the holy (place/precinct) (Lev 10:4), and the temple (2 Kgs 16:14).
Thus far, :o()nx in Lev 4:6 and 17 could be either (1) the direct object
nx with c:o, surface, meaning that the high priest sprinkles the veil di-
rectly, or (2) a preposition having the sense of before, meaning that the high
priest sprinkles in front of, but not directly on, the veil. The rst possibility is
practically eliminated by the fact that elsewhere sprinkling (hipil of I:) di-
rectly on an object or person is never indicated in Biblical Hebrew with nx
plus direct object but, rather, by the preposition "v alone (5:9; 16:15, 19)
6
or
in the combination :o"v (16:14). Therefore, we should take :o()nx in 4:6
and 17 to be a prepositional usage that is roughly equivalent to :o".
7
This
3. Gen 2:6; 31:2, 5; Exod 34:35; Job 42:9; 2 Sam 14:20; 2 Kgs 18:24; Isa 36:9; 2 Chr
9:23.
4. For functional equivalence between nx/nx and cv, see the parallel between Job
1:12, where the adversary (oD) departed \ :o cvo , from before Yhwh, and 2:7,
where the same adversary departed \ :o nxo , also from before Yhwh. That
:onx is approximately synonymous with :o" is indicated by comparison between
1 Kgs 10:8, referring to Solomons servants standing q:o" , before you (addressed to
Solomon), and 12:6, speaking of the elders who used to stand o"O :onx , before
Solomon.
5. For example, Yhwh (Gen 19:13, 27; Exod 32:11; 34:24), Eli (1 Sam 2:11), or the
king of Moab (1 Sam 22:4).
6. Cf. Exod 29:21; Lev 6:20; 8:11, 30; 14:7; Num 8:7; 19:18, 19.
7. Cf. Tg. Onq. at Lev 4:6, 17: xna\o c;.
Chapter 4 74
idea is strengthened by comparison with 16:14 and 15, where the high priest
sprinkles blood seven times :o", before, the ark cover in the inner sanctum
on the Day of Atonement.
Sprinkling before something means that the person performing the ac-
tion is facing it. Because sprinkling involves movement away from the body,
that which is sprinkled necessarily moves in the direction of that which the
performer is facing. But by itself :o()nx, like :o", refers only to the location
of the action in relation to a spatial reference point. It does not carry the mean-
ing toward in the sense of indicating that the motion of the gesture is in the
direction of the veil and therefore the inner sanctum.
8
This weakens the no-
tion that the sevenfold sprinkling before the veil is an indirect functional
equivalent of sprinkling on the ark cover in the inner sanctum.
9
With the
hipil of I:, to sprinkle, the meaning toward is carried by the preposition
"x, whether alone (Lev 14:51) or in the combination na:"x (Num 19:4).
If nao :o nx means before the veil, where is this in relation to the al-
tar of incense, which is nao :o", before the veil (Exod 30:6)?
10
In other
words, what is the relationship between :o()nx and :o" when their preposi-
tional object is nao? The sevenfold sprinkling in Lev 4:6 and 17 does not
apply blood to the altar of incense, which receives its blood by a separate act
of daubing on its horns (vv. 7, 18). Since all other blood manipulations in pu-
rication offerings at the sanctuary take place along its central axis between
the ark (16:1415) and the outer altar (e.g., 4:25, 30, 34), with the altar of in-
cense in between (4:7, 18; cf. Exod 30:10), the sprinkling would be performed
either in front of or behind the incense altar, rather than to one side of it.
I have come to the conclusion that the sevenfold sprinkling before the
veil should take place in front of (i.e., east of ) the incense altar. This location
farther from the ark than the incense altar is indicated by two factors: First,
the similar sevenfold sprinkling in the inner sanctum on the Day of Atone-
ment is performed in front of (i.e., east of ) the object that is located in that
8. Against C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament
(trans. J. Martin; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952 [orig. 1874]) 2:303; A. Clamer, Lvi-
tique, Nombres, Deutronome (La Sainte Bible 2; Paris: Letouzey et An, 1946) 4748.
9. Against Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 216; N. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering in
the Priestly Literature: Its Meaning and Function (JSOTSup 56; Shefeld: JSOT Press,
1987) 12426.
10. The additional designation \ :o", before Yhwh, in Lev 4:6 and 17 does
not help us here. This expression can refer to a location in the forecourt (e.g., 1:3) or
in the outer sanctum (e.g., Exod 30:8), even when something is placed on one side
or another of the sanctuarys central axis (Lev 24:4lampstand; v. 8bread of the
presence).
area on the central axis of the sanctuary, in this case the ark (Lev 16:14, 15).
Verse 16b abbreviates the prescription for the high priests subsequent activi-
ties in the outer sanctum: v\o "x" Ov a\ , and he shall do likewise for
the Tent of Meeting,
11
that is, the outer sanctum. Performing a sevenfold
sprinkling in front of the incense altar would fulll this instruction to purge
the outer sanctum in the same manner as the inner sanctum. C. F. Keil and
F. Delitzsch are on target here:
For these words can only mean, that in the same way in which he had ex-
piated the most holy place he was also to expiate the holy place of the tab-
ernacle, in which the altar of incense took the place of the ark of the
covenant of the most holy place; so that the expiation was performed by his
putting blood, in the rst place, upon the horns of the altar, and then sprin-
kling it seven times upon the ground in front of it.
12
Second, when the high priest sprinkles seven times in the inner sanctum
(16:14, 15), he contributes to purging (oa) that area (v. 16a).
13
The words
and he shall do likewise for the Tent of Meeting (16b) indicate that he also
purges the area of the outer sanctum. Milgrom comments:
In other words, the shrine should be purged in the same manner as the ady-
tum. Specically, one object (the incense altar) is to be purged by direct
contact with the purgation blood, and the rest of the shrine is to be purged
by a sevenfold sprinkling of the purgation blood on the shrine oor.
14
For Milgrom the important thing here is that in the outer sanctum, as in the
inner sanctum, there would be a single application of blood to an object and
a sevenfold sprinkling on the oor.
Notice that Exod 30:10 makes explicit what can be deduced from Lev 16
alone: of the three items of furniture in the outer sanctum (incense altar,
11. Translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722 (AB 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000)
1293; cf. idem, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 1010.
12. Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary, 2:400401.
13. Kiuchi reasons that in Lev 16:1415 the sprinkling of blood on and before the
ark cover is directed only to that object and therefore the meaning of oa in v. 16,
which affects the entire inner sanctum (O;), does not refer to these activities (The Pu-
rication Offering, 92). But how does the high priest accomplish oa for this portion
of the sanctuary if not through at least one of the sprinklings, which are the only blood
manipulations performed here?
14. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1034. Similarly, when Milgrom renders against the
veil in Lev 4:6, 17 (Leviticus 1722, 127172; idem, Leviticus 116, 226), he means
toward the veil, without the blood touching the veil (p. 234). Note that he refers to
the outer sanctum as the shrine and the inner sanctum as the adytum.
Chapter 4 76
table, lampstand), the one that is purged by the blood of a special purication
offering once a year is the incense altar.
In agreement with m. Yoma 5:45, Milgrom assumes that sprinkling with
reference to the veil is closer to the ark than the application of blood to the
horns of the incense altar (see below).
15
However, he follows Josephus (Ant.
3.243) and Ibn Ezra (on Lev 16:18) in identifying the altar before Yhwh in
v. 18 as the outer sacricial altar in the court.
16
Thus he rejects the tradition,
accepted by a number of modern scholars, that in this verse the high priest
exits (xx) only from the holy of holies to the outer sanctum, so that the altar
in this context is the golden altar of incense, which is described in Lev 4:18
with the same terminology: \ :o" Ox naIo , the altar that is before
Yhwh (m. Yoma 5:5; Sipra, Aare 4:7).
17
According to this interpretation, the
words and he shall do likewise for the Tent of Meeting in 16b refer only to
sprinkling with reference to the inner veil (m. Yoma 5:4) and do not include
subsequent application to the incense altar, which is specied in v. 18.
Since 16b already puts the high priest in the outer sanctum, how could
anyone interpret the high priests exit in v. 18 as a movement into this area?
18
Following v. 16b, v. 17 stipulates that nobody is permitted to be in the Tent of
Meeting when the high priest enters the inner sanctum (O;) to effect purga-
tion there until he exits (\nxx, inn. of xx), that is, from the inner sanctum.
Identifying this exit with the exit prescribed a few words later at the beginning
of v. 18 yields the conclusion that the altar in v. 18 must be the incense altar.
15. Ibid., 103435, 1038; cf. R. Rendtorff, who emphasizes that the blood would
be sprinkled in the closest possible proximity to the inner sanctum (Leviticus
[BKAT 3; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1985] 2:158; cf. 159, 160), and
G. J. Wenham, The Theology of Old Testament Sacrice, in Sacrice in the Bible
(ed. R. Beckwith and M. Selman; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995) 83; W. Gilders, Blood
Ritual in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 2004) 11415, 117.
17. H. L. Strack, Die Bcher Exodus, Leviticus, Numeri (Munich: Beck, 1894) 335;
D. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus (Berlin: Poppelauer, 19056) 450; B. D. Eerdmans,
Das Buch Leviticus (ATS 4; Giesen: Alfred Tpelmann, 1912) 7677; J. Gammie,
Holiness in Israel (OBT; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989) 3941; B. Levine, Leviticus
(JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989) 1035;
C. Meyers, Realms of Sanctity: The Case of the Misplaced Incense Altar in the Tab-
ernacle Texts of Exodus, in Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menahem
Haran (ed. M. Fox et al.; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1996) 4243.
18. Kurtz pointed out that the exit of the high priest in Lev 16:18 (xx\ ) must be
from the outer sanctum because he has been in that area performing the activities pre-
scribed in abbreviated fashion in v. 16b and referred to in the summary statements of
vv. 20, 33 (Sacricial Worship of the Old Testament, 39293); cf. A. Dillmann, Die
Bcher Exodus und Leviticus (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897) 57980.
The view that the altar in v. 18 is the inner one is defective on several
counts. For one thing, v. 17 is a parenthetical instruction, referring back to
the high priests activity in the holy of holies (vv. 1216a), which does not
move the ritual process forward. Although v. 16b carries the ritual into the
outer sanctum, it is logically placed before v. 17 in order to abbreviate the pro-
cedure in this area (he shall do likewise) with reference to the immediately
preceding instructions regarding the inner sanctum. So when ritual progress
resumes in v. 18, the exit and altar here should be based on v. 16b, bracketing
out v. 17. Moreover, v. 20 indicates that the high priest purges three main
components of the sanctuary: inner sanctum, outer sanctum, and altar (i.e.,
outer altar; cf. v. 33). If vv. 1819 refer to the golden altar in the outer sanc-
tum, where is the prescription for purgation of the outer altar? Additionally,
v. 18 refers to the high priests exit directly to the altar in order to carry out a
double manipulation of blood on it. This does not allow for the high priest to
sprinkle blood on/toward the inner veil following his exit from the holy of
holies and before he puts blood on the incense altar.
Milgrom is right: the altar before Yhwh in v. 18 is in the court. This is
the same as the altar before Yhwh in v. 12, which must be the sacricial al-
tar, because only this one had re continually burning on it (cf. 6:56[12
13]).
19
Once the high priest exits to the court and applies blood to the outer
altar (vv. 1819), he simply stays in the court to perform the ritual of Azazels
goat (vv. 2021). This explains why the text does not need to specify an exit
between treatment of the altar and the live goat ritual.
So far so good. However, Milgroms correct identication of the altar in
v. 18 generates a difculty: in order to preserve an unbroken progression of
movement away from the ark, he must have the sevenfold sprinkling toward
and close to the veil in the outer sanctum precede the single application of
blood to the incense altar. This 7 + 1 sequence reverses the 1 + 7 pattern es-
tablished in the inner sanctum (vv. 1415).
20
But he justies the 7 + 1 se-
quence in the outer sanctum on the basis of 4:67 and 1718, where the
outer sanctum purication offering provides a precedent for the 7 + 1 pat-
tern,
21
and nds the result to be satisfying: a symmetrical introversion in the
19. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1025. Notice that, since both altars are \ :o" , in
Lev 4:18 specication of the incense altar requires further identication: "xa Ox
v\o, that is in the Tent of Meeting.
20. Ibid., 103435, 1038.
21. Ibid., 1035. D. Wright also understands Lev 16:16b as likely referring back to
the activities detailed in 4:57, 1618 (The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in
the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature [SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars,
1987] 16).
Chapter 4 78
purgation of the inner sanctum (= adytum), outer sanctum (= shrine), and
outer altar on the Day of Atonement (16:1419):
22
adytum shrine altar
1 + 7 7 + 1 1 + 7
This interpretation is logical, based on biblical evidence, and aesthetically
attractive. But in 16:16b the word a, likewise, unambiguously refers to the
immediately preceding prescription belonging to the same ritual complex
that is, the single application of blood to the ark cover and sevenfold sprin-
kling in front of that object (vv. 1416a).
23
The rabbinic tradition insisting
that 16:16b refers to the 1 + 7 pattern established in the holy of holies
(b. Yoma 56b) correctly interpreted this aspect of the ritual.
24
So how is it possible to have a 1 + 7 pattern in the outer sanctum if Mil-
grom is right that the incense altar receives only the single daubing of blood
rather than the double application specied in vv. 1819, which refer to the
outer altar? There are two options here: (1) If the location of the sevenfold
sprinkling is behind (i.e., west of ) the incense altar, between the altar and the
inner veil, the high priest must rst daub blood on the horns of the incense
altar and then move closer to the ark in order to perform the sevenfold sprin-
kling. This option is unacceptable for two reasons: First, it is not faithful to
the pattern set in the inner sanctumblood application to an object and
then in front of that object. Second, it disrupts the otherwise consistent out-
ward progression of blood applications away from the ark, which the rabbis
and Milgrom have been careful to maintain, albeit in different ways.
(2) The sevenfold sprinkling is performed in front of (i.e., east of ) the in-
cense altar. This works. As in the inner sanctum, the high priest applies blood
once to an object, in this case the incense altar, and sprinkles seven times in
23. Compare Lev 16:15, which abbreviates to some extent by referring to previous
activities in the same complex (v. 14). By using different phraseology, 16:16b could
easily have referred to the outer-sanctum purication offering paradigm with its 7 + 1
pattern (4:67, 1718): See, for example, 4:10, where part of the high priests personal
purication offering is explained on the basis of explicitly mentioned similarity with
well-being offering procedure, and vv. 2021, where the prescription for disposing of
the purication offering of the community abbreviates by referring to the previous
instructions regarding the high priests bull (cf. 9:15).
24. However, this tradition understood the 1 + 7 blood applications in the holy of
holies and outer sanctum to be sprinklings performed once upward plus seven times
downward (cf. m. Yoma 5:34).
front of that object, meaning in the main part of the outer sanctum. This pro-
vides stronger support for Milgroms insight that the sevenfold sprinkling af-
fects the area of the outer sanctum than his own placement of this blood
manipulation in the peripheral space between the incense altar and the veil.
The parallel between blood manipulation in the outer sanctum on the
Day of Atonement and in the high priests personal purication offering for
inadvertent sin, both of which involve sevenfold sprinkling and application of
blood to the incense altar suggests that the sevenfold sprinkling in the high
priests outer-sanctum offering also affects the area. But what about the expres-
sion nao :o nx in Lev 4? Doesnt this necessitate a location closer to the
inner veil than the incense altar? The answer is: no. Aside from Lev 4:6 and
17, inanimate prepositional objects of :o()nx are places/areas: a city (Gen
33:18), the holy place / precinct (Lev 10:4), or the Solomonic temple (2 Kgs
16:14). To be :o()nx, before, one of these areas is to be located in an adja-
cent area. Strictly speaking, the nao, veil, of the sanctuary in Lev 4:6 and
17 is an object that is not an area. So in this sense :o()nx here is excep-
tional. However, the primary function of the nao is to establish the limit of
the outer sanctum and thereby to delineate the area of the inner sanctum by
stretching across the interior width of the sanctuary.
25
Thus sprinkling before
the veil means, in effect, sprinkling in the area in front of and adjacent to the
inner sanctum.
26
In this way :o()nx economically alludes to the area of the
inner sanctum while specifying the veil in front of which the high priest is to
perform the physical activity of sprinkling the blood. This allusion would not
be conveyed by a designation of location referring to the altar of incense,
such as before the altar of incense.
Genesis 33:18, Lev 10:4, and 2 Kgs 16:14 indicate that something :o()nx,
before, an area is located somewhere in an adjacent area. So the fact that in
Lev 4:6 and 17 the sevenfold sprinkling is performed in the outer sanctum in
front of the inner sanctum does not rule out the possibility that the incense
altar may be closer to the inner sanctum than the sevenfold sprinkling.
So why does the text employ :o()nx rather than :o", which can also re-
fer to location in an adjacent area?
27
Probably because the incense altar is
25. R. Gane and J. Milgrom, nao paroket, TDOT 12:9596. Compare the Akka-
dian cognate parakku, which can refer to the shrine or cella of a deity, and the verb
paraku, to go/lay/place across, to bar (AHW 2:82729).
26. This interpretation is viable whether O; in O; nao (Lev 4:6) refers to the
inner sanctum (Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 12425) or the outer sanctum
(Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 234). The nao belonged to both areas.
27. E.g., Gen 23:17; Exod 14:2, 9; 29:10; Lev 3:8, 13; 4:14.
Chapter 4 80
placed nao :o" (Exod 30:6), and use of the same preposition for the lo-
cation of a sprinkling that is not performed on that altar could be confusing.
Possible additional evidence for location of the sevenfold sprinkling in the
main part of the outer sanctum may be found in the fact that the incense
altar is nao :o" , before the veil, noa :o" , before the ark cover
(Exod 30:6), and nv \x :o" , before the ark of the covenant (40:5),
which indicates that this altar is relatively closer to the veil than the table
and lampstand, which are simply nao" no , outside the veil (Exod
26:35, 27:21, 40:22; Lev 24:3).
28
Accordingly, N. Sarna locates the incense
altar just outside the curtain that veils the Holy of Holies.
29
If this is true,
the proximity of the incense altar to the veil could make it difcult for the
high priest to sprinkle blood in the fairly small area between these objects
without consistently applying the blood directly on ("v) rather than before
(:o[]nx) the veil.
30
Of course, this indirect argument is weakened by the
lack of biblical evidence regarding the precise distance between the incense
altar and the veil.
The overall goal/meaning of an outer-sanctum purication
prerequisite to forgiveness
The end of the prescription for the high priests ritual does not explic-
itly state that this sacrice effects purgation (oa) of sin on behalf of the
high priest. However, this is implied by the facts that the sacrice is a pu-
rication offering to and before Yhwh for inadvertent sin (Lev 4:34, 67)
and parallels the outer-sanctum purication offering of the community,
which also remedies inadvertent sin and has this overall goal: c " v o a \
c " n" o : \ a , Thus the priest shall effect purgation for them that they
may be forgiven (v. 20).
31
This is basically the same goal that we found in
v. 26 for the chieftains outer-altar purication offering: purgation (oa)
prerequisite to forgiveness (n"o). The only difference between these goals
is the beneciary: the community in one case and the chieftain in the
28. Spatial relationships within the sanctuary are dened with reference to the
nao (Gane and Milgrom, nao paroket, 12:96).
29. N. Sarna, Exodus (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1991) 193; cf. U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Exodus (Jerusalem:
Magnes, 1967) 391.
30. Interestingly, b. Yoma 57a records the claim of a rabbi that he saw in Rome the
veil of the Second Temple with blood stains on it.
31. Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1272; cf. idem, Leviticus 116, 227.
other. The former requires an outer-sanctum offering and the latter an outer-
altar offering.
Milgrom builds on Abravanel to argue that in Lev 4:321 the purication
offering of the high priest and the community comprise a single case. The
high priest has erred in judgment, causing harm to the people (v 3) whereby,
in following the high priests ruling, the people also err.
32
But A. B. Ehrlich
regards the words cv noOx" in Lev 4:3 as explaining the effect of the high
priests sin rather than a restriction to only some of his sins: every offense of
the high priest would also cause the people to incur guilt.
33
D. Hoffmann ar-
gues that there is no distinction between the high priests ofcial and private
lives. Because he represents the nation, even his private sin brings guilt on
the people of Israel.
34

Hoffmann recognizes that the words \" n"o:\ are lacking at the end of the
pericope prescribing the high priests purication offering (v. 12). However,
from the appearance of these words in v. 20, at the end of the pericope regard-
ing the sacrice for the community, he derives the conclusion that the high
priests sacrice must also result in his being forgiven: if the entire commu-
nity, including the high priest, receives forgiveness through a purication of-
fering, a fortiori the high priest will receive expiation when he alone offers the
same sacrice.
35
Whether Milgrom or Hoffmann is right, both agree that the high priest
receives oa n"o within the context of Lev 4. Kiuchi, however, has an-
other idea. Because the high priest cannot bear his own guilt, he cannot re-
ceive expiation (oa) at this stage, even though the sanctuary is partially
puried by the blood manipulations that he performs (vv. 67). His expia-
tion must await the bearing of his sin by Azazels goat on the Day of Atone-
ment. Thus, uniquely, the high priests purication-atonement spans two
32. Ibid., 241; cf. Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary, 2:303. B. Levine ar-
gues that fear and extreme need induced by misfortune often motivate people to seek
expiation. So he is tempted to translate Lev 4:3a: If the anointed priest commits an
offense to the misfortune of the people (Levine, review of Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus
116, Bib 74 [1993] 285).
33. A. B. Ehrlich, Randglossen zur Hebrischen Bibel: Textkritisches, Sprachliches
und Sachliches (Hildesheim: Olms, 1968) 2:13.
34. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus, 17677; cf. m. Hor. 2:12; Rashi on Lev 4:3;
Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 21314 n. 1; M. M. Kalisch, A Historical and Critical
Commentary on the Old Testament, with a New Translation: Leviticus (2 vols.; Lon-
don: Longman, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 186772) 1:312; A. Dillmann, Die Bcher
Exodus und Leviticus (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897) 461, citing Lev 10:6.
35. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus, 186.
Chapter 4 82
different occasions (Lev 4.312 + Lev 16.14ff.).
36
According to Kiuchi, the
inadequacy of the Lev 9 ritual to cope with the priestly sin of Nadab and
Abihu also implies a need for more potent atonement for the high priest,
the head of the priestly house, and thereby for all Israel, on the Day of
Atonement.
37
Notice that Kiuchi, like Milgrom, treats the purication offerings as a co-
herent, dynamic system,
38
albeit a different one. The idea that atonement
involves a ritual process accomplished in two stages, with completion of the
process on the Day of Atonement, is a signicant and intriguing idea to which
we will return in a major way.
Several problems with Kiuchis interpretation prevent me from adopting
it. First, in each of the other cases in Lev 4, completion of ritual oa is pre-
requisite to forgiveness (n"o) granted by Yhwh (vv. 20, 26, 31, 35). So if Kiu-
chi is correct, the high priest should also receive forgiveness following
completion of his oa on the Day of Atonement. But alas, there is no evi-
dence that the Day of Atonement rituals provide forgiveness for anyone: Sur-
prisingly, there is not a single instance of the root n"o in Lev 16 or any of the
other Day of Atonement prescriptions (23:2632; Num 29:711)! Rather, the
oa benet on this day for the Israelites, including the high priest, is some
kind of purication (o; Lev 16:30). We will explore the implications of this
in a subsequent chapter of the present work.
Second, on the Day of Atonement, Azazels goat carries away the moral
faults of all Israelites together (16:2122). So at this time the sins of the high
priest are bundled up with those of everyone else, without a hint that he re-
ceives a special second stage of oa that they do not also receive at this time.
Third, the high priest performs oa on ("v) the nonsacricial goat for Aza-
zel (16:10), which serves as a vehicle of elimination. There is no indication
that this kind of oa benets the Israelites in the way that sacricial oa does.
Fourth, later I will argue that the only purication offerings having the
goal of purifying the sanctuary and its sancta are those performed at the initial
36. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 12728; cf. R. Pter-Contesse and J. Elling-
ton, who take the atonement formula (the priest shall make atonement for them/
him) to represent a discrete ritual gesture that the high priest would not likely per-
form on himself (A Handbook on Leviticus [UBSHS; New York: United Bible Socie-
ties, 1990] 52). This interpretation of the formula fails to distinguish between the two
levels of ritual data provided by the text: instructions for performance of physical ac-
tivities and interpretation of those activities. If the formula refers to a separate activity,
how is it performed?
37. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 8385, 159.
38. Cf. ibid., 162.
consecration of the altar (Exod 29:3637; Lev 8:15) and at the purgation of
the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:16, 1819).
39
If I am right
about this, and if Kiuchi is right that the high priest himself receives no oa
as a result of his Lev 4 sacrice, what does the ritual accomplishnothing?
Thus far we have found that the goals of outer-altar and outer-sanctum pu-
rication offerings for inadvertent sin are basically the same: purgation (oa)
prerequisite to forgiveness (n"o), except that the beneciaries are chieftain/
commoner and high priest/community, respectively. So the outer-sanctum
type remedies inadvertent sins of community-wide rather than individual
scope, due to the fact that the sin is that of the high priest (the cultic repre-
sentative of the community) and/or the community itself. This vastly wider
scope explains the superiority of the outer-sanctum procedural system in
terms of victim, ofciant, location, and activities. It requires the most expen-
sive victim (bull), the highest cultic functionary (high priest), blood applica-
tions inside rather than outside the Sacred Tent, and performance of two
blood applications (sevenfold sprinkling and daubing on the incense altar)
rather than one.
Numbers 15:2226 presents another ritual for an inadvertent sin of the
community, consisting of a purication-offering goat accompanied by a
burnt-offering bull. Verse 25 shows that the goal is the same as in Lev 4: pur-
gation (oa) prerequisite to forgiveness (n"o).
At rst glance Num 15:2231 appears to contain a second set of general
rules governing purication offerings.
40
G. A. Anderson contends, in agree-
ment with the Temple Scroll but against rabbinic interpretation (e.g., m. Hor.
2:6), that vv. 2226 are more likely than Lev 4:1321 to express a general rule
because special applications of purication offerings for the community pre-
scribe goats rather than bulls (Lev 9, 16; Num 2829), in accordance with the
rule of Num 15 rather than that of Lev 4.
41
However, he somewhat overstates
the problem of the relationship between Lev 4 and Num 15.
First, while Anderson properly contrasts the bull in Lev 4 to the corre-
sponding male goat for a purication offering in Num 15, he does not ade-
quately take into account the fact that in the latter passage a burnt-offering
bull must accompany the purication-offering goat. So in each passage there
is a bull. Therefore, the sacrices of the community in Lev 4 and Num 15
39. With A. Rodrguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus (AUSDS 3; Berrien
Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979) 123, 12829, 137.
40. G. A. Anderson, The Interpretation of the Purication Offering (nxon) in the
Temple Scroll (11QTemple) and Rabbinic Literature, JBL 111 (1992) 19.
41. Ibid., 1924, 3234.
Chapter 4 84
are quite similar in quantitative terms. As we have already shown, purica-
tion offerings have enhanced blood manipulations and hence greater expia-
tory power than burnt offerings. The descending gradation of victims in Lev
4, from a bull for the high priest or the community (vv. 321) to a male goat
for a chieftain (vv. 2226) and then a female goat or sheep for an individual
(vv. 2735) indicates that a bull is a greater sacrice than a goat. On this basis
we could argue that the burnt offering in Num 15 compensates for the fact
that the purication offering is a goat, a lesser victim than the bull in Lev 4.
That the burnt offering quantitatively supplements the expiation effected
by the purication offering, resulting in what amounts to a greater purica-
tion offering for the entire community, is clear from comparison between
Num 15:2226 and vv. 2729, where the functional equivalent in the less-
serious case of an individual sinner consists only of a female goat for a puri-
cation offering, with no accompanying burnt offering. See also Lev 5:710,
where a sacrice of two birds, one as a purication offering and the other as
a burnt offering, carries the same function as a single purication offering of
a female sheep or goat (v. 6).
42
The purpose of the burnt-offering bird is to
supplement the quantity of the purication-offering function;
43
it carries no
independent qualitative signicance. The fact that the two birds are a unit is
shown by the fact that the oa formula is stated only once, after completion
of the second ritual (burnt offering), thereby covering both rituals (Lev
5:10).
44
It is true that a burnt offering expiates (Lev 1:4; 16:24; cf. 14:20; Job
1:5; 42:8), but in combination with a purication offering, the function of a
burnt offering is subsumed under that of the purication offering to provide a
greater purication offering.
45
The fact that individual activity systems, such
Leviticus 4:1321 Numbers 15:2226
purication offering (greater)
bull (greater)
purication offering (greater)
goat (lesser)
+
burnt offering (lesser)
bull (greater)
42. Notice that the blood of the purication-offering bird, as in burnt offerings of
birds, is applied to the side of the altar rather than to its horns (v. 9; cf. Lev 1:15).
43. Cf. Levine, Leviticus, 29; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 304.
44. Cf. Rendtorff, Leviticus, 3:177.
45. B. Janowski (Shne als Heilsgeschehen: Studien zur Shnetheologie der Priester-
schrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament [WMANT 55;
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982] 192) and Rendtorff (Leviticus, 1:38)
hold that a burnt offering expiates only when it is combined with a nxon sacrice.
as purication offerings and burnt offerings, can operate together to form
higher-level systems, which we could call ritual complexes, arises from the
fact that rituals are hierarchical.
Andersons second overstatement is his characterization of Num 15:2231
as containing a general rule for the purication offering (see above). For one
thing, this legislation is not self-standing because it does not say how the pu-
rication offering is to be performed; at least in the present form of the text,
it depends on Lev 4:1321 for the activity paradigm. For another, Num 15:22
26 prescribes a ritual complex consisting of two kinds of sacrices: purica-
tion offering and burnt offering. So this passage is closer to what Anderson
calls a particular application in the sense that its focus is on the remedy for
a kind of case, an inadvertent fault,

rather than on a particular activity para-
digm, the purication offering.
The problem with regarding Num 15:2226 as a particular application is
the fact that Lev 4 deals with the same kind of case: inadvertent sin. In a later
chapter we will consider the possibility of differentiation between Lev 4 and
Num 15 in terms of subcategories of inadvertence, but we will nd insuf-
cient evidence to make such a distinction. So it appears that Num 15:2226
does not present a general rule for the purication offering or a particular
application of such to another kind of case but, rather, a diachronic modi-
cation of one aspect of the general rule when the offerer is the whole commu-
nity: instead of a bull, which is also the victim for the high priest in Lev 4, the
community must now bring a male goat. To compensate for this downgrad-
ing of the purication offering, the community must offer a supplementary
bull as a burnt offering.
Naturally we want to know why the ritual for the community was changed.
What difference does it make whether there is a purication-offering bull or
a goat plus a burnt-offering bull, and what would motivate a shift from one to
the other? One obvious difference is that Num 15 establishes a ritual distinc-
tion between the purication offering of the high priest and that of the com-
munity, which are both bulls and therefore equal in Lev 4. But why such a
change? Does it lie in the narrative context of the book of Numbers, where
sins of the community, including conict with the high priesthood, feature
so prominently in close proximity to ch. 15?
46
Does it have to do with a
46. Rabbinic exegetes (e.g., Rashi, Ramban) have explained that Num 15:2226
calls for a special ritual because in this case the sin has the effect of breaking all these
commandments (v. 22). In their view such breach of the covenant could only result
from idolatry. However, it is difcult to see how the community could inadvertently
commit idolatry (G. Wenham, Numbers: An Introduction and Commentary [TOTC;
Chapter 4 86
difference or change in the scope of nxon sacrices as legal remedies?
47
We
cannot pursue this intriguing question further in the present work.
Andersons third overstatement is his interpretation of high-handed sin
in Num 15:3031 as advertent sin. This yields a simple contrast between ex-
piable inadvertence in vv. 2229 and inexpiable advertence in vv. 3031, the
latter being a very harsh measure.
48
But as we shall see later, not all advertent/
intentional sins are high handedthat is, deant. So rather than ruling out
the possibility that any deliberate sin could be expiated through sacrice
(against Lev 5:2026[6:17]), Num 15:3031 makes explicit what could be
deduced from the silence in Leviticus regarding the sacricial expiability of
deant sin.
49
47. On the relative legal scope of Lev 4 versus Num 15:2231 in terms of a distinc-
tion between prohibitive and performative commandment violations, see Milgrom,
Leviticus 116, 26469. While Lev 4 clearly deals with prohibitive commandments,
this aspect of Num 15 is debated. For example, Ibn Ezra argued that Num 15:22 refers
only to violation of performative commandments, but Ramban emphasized the com-
prehensive coverage of the same verse, which speaks of failing to do any of Yhwhs
commandments, implying prohibitive as well as performative ones.
48. Anderson, The Interpretation of the Purication Offering, 19, 3031.
49. Anderson nds that the Qumran sect used Num 15:2231 as a general rule to
decide whether a member should be regarded as apostate, and therefore expelled
from the community, or not (ibid., 3233; quoting 1QS 8:219:2 as an example).
In basic harmony with the tenor of Num 15:3031, a sin o a , with a high
hand, was treated with extreme seriousness as apostasy. However, even if the Qumran
Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 1981] 130), as shown by the lengths to which Ram-
ban must go to imagine scenarios of unwitting apostasy, such as a child who was taken
captive and grew up unaware of his Jewish identity. A. Toeg attempts to account for
the difference between the purication offerings of the community in Lev 4 and Num
15 by regarding the latter as containing an interpolation (Numbers 15:2231Mid-
rash Halakha, Tarbiz 43 [1974] 810 [Hebrew]). M. Fishbane accepts Toegs idea that
the Num 15 passage is based on Lev 4 but stresses the magnitude of the change in
Num 15:2231: Indeed, the expansion of an older law dealing only with uninten-
tional transgression of negative prohibitions to the unintentional transgression of every
one of the commandments, and the corresponding transfer of the penalty of na from
specic transgressions to the wilful and high-handed violation of any particular
commandment, is a quantum development (Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel
[Oxford: Clarendon, 1985] 193). I. Knohl responds negatively to Toegs approach but
retains the priority of Lev 4: The language of the text in Numbers 15 deviates com-
pletely from the language in Leviticus 4. . . . This is no exegetic insertion but rather a
revised and renewed version with only a weak afnity to the original text! (The Sin
Offering Law in the Holiness School [Numbers 15.2231], in Priesthood and Cult in
Ancient Israel [ed. G. A. Anderson and Saul M. Olyan; JSOTSup 125; Shefeld: JSOT
Press, 1991] 195). Knohl goes on to explain the difference as due to Lev 4 belonging
to the Priestly Torah and Num 15 as a later version of the ritual law by the Holiness
School (pp. 195203).
We can outline the outer-sanctum purication-offering paradigm pre-
scribed in Lev 4:312 and 1321 as a hierarchical activity system:
Hand-leaning, slaughter, and burning suet on the outer altar are performed
in the same manner as in the outer-altar purication offering. Since the over-
all goals of the outer-sanctum and outer-altar types are the same, except for
the cultic status of their respective beneciaries, we can assume that the con-
tributions of these activities to achievement of the overall goals are the same.
But differences in blood manipulations and treatment of remaining animal
parts must be further investigated.
Applying blood in outer sanctum
The combination of sprinkling seven times nao :o nx , before the
veil (Lev 4:6, 17), that is, east of the incense altar in the main area of the
outer sanctum (see above), and daubing blood on the horns of the incense
altar serves as a more-powerful functional equivalent of putting blood on the
Outer-Sanctum Purication Offering
slay animal
apply blood in outer sanctum
collect blood
dip nger in blood and sprinkle seven times in front of (inner) veil
burn suet on (outer) altar
remove suet
burn suet on altar
dispose of remainder of animal
community harshly interpreted all advertent sins as high-handed apostasy, as Anderson
implies (ibid., 32), this does not necessitate reading their denition of o a into the
biblical text.
Chapter 4 88
horns of the outer altar.
50
Therefore it is clear that each of the two kinds of
blood applications contributes to expiation before Yhwh.
51
Earlier we found that putting blood on the horns, that is, the highest
points, of the outer altar or incense altar elevates the importance of the ex-
piatory blood in a vertical direction, in which smoke of sacrices or incense
goes up toward Yhwh at his heavenly place of enthronement (cf. Ps 11:4).
The outer-sanctum paradigm highlights the blood even further: uniquely
among sacrices performed at times other than the Day of Atonement, its
blood-manipulation subsystem is expanded by addition of the sevenfold
sprinkling, and it is extended in a horizontal direction to within the tent,
closer to the place of Yhwhs enthronement in the holy of holies above the
ark cover (Exod 25:22; Num 7:89) or the cherubim on the ark (1 Sam 4:4;
2 Sam 6:2).
52
50. Cf. Janowski, Shne, 235.
51. Against the theory of T. Vriezen that in a purication offering of special sanc-
tity, sprinkling blood (hipil of I:) originally served to consecrate it in preparation
for expiatory application (n:) of the blood (The Term Hizza: Lustration and Con-
secration, OtSt 7 [1950] 20135; cf. M. Noth, Leviticus [trans. J. E. Anderson; OTL;
London: SCM, 1965] 39). Because Lev 16:19 has blood sprinkled seven times on the
outer altar outside the Sacred Tent, where Vriezen does not see the need for special
consecration of the blood preparatory to expiation, he interprets this as an exceptional
act of lustration that represents a later stage of the text (pp. 23031; cf. 233). Janowski
has opposed Vriezen on several grounds, including the reverse n: I sequence in
Lev 16:1819 (Janowski, Shne, 22627; cf. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 120,
12230; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 233). However, Janowski (Shne, 227 n. 211) and
Milgrom (Numbers [JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Soci-
ety, 1990] 158, 440; cf. idem, Leviticus 116, 103740) accept the idea that sevenfold
sprinklings enact consecration in certain contexts: Num 19:4, where the priest sprin-
kles blood from the red cow seven times toward the sanctuary from a location outside
the camp, and (for Milgrom) Lev 16:19, where the high priest explicitly (re-)conse-
crates the outer altar. Kiuchi, however, interprets the sprinkling in Num 19:4 as an
indirect way of purifying the Tent in the sense that this and other observances of pu-
rication rules regarding corpse contamination prevent the delement of the sanctu-
ary, which, according to vv. 13, 20, would otherwise occur (The Purication Offering,
124). While this suggestion is attractive in that it places the purpose of the sprinkling
rmly within the framework of the puricatory goal assigned to the red cow ritual, it
is hard to see how later prevention of the sanctuarys delement through application
of the rehydrated ashes of the cow to a corpse-contaminated person (vv. 13, 20) so
neatly explains the sevenfold sprinkling of blood, before the cow is burned, in terms of
indirect purication of the sanctuary. Prevention by one action is not indirect puri-
cation by another. Prevention is prevention, not a form of purication. Maybe Kiu-
chis theory is worth pursuing, but in its present form a conceptual gap (or two) needs
to be lled in.
52. Cf. 2 Kgs 19:15; 1 Chr 13:6; Ps 80:2[1]; 99:1; Isa 37:16.
The expanded, extended use of blood in the outer-sanctum ritual cor-
relates with greater expiatory power, which is needed to remedy a fault of
community-wide magnitude. From comparison with the outer-altar type, we
can deduce an underlying principle: the more serious the situation in terms
of the cultic status of the sinner, the more intimate and elaborate the transac-
tion with Yhwh to make amends.
53
Disposing of remainder of the animal
In the outer-sanctum purication offering, the remainder of the animal is
taken outside the camp and incinerated, rather than eaten (Lev 4:1112, 21).
Presumably the reason for such disposal is the fact that this ritual type in-
volves the high priest, not only as ofciant, but also as offerer, whether indi-
vidually or as a member of the community (cf. m. Hor. 2:2). Except in the
case of a well-being offering, which carries a lower grade of sanctity,
54
an of-
ferer is not permitted to benet from his own sacrice.
55
This rule is implicit
in 9:11, where the inaugural outer-altar purication offering on behalf of
Aaron (and presumably his family; cf. 16:6, 11) is incinerated outside the
camp. See also 6:16[23]: So every cereal offering of a priest shall be a total
offering; it shall not be eaten.
56
When a sacrice expiates for sin, as is always
the case with an outer-sanctum purication offering, the principle that an of-
ferer may not benet from his own sacrice effectively eliminates the possi-
bility that he could indirectly benet from his own sin.
57
Leviticus 6:23[30] rules that applying blood in the outer sanctum and eat-
ing the esh are mutually exclusive. This does not mean that eating the esh
is permitted in every outer-altar purication offering, as shown by the case of
(JSOTSup 106; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1992) 17273. This was missed by Noth, whose
theoretical historical stages of development from a general and unied purication of-
fering obscure his understanding of the rituals (Leviticus, 3741).
54. See, e.g., Num 18:911, 1819; cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 204.
55. H. Cazelles, Le Lvitique (La Sainte Bible; 2d ed.; Paris: Cerf, 1958) 39;
Dillmann, Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus, 463; Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 23738.
57. Ibid., 264; cf. idem, Two Kinds of aat, VT 26 (1976) 337; Kiuchi, The
Purication Offering, 13435; N. Snaith, Leviticus and Numbers (CB, new ed.; Lon-
don: Nelson, 1967) 17. This is simpler than the theory of Levine, who argues that Lev
4 represents a redactional combination of two different kinds of sacrices: First, there
is a riddance rite by which impurity resulting from a severe offense committed by the
high priest or community is eliminated from the camp and destroyed. Second, the rite
of the chieftain or commoner propitiates God and compensates the priests for their
service with portions that they consume (Leviticus, 1819, 21).
Chapter 4 90
the inaugural sacrice mentioned above (9:11). Correctly performed inciner-
ation of this outer-altar offering for the priests, which was the counterpart of
the outer-altar offering for the community (v. 15) that the priests should have
eaten under normal circumstances (10:1620), undermines Kurtzs explana-
tion that outer-sanctum offerings (uniquely) had to be incinerated because
they were too holy even for priestly consumption.
58
Conclusion
Thus far we have found that an outer-sanctum purication offering carries
out the goal of removing inadvertent sin of community-wide scope on behalf
of the offerer(s) through activities that identify the offerer(s) as the party trans-
ferring the victim to Yhwh (hand-leaning), effect superior purgation (blood
in outer sanctum), make a debt payment to Yhwh (suet), and dispose of the
remaining animal material that includes what would otherwise be the
agents commission (meat) for the ofciating high priest, who is denied this
because he simultaneously plays the role of an offerer.
91
Chapter 5
Purication-Offering Flesh:
Prebend or Expiation?
In our investigation of the outer-altar purication offering, we found that a
priest who ofciates such a sacrice on behalf of another Israelite receives the
remaining meat as a prebend/perquisite that functions as an agents commis-
sion for carrying out the primary transaction between Yhwh and the offerer
(Lev 6:19[26], 22[29]; 7:6). Here we will take up the question of whether
priestly consumption of the meat additionally and simultaneously plays some
kind of role in effecting purgation (oa) on behalf of the offerer.
When priests eat the esh of purication offerings at which they
have ofciated, they contribute to expiation
Those who regard the purication-offering esh as a priestly perquisite
that lacks an expiatory role use a variety of arguments. I will describe and
parry these in the following paragraphs, arriving at my own conclusion in the
process.
J. Kurtz and A. Dillmann have viewed the most holy status of purica-
tion offerings (Lev 6:18[25], 22[29]; 10:17) to be incompatible with the idea
that they carry evil.
1
Later we will nd this argument to be undermined by
6:2021[2728], where most holy purication offerings are uniquely and par-
adoxically treated as if they are impure.
2
Dillmann observed that in Lev 4 atonement is achieved (vv. 20, 26, 31, 35)
without any indication that it depends on the priests eating of the meat. Ac-
cording to his reading of the text, following the forgiveness granted in ch. 4
no further extermination of sin is needed.
3
He did not give adequate weight
to the fact that eating the meat is postrequisite. It takes place after the core
1. J. H. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship of the Old Testament (trans. J. Martin; Minne-
apolis: Klock & Klock, 1980; repr. of 1863) 22830; cf. 24041; A. Dillmann, Die
Bcher Exodus und Leviticus (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897) 46364; cf. 517.
2. Cf. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 4034.
3. Dillmann, Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus, 464.
Chapter 5 92
activities of the ritual are completed and may be postponed until a regular
mealtime, but it is required nonetheless (10:17; cf. 16:2628) and therefore is
a contributing part of the ritual that effects purgation. The fact that priestly
consumption of the meat appears in 6:19[26], 22[29] among special instruc-
tions for the priests, rather than in ch. 4 with the earlier ritual activities, is due
to the fact that it involves only the priests. This does not mean that the eating
activity was not a necessary component of the ritual.
4
Once the suet was
burning on the altar, the offerer could go on his way assured of expiation pre-
requisite to divine forgiveness, as indicated by the oa formulas in ch. 4, trust-
ing that the priest would nish whatever remained to be done.
K. Elliger reacts to the narrative of Lev 10. He nds here that the expiatory
efcacy of the peoples purication offering was not invalidated by priestly
failure to consume its esh, which can be taken to imply that eating the meat
did not contribute to the expiation.
5
However, while it is true that the sacri-
ce was not invalidated, this departure from the prescribed procedure was
conditioned by exceptional and extreme extenuating circumstances, namely,
the execution of Aarons sons by Yhwh when they performed ritual activity
that misred or backred (literally! see vv. 12).
6
Abstaining from the
meat was not simply a ritual mistake but a deliberate choice based on Aarons
reection on the implications of his sons execution for his own status before
Yhwh and therefore the status of the priestly house of which he was the head
(v. 19).
7
Aarons idea here, which Moses accepted (cf. v. 20), seems to have
been that he and his remaining sons were unworthy to enjoy their prebend
for mediating a sacrice on behalf of others on the very day that the priestly
house had so notably fallen under divine condemnation. In any case, it is
clear that maintenance of the offerings validity in this context does not tell us
that under normal circumstances failure to eat the esh would not invalidate
the offering as an infelicitous performance that failed to achieve its goal be-
cause of misexecution.
8
4. Against N. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering in the Priestly Literature: Its Mean-
ing and Function (JSOTSup 56; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1987) 130.
5. K. Elliger, Leviticus (HAT 4; Tbingen: Mohr, 1966) 139; Cf. Kiuchi, The Puri-
cation Offering, 49.
6. Cf. R. L. Grimes, Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its The-
ory (SCR; Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1990) 207;
repr. from Infelicitous Performances and Ritual Criticism, Semeia 41 (1988) 118.
7. Cf. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 73, 7577.
8. Moses initially criticized the performance not because one ritual action (in-
cineration) was substituted for another (eating) but because he judged the ritual to
be incomplete without priestly consumption of the meat (Lev 10:1618). On ritual
Purication-Offering Flesh: Prebend or Expiation? 93
N. Kiuchi contends against the possibility that atonement can be retroac-
tively invalidated:
Furthermore it must be borne in mind that the idea that atonement can be
annulled or invalidated after it is made is not mentioned in the cultic law,
and that more immediately both Moses and Aaron appear to assume in Lev
10.16ff. the validity of the atonement in Lev 9. Therefore one cannot say
that the atonement of priests in Lev 9 was invalidated by the sin of Nadab
and Abihu.
9
It is true that the atonement for the priests was not invalidated by the sin of
Nadab and Abihu. But in Lev 10 it was expiation for the people, not for the
priests, that was in question. Moses had no qualms about completion of the
priests purication offering of a calf (cf. 9:811); it was the goat for the non-
priestly community that concerned him (10:16; cf. 9:15). Furthermore, at
issue here is not whether the expiatory (oa) process for the people could be
retroactively invalidated after it was completed but whether it was completed
before the last action connected with that expiatory ritual was properly per-
formed.
10
The magnitude of Moses reaction (10:1618) indicates his percep-
tion that, if the priests did not correctly complete the purication offering, the
people would suffer some kind of loss even though Yhwh had already mani-
fested his acceptance of the victim by consuming the suet in theophanic re
on the altar (Lev 9:24).
Some arguments against an expiatory function for priestly consumption of
meat relate to the terminology of Moses angry words to the priests in Lev
10:17, which Milgrom renders: Why did you not eat the purication offering
in the sacred precinct? For it is most holy, and he has assigned it to you to
remove the iniquity of the community to effect purgation on their behalf be-
fore Yhwh.
11
Taking it in for it is most holy as referring to the purication
offering in general, including the earlier application of blood, Kiuchi con-
cludes that the last part of this verse means that through the blood
manipulation the priests bear the guilt . . . of the congregation.
12
Kurtz
10. Regarding the invalidating effect of a mistake in the course of a ritual, see
m. Yoma 5:7.
12. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 49; cf. 5152.
failure, see Grimes, Ritual Criticism, 191209, esp. 200 on hitches, that is, mis-
executions in which the procedures are incomplete; repr. from Infelicitous Perfor-
mances, 10322
Chapter 5 94
emphasizes that, while 10:17b uses the words and he has assigned it to you
(ca" n: Jnx\), this part of the verse does not refer to eating.
13
B. Janowski con-
tends that to remove the iniquity of the community (v \vnx nxO" ),
explained by to effect purgation on their behalf (c"v oa"), means that
the priests are to bear guilt in a mediatorial role for the Israelites by ac-
complishing expiation for them by means of the purication offering (as a
whole).
14
To evaluate this cluster of arguments, lets begin with Kurtz. His denial
that eating is in view in 10:17b violates the implication clearly conveyed by
the structure of Moses words in this verse:
Why did you not eat the purication offering taF:j"h" Ata< 0D?ox x" vo
in the sacred precinct? c\;oa
For it is most holy, x\ a
and he has assigned it to you 0o? D:
to remove the iniquity of the community v \vnx nxO"
to effect purgation on their behalf before Yhwh. \ :o" c"v oa"
Aside from the overall bipartite structure, with a question (. . . vo) followed
by a motive clause (. . . a) that concludes with parallelism dened by inni-
tives (. . . oa" . . . nxO"), notice a chiasm that binds the motive clause to the
question:
cn"ax A
mn B
mn B
ca" n: n A
1
Correspondence between the B elements is obviously formed by repetition
of O;. A corresponds with A
1
in the sense that each contains a verb and
second-person plural address, referring to the priests. So A
1
ca" n: , he has
assigned to you, serves as the structural functional equivalent of A cn"ax ,
did you eat.
14. B. Janowski, Shne als Heilsgeschehen: Studien zur Shnetheologie der Priester-
schrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament (WMANT 55;
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982) 239 n. 272. For such explanatory use
of the innitive with the preposition " (here oa"), see GKC 114o. For the idea that
the communitys sin is taken away by the sacrice itself (as a whole) rather than by the
eating, see long ago J. von Hofmann, Der Schriftbeweis (2nd ed.; Nrdlingen, 1859)
2/1:281.
1n
01, 1,
hDx\
1n
01, 1,
Lest there be any doubt that the equivalence between A and A
1
is inten-
tional, let us observe a second chiasm that frames the rst:
taF:j"h" Ata<< 0D?ox
xmnmm
0o? D: Ht:aOw]
In this graphic display (cf. above), nx\ (and it) stands opposite its anteced-
ent, nxonnx (the purication offering), and the A and A
1
elements are op-
posite each other, reinforcing the idea that the words and he has assigned it
to you refer to the question Why did you not eat the purication offering?
So against Kurtz, the last part of the verse does have to do with eating the meat:
he has assigned it to you means he has assigned the purication offering to
you to eat. But the text does not need to repeat the verb eat ("ax) here be-
cause the context implies this. Rather, the rest of the verse gives the higher
level goal/function of the physical activity of eating, namely, to remove the
iniquity of the community to effect purgation on their behalf before Yhwh.
Against Kiuchi and Janowski, the purication offering (nxon) in view
here is not the ritual-activity system as a whole, which includes the blood
manipulation, but rather the remainder of the animal that can be eaten, as
shown by the fact that nxon is the direct object of the verb "ax, eat.
Moreover, ca" n:, he has assigned to you, does not refer to Yhwhs assign-
ing the victim to the priests so that they would apply the blood to the altar.
By the time of the blood manipulation, the animal had been transferred to
Yhwh, but when Yhwh assigns (n:) something sacricial to the priests, he
allots a portion of the offering material to them as a prebend (cf. Lev
6:10[17]; 7:32, 34, 36).
In Lev 10:17, the words x\ cO; O; , it is most holy, come after a,
for, as part of the reason why the priests should have eaten the sacrice.
There is no a between x\ cO; O; and the remainder of the verse (e.g.,
It is most holy because [a] he has assigned it to you to remove the iniquity)
to suggest, as Hofmann does, that the purpose of these nal words is to afrm
that the sacrice is most holy for the reason that it has already had an expia-
tory function.
15
Compare 6:910[1617], where Yhwh gives (n:) the remain-
der of the most holy grain offering (n:o) to the priests, who are to eat it in a
holy placethat is, in the sanctuary court. Its most holy status is not due to a
prior blood rite or expiatory function, which do not exist, but rather, the most
holy status determines the location of the eating.
15. Ibid.
Chapter 5 96
It is true that the contribution of eating to the expiatory goal is not the
same as that of daubing the blood on Yhwhs altar or burning the suet on it
(see further below). But Kiuchi overreaches when he asserts that eating the
hattat does not belong to the atoning process.
16
As Milgrom now recognizes,
if this action were merely a prebend, it would be difcult to explain Moses
anger at Aarons sons in Lev 10:1618
17
or the fact that Lev 10:17 singles out
priestly use of the purication offering but not prebends of other sacrices, as
required.
18
Thus far we cannot escape the conclusion, reached by a number of in-
terpreters, that priestly consumption of sacricial esh is an integral part of
the purication-offering ritual and makes some kind of contribution to ex-
piation.
19
It is not merely priestly enjoyment of compensation for service al-
ready rendered, including applying the blood to the altar. B. Levine is right
that the priestly meal of purication-offering meat accomplishes both
things at once.
20
On the basis of the words v \vnx nxO" , to remove the iniquity of
the community, in Lev 10:17, some scholars who accept an expiatory func-
tion for eating the meat maintain that it accomplishes this goal by remov-
ing evil that has been absorbed by the esh. For example, C. F. Keil and
F. Delitzsch comment on Lev 10:17:
To bear the iniquity does not signify here, as in chap. v. 1, to bear and
atone for the sin in its consequences, but, as in Ex. xxviii.38, to take the sin
of another upon ones self, for the purpose of cancelling it, to make expia-
tion for it. . . . This effect or signication could only be ascribed to the eat-
ing, by its being regarded as an incorporation of the victim laden with sin,
whereby the priests actually took away the sin by virtue of the holiness and
sanctifying power belonging to their ofce.
21
16. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 72; cf. 163, where he denies that eating the
esh is part of the nxon ceremony.
17. Communication cited by D. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination
Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (SBLDS 101; Atlanta:
Scholars Press, 1987) 133 n. 22; cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 63540.
19. Sipra, Shemini 2:4; Ibn Ezra on Lev 10:17; B. Levine, Leviticus (JPS Torah
Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989) 62; now Milgrom,
Leviticus 116, 62225, 63540; see further below.
20. Levine, Leviticus, 62; cf. idem, In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and
Some Cultic Terms in Ancient Israel (SJLA 5; Leiden: Brill, 1974) 104, 107.
21. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament [trans.
J. Martin; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952; orig. 1874] 2:355; Milgrom, Leviticus 116,
62325, 63739.
Along the same line, Y. Kaufmann suggests that eating and incinerating
purication offerings are alternative ways of eliminating dangerous impuri-
ties.
22
Milgrom develops this approach further in light of ancient Near East-
ern background and his general nxon theory (see ch. 7 below), explaining:
By requiring that the aat be eaten, Israels priests were able to afrm
that the power to purge the sanctuary does not inhere in a ritual but is
solely dependent on the will of God. Moreover, they backed up their con-
viction by their act: they ate the aat and were willing to suffer the con-
sequences if their conviction proved wrong. Yet their faith was not without
its limits: the aat prescribed for the deep pollution of the sanctuary,
when its blood was brought into the shrine, continued to be burned. The
pollution incurred by Israels brazen sins and impurities, which had in-
fested the very seat of the Godhead in the Holy of Holies . . . was just too
lethal to be ingested.
23
Here Milgrom distinguishes between eaten outer-altar and noneaten outer-
sanctum and inner-sanctum purication offerings by levels of severity with
which their esh is affected by the evils that these sacrices remove.
24
Whereas he formerly held that at the lowest level the impurity is not trans-
ferrable to the aat and, hence, it is eaten by the priests for their ser-
vices,
25
he now accepts limited transferability, emending his statement to:
the impurity transferred to the aat is slight and, hence, the latter is eaten
by the priests for their services.
26
This change does not disturb Milgroms
theory that the eaten and noneaten kinds of purication offering are distin-
guished both by degrees of impurity that they handle and by the fact that the
former provides a priestly prebend but the latter does not.
Since the principle that the priests could not benet from their own expi-
atory sacrices, which Milgrom cites to show why the consecration and inau-
guration purication offerings on behalf of the priests were incinerated even
though their blood was only applied to the outer altar (Exod 29:14; Lev 8:17;
9:11),
27
also explains why the outer-sanctum offerings could not be eaten, it is
not necessary to assume a priestly motivation of fear (from limits of faith) re-
garding ingestion of this higher level of impurity (see above). But what about
22. Y. Kaufmann, n"xO :\ox n\"\n (Jerusalem: Bialik, 193756) 1:568.
24. B. Levine makes a sharper distinction between what he regards as two origi-
nally distinct ritual types: incinerated nxon sacrices are rites of riddance, but eaten
nxon sacrices are gifts of expiation (In the Presence, 1038).
25. J. Milgrom, Two Kinds of aat, VT 26 (1976) 336.
27. Milgrom, Two Kinds, 337; Leviticus 116, 264.
Chapter 5 98
the inner-sanctum purication offering on behalf of the community on the
Day of Atonement (Lev 16)? Unlike the outer-sanctum offering for the com-
munity in 4:1321, the inner-sanctum ritual does not have the high priest in-
cluded in the offering party. Rather, the high priest performs a parallel
sacrice for himself and his household (cf. ch. 9). Since the high priest would
not benet from his own sacrice if he were to eat the communitys nxon
goat, why is it incinerated (16:27)? Is this due to fear of lethal pollution?
Granted, priestly fear of a high level of pollution was a real possibility with
the inner-sanctum offering. But is this the motivating factor behind the cultic
legislation? Below we will begin to raise another possibility, to be further de-
veloped in later chapters of the present work: consumption of purication-
offering esh serves to involve the ofciating priest in the process by which
Yhwh extends forgiveness to the offerer. The inner-sanctum offerings, on the
other hand, which are tightly interwoven together and merged into a higher-
level ritual unit that benets all Israelites, are distinguished from outer-altar
and outer-sanctum offerings by the fact that they purge the communal sanc-
tuary and its sancta (for the benet of everyone, including the priests) rather
than those who offer these sacrices, thereby accomplishing a post-forgive-
ness stage of oa (16:16, 1819, 30, 33).
28
A. Rodrguez raises the expiatory signicance of eating the esh to a
unique level. Observing that the outer-sanctum purication offering has a
sevenfold sprinkling in front of the veil but the outer-altar offering has con-
sumption of the meat by the priests, he states that the ritual of the eating of
esh can take the place of the ritual of the sprinkling of blood.
29
But his no-
tion that these activities are functional equivalents founders on Lev 9:811,
where the inauguration offering on behalf of Aaron (and his sons) involved
only application of blood to the outer altar. It had no sprinkling of blood in-
side the Sacred Tent, and it was correctly incinerated rather than eaten. The
28. Compare the fact that, during the consecration service, although Moses ofci-
ated an outer-altar purication offering belonging to the priests (not including himself
as offerer), he did not take the esh of this sacrice for an agents commission (8:14
17) in the way that he received the breast of the ram of ordination (v. 29). This could
be explained by the concept that the purpose of the purication offering was to purify
the communal altar for the benet of everyone, including Moses (v. 15). Alternatively
or additionally, while Moses was not permitted to eat a most holy purication offering
reserved for the Aaronic priests (cf. 6:19[26], 22[29]), he could partake of the some-
what less-sacred ordination offering, which shared some characteristics with holy well-
being offerings as well as with most holy sacrices (cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 527).
Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979) 135; cf. 136.
inaugural context does not discount the import of the fact that the esh was
not eaten: the purication offering of the community, also performed at the
outer altar without sprinkling in the Tent (cf. v. 18), should have been eaten
and would have been except for the tragic deaths of Nadab and Abihu (Lev
10:1620). So the difference between eating the esh and not eating it was
not due to the presence or absence of sprinkling blood in the outer sanctum;
rather, it was due to the difference between whether the offerer(s) consisted of
priests or laypersons.
As mentioned above, the reason for the incineration rather than eating of
the priests inaugural purication offering is the principle that a priest ofci-
ating his own expiatory sacrice cannot benet from it.
30
The rule in 6:23[30]
that no purication offering may be eaten if its blood is brought into the
Tent excludes priestly consumption of the meat in outer-sanctum or inner-
sanctum purication offerings; it does not say that every outer-altar purica-
tion offering must be eaten, as Rodrguez assumes. When Moses cites this
rule in 10:18 to assert that the priests should have eaten the inaugural offer-
ing because its blood was not brought inside the sanctuary, he is saying that
an outer-altar purication offering of the community (not of the priests) should
be eaten.
The priests participate with Yhwh in bearing the
culpability of the people
In Lev 10:17b the purpose of Yhwhs assigning the purication-offering
esh to the priests is:
to remove the iniquity of the community v \vnx nxO"
to effect purgation on their behalf before Yhwh. \ :o" c"v oa"
The parallel syntax hereprep. " + inn. cstr. + reference to the community
(v / pron. suff. c-)strongly conveys the impression that the two ideas
are intended to be synonymous.
31
The ritual activity of eating the esh is nec-
essary for the priests to remove (inn. of xO:) the iniquity (\v) of the people,
and by so doing, the priests effect purgation on their behalf. While the earlier
ritual activities also made vital contributions to the overall oa accomplished
by the ritual (9:7, 15), nothing is said about the priests removing the iniquity
31. Cf. Ibn Ezra on Lev 10:17; G. Olaffson, The Use of n in the Pentateuch and
Its Contribution to the Concept of Forgiveness (Ph.D. diss., Andrews University,
1992) 263.
Chapter 5 100
of the people until 10:17b, where this aspect of oa is carried out through eat-
ing the esh.
To interpret v. 17b it is important to remember that removal of iniquity by
eating the esh is not indispensable for completion of oa in every kind of
purication offering. Outer-altar offerings of priests and all outer-sanctum of-
ferings are incinerated rather than eaten, but they achieve the same overall
goal of purging evil on behalf of the offerer(s), prerequisite to forgiveness by
Yhwh (4:20; 9:7). So in sacrices at which the priests ofciate solely for the
benet of others (excluding all outer-sanctum offerings), the aspect added by
eating the meat is a special kind of priestly participation in the primary oa
transaction between Yhwh and the offerer(s), at the same time that the
priests act upon a secondary transaction by using the agents commission
that Yhwh has assigned to them. This priestly participation goes beyond the
ofciation involved in non-eaten purication offerings.
Whatever the precise meaning of \v xO: in Lev 10:17 may be, this dy-
namic would apply only to purication offerings for moral faults.
32
In outer-
altar purication offerings for severe ritual impurities, which are not acts of
sin, presumably no \v would be involved, and in such cases the remaining
esh would function only as a priestly prebend.
33
By eating the esh, the priests serve as a mediatorial bridge between the
Israelites and Yhwh: by taking the iniquity of the people that they would oth-
erwise continue to bear (cf. 5:1), the priests identify with them.
34
By remov-
ing that iniquity, the priests identify with Yhwh, who removes iniquity (Exod
34:7).
35
Thus the priests intimately participate in the process through which
Yhwh extends forgiveness to his people.
32. A. Rodrguez, personal communication.
33. Because Keil and Delitzsch insisted that the esh of the eaten nxon functions
only to bear and remove the iniquity of the community and not as a priestly prebend,
they were constrained to regard the incineration of the noneaten (outer-sanctum) pu-
rication offering as carrying signicance over and above simple disposal (Biblical
Commentary, 3067).
34. P. Bovati points out: Intercession is the more effective the more it takes the
criminals part, shouldering the guilt and asserting total solidarity with the person and
fate of the guilty (Re-Establishing Justice: Legal Terms, Concepts and Procedures in the
Hebrew Bible [JSOTSup 105; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1994] 132).
35. On the fact that Exod 34:7 expresses the reverse of Lev 5:1, see R. E. Friedman,
Commentary on the Torah (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001) 326. D. Hoffmann
makes the connection between sinners bearing their burden of \v and priests remov-
ing \v (Lev 10:17) when they eat the esh of nxon sacrices (Das Buch Leviticus
[Berlin: Poppelauer, 19056] 21314). On priests as agents of Yhwh, see S. Hills, A
A. B. Ehrlich maintains that \v xO: means bear responsibility (cf. Num
18:1), rather than remove sin/guilt, and refers to the priestly burden of puri-
fying the sanctuary on behalf of the people, for which the priests are rewarded
by the prebend of meat.
36
This idea suffers from three shortcomings: First, the
neutral word responsibility fails to sufciently convey the negative implica-
tions of \v.
37
Second, as Kiuchi points out, it is inadequate to assume in the
context of Lev 9 that the sanctuary was deled by the congregation before the
purication ritual.
38
Third, in 10:17b the plain sense of the preposition " in
nxO", to bear/remove, is that of purpose,
39
indicating that the eating serves
as the activity vehicle for priestly bearing of \v rather than simply as a perqui-
site for earlier bearing of ofciating responsibility.
In spite of the problems with Ehrlichs view, his understanding of xO: in
the sense of bear rather than simply remove is true to the meaning of this
word. As R. Knierim observes, Hebrew does not make a terminological dis-
tinction between bearing the consequences of ones actions and bearing
them for someone else. The difference is expressed only by the change of sub-
ject.
40
When combined with an understanding of \v in the sense of negative
responsibility, the resulting idea is bear culpability (see further below).
The priests receive a reward for their service on behalf of the people that
carries with it an onerous responsibility: bearing their culpability. Naturally
the questions arise: What happens to the priests as a result of bearing this cul-
pability? Do they get rid of it, and if so, how and when?
Baruch Schwartz contributes precision to our discussion by interpreting
the \v xO: crux in Lev 10:17 in light of other passages in which \v xO: ap-
pears in the priestly material (including H). While the expressions \v xO:,
vOo xO:, and xon xO: (bear iniquity, bear transgression, bear sin) show up
36. A. B. Ehrlich, Randglossen zur hebrischen Bibel: Textkritisches, Sprachliches
und Sachliches (Hildesheim: Olms, 1968; orig. 1909) 2:37; cf. Milgrom, Two Kinds,
33334. But note that Milgrom has changed his mind (see above). W. Zimmerli places
\v xO: in Num 18:1 in the category of priests bearing responsibility for the sanctuary
and the priesthood, but he puts Lev 10:17 and Exod 28:38 in the category of carrying
away the indebtedness of the people (Die Eigenart der prophetischen Rede des
Ezechiel, ZAW 66 [1954] 910, incl. 9 n. 3).
37. R. Knierim, Die Hauptbegriffe fr Snde im Alten Testament (Gtersloh: Mohn,
1967) 220 n. 88; cf. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 5051.
38. Ibid., 50.
39. Ibid., 48.
40. Knierim, Die Hauptbegriffe, 5153.
Semantic and Conceptual Study of the Root KPR in the Hebrew Old Testament with
Special Reference to the Accadian Kuppuru (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University,
1954) 27880.
Chapter 5 102
in contexts having to do with consequences of offenses on the one hand or
forgiveness on the other, they do not have the two distinct meanings forgive
sin and suffer punishment, as is often maintained. Rather, they meta-
phorically refer to the objective fact of legal guilt in terms of bearing or car-
rying sin, conceiving of wrongdoing as an object to be hauled around as a
burden.
41
When a sinner bears his own sin, \v xO:, vOo xO:, and xon xO: denote
his culpability, indicating that he deserves and may suffer the consequences,
if there are any.
42

However, when and if another partymost often, but not necessarily,
Godbears the sinners burden, it no longer rests on the shoulders of the
wrongdoer; the latter is relieved of his load and of its consequences, once
again if such there be. In this second usage, the bearing of the sin by an-
other is a metaphor for the guilty partys release from guilt. The phrase has
two uses, but only one meaning.
43
In light of Schwartzs interpretation, in Lev 5:1 a person who has sinned (verb
xon) is in a dangerous state of bearing his own culpability (\v xO:) until/
unless he is relieved of it through sacricial expiation ofciated by a priest
(v. 6).
44
But Schwartz recognizes that some offenses are inexpiable, so in these
cases sin-bearing is permanent.
45
According to Schwartz, the two uses of vOo/xon/\v xO: are distinguished
from each other not only by their subjects (sinner himself or someone else)
but also by the senses in which they employ xO:, bear. When there is con-
sequential sin-bearing, the sinner carries the weight of his own sin, which
may crush him and lead to his death by human or divine agency if it remains
unremedied. But if this culpability is transferred to someone else, the second
41. B. Schwartz, x;oz xon/vOo/\v xO: ?\ooo" n:\o z o, Tarbiz 63 (1994)
14971; idem, The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature, in Pomegranates and
Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature
in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (ed. D. Wright, D. N. Freedman, and A. Hurvitz; Winona
Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 8, 15; idem, The Holiness Legislation: Studies in the
Priestly Code (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999) 5759, 62 [Hebrew]; cf. E. Jacob, Theology of
the Old Testament (trans. A. Heathcote and P. Allcock; New York: Harper, 1958) 291;
A. von R. Sauer, The Concept of Sin in the Old Testament, CTM 22 (1951) 716
17; K. Koch, \v awon, TDOT 10:559; cf. 55055.
42. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin, 915; idem, The Holiness Legislation, 59;
cf. Knierim, Die Hauptbegriffe, 52. Knierim regards \v and cOx as dealing with
two distinct elements, even when they relate to the same situation: \v refers to the
weight or burden (of guilt) and cOx expresses the element of obligation (with re-
spect to the resolution of guilt) (cOx asam Guilt, TLOT 1:192).
43. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin, 9; idem, The Holiness Legislation, 59; cf. 62.
44. Cf. Zimmerli, Die Eigenart, 1112; Koch, \v awon, 55960.
45. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin, 1213, 15, 21.
party does not bear its weight because it disappears. In this case xO: means
bear in the well-attested sense of carry off, take away, remove.
46
Because Lev 10:17 refers to the priests bearing the \v of the community
rather than their own culpability, Schwartz renders v \vnx nxO" in this
context: to carry away the transgressions(s) of the community.
47
So the
priests take away the culpability of the people, the weight of which they do
not subsequently bear.
48
The priests accomplish this through a ritual process
that is termed oa, purgation, as conrmed by the synonymous parallelism
in v. 17, recognized by Ibn Ezra, between v \vnx nxO" and c"v oa",
thereby purging [them] on their behalf.
49
Milgrom agrees that \v xO: here
means taking away evil, as reected by his translation of v \vnx nxO" :
to remove the iniquity of the community (see above).
50
Schwartz is convincing, except that he does not adequately support the
idea that culpability transferred to someone other than the sinner simply
vanishes. Since the consequences for the secondary sin-bearer are not explic-
itly stated in pentateuchal cultic contexts, how do we know that this party
does not temporarily carry culpability in some sense?
51
K. Koch afrms:
Part of the task of priests and Levites, however, is to remove awon from
Israel or from the sanctuary itself, to bear that awon representatively, and
by virtue of their own inherent quality to render it harmless (Ex. 28:38; Lev.
10:17; Nu. 18:1, 23).
52
By their own inherent quality that renders the
priests immune to harm, Koch is referring to the divinely derived holiness
conferred on the priests and their vestments at their consecration.
53
46. Ibid., 10; cf. 13; idem, The Holiness Legislation, 5960.
47. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin, 16; cf. LXX here: na ajfevlhte . . . , in order
that you should take away. . . .
48. Schwartz understands Exod 28:38 similarly: It is not that Aaron takes upon
himself the liability, or worse, the punishment, for the cultic sins of the community;
rather, he is charged with their removal, their elimination (The Bearing of Sin, 16).
49. Ibid.
50. Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1281; idem, Leviticus 116, 596.
51. Outside the Pentateuch, Schwartz notes as exceptional Isa 53:412, where Yh-
whs servant bears the weight of culpability for others, and Lam 5:7, where descendants
bear the \v of their ancestors, an idea that appears to be countered by Ezek 18:19
(The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature, 10 n. 25). For the idea that there are
two possibilities regarding the fate of evils that are transferred to the sacred domain of
the sanctuary, see N. Zohar on impurities that are transferred from persons to Yhwhs
altar: either Yhwh immediately destroys them or they remain there until the Day of
Atonement (Repentance and Purication: The Signicance and Semantics of nxon
in the Pentateuch, JBL 107 [1988] 615).
52. Koch, \v awon, TDOT 10:559; cf. Rodrguez, Substitution, 13234.
53. Cf. Koch, \v awon, 560. On priestly immunity, see Milgrom, Leviticus 116,
623, 63839, 1048.
spread one pica long
Chapter 5 104
If the \v were to remain on the priests, who are immune to its conse-
quences, when would they get rid of it? Kochs next sentence reads: Further-
more, the high priest is also able through confession and leaning a hand on
the animals head to transfer the awon to that animal such that the scape-
goat is now the one bearing it (Lev. 16:21f.).
54
This is an intriguing connec-
tion, to which we will return later when we trace the trajectories of terms for
evil that appear in Lev 16:16, 21.
W. Zimmerli distinguishes between expressions of direct, divine sin-bearing
with Yhwh as subject, which refer to forgiveness in noncultic contexts, and
cultic usage, which includes priestly consumption of purication-offering
esh (10:17).
55
So even if noncultic instances show no aftereffect for Yhwh,
56
can we assume the same to be true when a human priest bears \v on behalf
of another person as a result of carrying out expiation that is prerequisite to
divine forgiveness?
57
The close parallel between the language of Exod 34:7, in which Yhwh is
xon\ vOo\ \v xO: , bearing iniquity and transgression and sin, and Lev
10:17, in which his priest bears \v, indicates that there is a close relationship
between the two. Koch observes: Use of the term awon is one example
among many demonstrating that the legislative concerns of the Priestly docu-
ment focus on institutionalizing Gods own activity in removing guilt rather
than fostering some sort of nomism.
58
It appears that, by eating the esh, the
priests participate in the process through which Yhwh grants forgiveness. If
there is a distinction between divine and human sin-bearing on behalf of an-
other, it is most likely to be sought in the difference between the divine and
54. Koch, \v awon, 559.
55. W. Zimmerli, Zur Vorgeschichte von Jes. LIII, Congress Volume: Rome, 1968
(VTSup 17; Leiden: Brill, 1969) 239.
56. Regarding God bearing sin for people, R. Knierim states that he possesses power
to remove a load of offenses without suffering from their destructive power (Die Haupt-
begriffe, 52).
57. Zimmerli comments on Isa 53 that here the bearing of guilt does not indicate
the guilt-bearing of God but in the sense of Lev 16:22 and 10:17 it has to do with
the vicarious guilt/punishment-bearing of a man, the Servant of Yhwh (Zur Vorge-
schichte, 240). Olaffson argues that the effect on a secondary carrier can be safely
assumed in light of what happens to those who bear their own iniquities: suffering, dis-
ease, and/or death (The Use of n, 216). This assumption does not take into ac-
count the possibility that secondary carriers in passages such as Lev 10:17 may have
immunity.
58. Koch, \v awon, 560; compare Milgrom on to remove the iniquity of the
community in Lev 10:17: True, the subject is man, not God, but in this case it is the
priest who serves as the divine surrogate on earth and exclusively so in the sanctuary
(Leviticus 116, 623).
human natures of Yhwh and his priests, respectively, in terms of the kind(s)
of immunity to evil that they possess. In later chapters we will pursue further
the issue of cultic immunity and the dynamics of \v in relation to other kinds
of moral evil.
Conclusion
The structure of Lev 10:17 shows that priestly eating of purication-
offering meat as a prebend is an integral, if postrequisite, part of the ritual and
contributes to the expiatory process. When a priest bears the culpability of a
sinner as Yhwhs servant and representative, he participates in the process by
which Yhwh frees the sinner from culpability by bearing it for him.
106
Chapter 6
Purication Offering: Purgation of
Sanctuary or Offerer?
Now we return to the crucial question: whom or what does a purication
offering purify? We have found that in Lev 4:26 the goal of the chieftains
nxon sacrice is formulated \nxono a \"v oa\ , which Milgrom renders:
Thus shall the priest effect purgation on his behalf for his wrong.
1
The sin
that is removed by the ritual belongs to the chieftain (his wrong) because
he violated one of Yhwhs commandments (cf. v. 22). But it is not immedi-
ately certain where the sin is located when the sacrice purges it. Is it on/in
the chieftain himself or on the altar to which the priest applies the sacricial
blood?
I agree with F. Gorman that at the most general level, kpr means to deal
with disruptions in the divine-human relations.
2
But adding one or more
prepositions qualies the meaning. In the present context, to effect purgation
on behalf of ("v oa) someone or something for/because of (preposition o)
an evil belonging to the offerer (here \nxon, his wrong) appears to free him
from that evil. In fact, there is a close parallel between this verse and 16:16,
in which the high priest purges ("v oa) the inner sanctum of/from (o) the
impurities and moral faults of the Israelites. This means that he purges the
evils (i.e., the effects of the evils on the sanctuary) from the inner sanctum.
Noticing this parallel, A. Bchler interprets the prepositions in Lev 4:26: "v
2. F. Gorman, Divine Presence and Community: A Commentary on the Book of
Leviticus (ITC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) 16. Here Gorman uses disrup-
tions to cover both sins and physical ritual impurities. Cf. S. Hills, who nds the
piel of oa to imply a break in a relationship between two persons, and denote an
act which overcomes that break. In all but one instance (Gn. 32:20) the relationship
involved is ultimately that between God and man (even in Pr. 16:14 and Is. 47:9)
(A Semantic and Conceptual Study of the Root KPR in the Hebrew Old Testament
with Special Reference to the Accadian Kuppuru [Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity, 1954] 287).
Purication Offering: Purgation of Sanctuary or Offerer? 107
refers to the person who committed the sin and for whom the priest is aton-
ing, and o points to the sin from which he is cleansed.
3
In his seminal 1970 and 1976 articles entitled nxon z; ;on (The
Function of the aat Sacrice) and Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly Pic-
ture of Dorian Gray, respectively, Jacob Milgrom challenged the prevailing
assumption that the nxon sacrice cleanses its offerer: The rendering of
aat as a purication (or purgation)-offering leads automatically to the ques-
tion: whom or what does it purge? Herein lies the rst surprise: it is not the
offerer of the sacrice.
4
Milgrom supports this conclusion with three points:
1. Impurity is removed from the offerer before performance of the
purication offering. In a case of physical ritual impurity it is removed
by ablution. In a case of spiritual impurity it is removed by inner
purication (i.e., repentance).
5
2. Use of the purgative blood is conned to the sanctuary, but it is never
applied to a person.
6
3. When the object of purgation is non-human, the piel of oa can take a
direct object, but when the object is a person, it is never expressed as
a direct object but requires the preposition al or b
e
ad, both signifying
on behalf of . . . . This means the purgation rite of aat is not carried
out on the offerer but only on his behalf.
7
Milgrom wastes no time in getting to the next logical step:
If not the offerer, what then is the object of the aat purgation? The
above considerations lead but to one answer: that which receives the pur-
gative blood, i.e., the sanctuary and its sancta. By daubing the altar with the
aat blood or by bringing it inside the sanctuary (e.g., Lev., XVI, 1419),
Century (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1967) 266; cf. A. Treiyer, The Day of Atonement as
Related to the Contamination and Purication of the Sanctuary, in The Seventy
Weeks, Leviticus, and the Nature of Prophecy (ed. F. Holbrook; DARCOM 3; Washing-
ton, D.C.: Biblical Research Institute, 1986) 21617.
4. J. Milgrom, Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray, RB 83
(1976) 390; repr. in Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology (Leiden: Brill,
1983) 75; idem, nxon z; ;on [The Function of the attat Sacrice],
Tarbiz 40 (1970) 1; idem, Numbers [JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society, 1990], 444; idem, Leviticus 116, 254.
5. Milgrom, Israels Sanctuary, 390; idem, Leviticus 116, 254. On the sinners
remorse prior to bringing his expiatory sacrice, see idem, Cult and Conscience: The
Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance (Leiden: Brill, 1976) 712.
6. Milgrom, Israels Sanctuary, 391; idem, Leviticus 116, 255.
7. Idem, Israels Sanctuary, 391; idem, Leviticus 116, 25556; idem, va/"v oa ,
Les 35 (1970) 1617 [Hebrew].
Chapter 6 108
the priest purges the most sacred objects and areas of the sanctuary on be-
half of the person who caused their contamination by his physical impurity
or inadvertent offense.
8
By concluding that purication offerings always purge the sanctuary and its
sancta and never their offerers, Milgrom lays the foundation for his general
aat theory.
In this chapter of the present work, we will cross the continental divide.
By arriving at a different answer to the question of whom or what purication
offerings purge, we will begin to wend our way to a revised (but by no means
totally different) theological understanding of this sacrice.
Milgrom is right when he says that a study of the kipper prepositions is de-
cisive.
9
In fact, of the areas of investigation addressed by his three points,
only study of these prepositions can be decisive because only this deals with
the language of the formulas that express the goal(s)/meaning(s) assigned to
purication-offering activity systems. Prior purication of the offerer by ablu-
tion or repentance does not rule out the possibility that he may need some
kind of additional purgation through sacrice. Application of aat blood
only to the sanctuary and its sancta, but never to the offerer, is physical activ-
ity, which has no inherent meaning. In light of our earlier investigation of the
locus of ritual meaning, the meaning of the activity is determined solely by
the goal assigned to it. True, there is a striking correlation between the fact
that purication-offering blood is never physically applied directly to persons
and the fact that the goal formulas of purication offerings avoid expressing
persons as direct objects of oa. But this indirectness does not ineluctably
yield the conclusion that purication offerings never remove evils from per-
sons. It may simply mean that for some reason purgation of a person, in con-
trast to a nonhuman object, cannot be direct.
Without further ado, let us plunge into the oa formulas. We will nd that
the matter is indeed decided by the syntax of a preposition, but not one that
Milgrom includes in his decisive study or that Levine considers in his per-
ceptive analysis of the syntax of oa, with which I mostly agree, as far as it
goes.
10
The overlooked preposition is o, to which Milgrom devotes only pass-
ing notes in his Leviticus 116 commentary.
11
8. Idem, Israels Sanctuary, 391; idem, Leviticus 116, 256.
9. Idem, Israels Sanctuary, 391; idem, Leviticus 116, 255.
10. B. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms
in Ancient Israel (SJLA 5; Leiden: Brill, 1974) 6367. Compare the lack of o in B. Ja-
nowskis syntactic analysis (Shne als Heilsgeschehen: Studien zur Shnetheologie der
Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament [WMANT
55; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982] 10710).
11. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 251, 303, 307, 85758, 926.
As a reference point for subsequent discussions, we can begin by tabulating
components of language governed by oa in pentateuchal prescriptions/de-
scriptions of purication offerings, plus the results of oa if they are given (see
table 1).
12
Most of these expressions constitute complete formulas, but some-
times an innitive of oa continues a formulaic clause governed by another
main verb (see below). Aside from the references at the far left (E. = Exodus,
L. = Leviticus, N. = Numbers), the columns are to be read from right to left,
following the Hebrew order. In the far right column (oa + subject), ellipses
(. . .) indicate the location of words placed in the next column for purposes of
classication. For example, a c"v oa\ is represented: | a . . . oa\
c"v. The two shaded columns provide labels for the kind of prepositional ob-
ject or direct object (S = sanctuary/sancta, O = offerer) and the kind of case
(C = consecration, P = physical ritual impurity, M = moral fault). Not in-
cluded are occasional additional elements, such as parts of clauses preceding
innitival forms of oa (e.g., E. 29:36\"v qoaa naIo"v nxon\ ), tem-
poral and instrumental specications (e.g., E. 30:10\n:;"v x oa\
coa nxon co :Da nnx ), or supplementary description/identication
of the high priest (L. 16:32a" \nx x"o Ox\ \nx nOoOx a oa\
\zx nnn ).
Notice that, in terms of the order in which components appear, this table
reveals a high degree of syntactic consistency. Aside from some reversal in
word order between the two columns at the far right, as indicated by ellipses,
the other elements consistently appear in the same order. Variety is achieved
by inclusion or omission of components following oa. So instances that ex-
press parallel functions/goals, as shown by matching labels in both shaded
columns, can include different components without introducing distinctions
in terms of oa function.
For example, while Lev 4:26 includes \nxono in the evilprep. column,
vv. 20 and 31 do not. This does not mean that a chieftain (v. 26) receives oa
benet that differs from that of the community (v. 20) or a commoner (v. 31),
all of which bring purication offerings to remedy their moral faults. Rather,
the chieftains formula simply provides another piece of information. So
whether we regard the formula in v. 26 as expanded or the others as abbrevi-
ated makes no difference. The point is that the parallel formulas are function-
ally equivalent, and therefore a component expressed in one instance (e.g.,
\nxono) is understood in the others to the extent that the cases are similar.
12. I am grateful for the Accordance Bible software program, which has greatly fa-
cilitated the present project.
Chapter 6 110
Table 1. Components of Language Governed by oa
ref.
kind
of
case result evilprep. locus
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
E. 29:36 C S \"v qoaa
E. 29:37 C S naIo"v oan
E. 30:10 M+P \n:;"v x oa\
E. 30:10 M+P S \"v oa
L. 4:20 M c" n"o:\ O c"v a . . . oa\
L. 4:26 M \" n"o:\ \nxono O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 4:31 M \" n"o:\ O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 4:35 M \" n"o:\ \nxon"v O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 5:6 M \nxono O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 5:10 M \" n"o:\ \nxono
xonOx
O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 5:13 M \" n"o:\ \nxon"v
xonOx
"xo nnxo
O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 6:23 M O;a oa"
L. 7:7 M/P Ox a
\aoa
L. 8:15 C S \"v oa"
L. 9:7 M O vz qva
cv
oa\
L. 9:7 M O cva oa\
L. 10:17 M \ :o" O c"v oa"
L. 12:7 P ;oo o\
o
O "v oa\
L. 12:8 P o\ O "v a . . . oa\
L. 14:19 P \nxooo O oo"v oa\
L. 14:31 P \ :o" O oo "v a oa\
L. 15:15 P \z\Io \ :o" O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 15:30 P Jnxoo z\Io \ :o" O "v a . . . oa\
L. 16:6 M+P O vz \va
\na
oa\
L. 16:10 M \"v oa"
L. 16:11 M+P O vz \va
\na
oa\
L. 16:16 M+P :a nxooo
"xO
cvOoo
cnxo n"a"
S O;"v oa\
L. 16:17 M+P O;a oa"
L. 16:17 M+P O vz \va
vz \na
"xO ";"a
oa\
L. 16:18 M+P S \"v oa\
L. 16:20 M+P S O;nx
v\o "xnx\
naIonx\
oao
L. 16:27 M+P O;a oa"
L. 16:30 M canx o"
canxo n "ao
\ :o"
on
O ca"v oa
L. 16:32 M+P a oa\
L. 16:33 M+P S O;onx
O;
v\o "xnx\
oa\
L. 16:33 M+P S naIonx\ oa . . .
L. 16:33 M+P O c:a "v\
cv"a"v\
";
oa . . .
L. 16:34 M cnxo n"ao O "xO :a"v oa"
L. 23:28 M+P \ :o"
ca"x
O ca"v oa"
N. 6:11 M xon Oxo
Oo:"v
O \"v oa\
N. 8:12 P O c\ ""v oa"
N. 8:21 P co" O c"v x . . . oa\
N. 15:25 M c" n"o:\ O nv"a"v
"xO :a
a oa\
N. 15:28 M O Oo:"v
xona nD
:o" Oz
\
a oa\
N. 15:28 M \" n"o:\ O \"v oa"
N. 28:22 M/P? O ca"v oa"
N. 28:30 M/P? O ca"v oa"
N. 29:5 M/P? O ca"v oa"
Table 1. Components of Language Governed by oa (cont.)
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
Chapter 6 112
Obviously the pronominal sufx in \nxono specically refers to the chieftain,
and this identication would not be implied in vv. 20 and 31.
Physical ritual impurities are puried from offerers
We can quickly arrive at a basic answer to the question of whether puri-
cation offerings always purge the sanctuary and its sancta by abstracting and
analyzing the instances that deal with physical ritual impurity (kind of case
= P) in which the object of the preposition following oa refers to the offerer
(kind of obj. = O). We will focus on the evilprep. and result columns
in table 2.
Considering these passages in order, we start with Lev 12:7, the case of the
mother who has recently given birth. Here the result of the oa process ac-
complished by a purication offering paired with a burnt offering (cf. v. 6) is
expressed: o ;oo o\ . Milgrom renders these words: and then she
shall be pure from her source of blood.
13
Here he translates the preposition
o in ;oo as from because there is no other viable option. Milgrom only
obliquely explains the sense of from in this context by citing Sipra, Tazria
3:6: This teaches us that all the blood she sees issues from the source.
14
But
following o\, and then she shall be pure, o does not refer to impure
blood coming from its genital source. Rather, the real force of o here can
only be privative,
15
a usage derived from the overall concept of separation
that is basic to this preposition (cf. GKC 119v; JM 133e):
16
as a result of the
14. Ibid., 761.
15. See H. C. Brichto on Lev 4:35 (sic v. 26) and 15:15, 30 (On Slaughter and Sac-
rice, Blood and Atonement, HUCA 47 [1976] 31, 33). For a similar interpretation of
o in such contexts, see S. R. Driver, Propitiation, A Dictionary of the Bible (ed.
J. Hastings; New York: Scribners, 1911) 4:130; N. Fglister, Shne durch Blut: Zur
Bedeutung von Leviticus 17,11, in Studien zum Pentateuch (ed. G. Braulik; Vienna:
Herder, 1977) 148; P. Garnet, Atonement Constructions in the Old Testament and
the Qumran Scrolls, EvQ 46 (1974) 141; S. Lyonnet, and L. Sabourin, Sin, Redemp-
tion, and Sacrice: A Biblical and Patristic Study (AnBib 48; Rome: Pontical Biblical
Institute, 1970) 13031, 13334. On the privative use of o, see, for example, B. K.
Waltke and M. OConnor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake,
Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1990) 214 (11.2.11e). The privative interpretation does not ap-
ply to o in Exod 30:10 (coa nxon co ), where the object of the preposition is
blood rather than a kind of evil. Here the usage appears to be instrumental (cf., e.g.,
njpsv: with blood of the sin offering of purication; emphasis mine). Garnet reads it
as partitive (Atonement Constructions, 145).
16. For similar use of o with reference to separating (piel of o, purify, or oza,
wash) evils from persons, see the following verses (trans. njpsv):
Ps 51:4[2], :no nxono :\vo :oaa a , Wash me thoroughly of my iniquity,
and purify me of my sin. Notice the chiasm in which the piel verbs o and oza
priests performing oa on her behalf ("v), the parturient becomes pure in
the sense that she is freed/separated from (o) her physical ritual impurity,
which is identied in terms of its physical cause as her source of blood. This
does not refer to physical healing, of course, because her ow of blood had al-
ready stopped before she brought her sacrices (vv. 46). Rather, the sacri-
cial process removes residual ritual impurity from her.
The syntax of the goal formula in v. 7 consistently species the parturient
herself (i.e., the offerer) as the beneciary of the sacrice and the patient
Table 2. Physical Ritual Impurities Puried from Offerers
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
L. 12:7 P ;oo o\
o
O "v oa\
L. 12:8 P o\ O "v a . . . oa\
L. 14:31 P :o"
\
O oo "v a oa\
L. 15:15 P \z\Io :o"
\
O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 15:30 P Jnxoo z\Io :o"
\
O "v a . . . oa\
N. 8:12 P O c\""v oa"
N. 8:21 P co" O c"v x . . . oa\
are functionally equivalent and the evils \v, iniquity, and nxon, sin, are also
parallel.
Jer 4:14, c"O a" vo oaa , Wash your heart clean of wickedness, O
Jerusalem.
Jer 33:8, Ox\ "xon Ox cn\:\v"\a" nn"o\ "xon Ox c:\v"ao cno\
z vOo , And I will purge them of all the sins which they committed against Me,
and I will pardon all the sins which they committed against Me, by which they re-
belled against Me.
Ezek 36:33, can\:\v "ao canx o c\a , When I have cleansed you of all your
iniquities.
Neh 13:30, a:"ao cno\ , I purged them of every foreign element.
Compare 2 Chr 34:3, in which the piel of o with o expresses purgation of places:
n\aoo\ c"oo\ cOx\ n\oao c"O\ nx o" "n , he began to
purge Judah and Jerusalem of the shrines, the sacred posts, the idols, and the mol-
ten images.
Chapter 6 114
upon whom the ritual process is interpreted as acting. The word Dx,
woman (cf. v. 2), is the antecedent of the pronominal sufx attached to the
preposition "v that immediately follows oa. This sufx functions as the ob-
ject of the preposition and as the indirect object of the verb, indicating that
the parturient benets from this instance of oa. How does she benet? The
woman is also the subject of the qal stative verb no, she shall be pure,
which means that it is her state that the ritual affects. Lest there be any doubt
about that, the woman is also the antecedent of the possessive pronominal
sufx in o ;o, her source of blood. She was the one who had the source
of impurity in herself (i.e., in her body). There is nothing here about purga-
tion of the altar on behalf of the woman. The purication offering, quantita-
tively supplemented by the burnt offering, has the goal of purging residual
physical ritual impurity from the parturient herself.
17
We have already found an exception to Milgroms rule that the purication
offering always purges the sanctuary and its sancta and never the offerer. Now
we can move on to see if there are any other exceptions. In Lev 12:8, the result
is o\, simply an abbreviation of the formula in v. 7. In 14:19 we nd that
the offerer and beneciary is oo, the one being puried following his
scaly skin disease. As in 12:7, the offerer is referred to by the object of the
preposition "v, which is also the indirect object of oa. Also as in 12:7, there
follows an expression that includes the preposition o + a term for impurity +
a possessive pronominal sufx having the word for the offerer as its anteced-
ent. But in this case \nxooo does not belong to a subsequent result clause
that is signaled, for example, by waw + another main verb (cf. o\ in 12:7).
Rather, the prepositional phrase constituted by \nx o o o forms an integral
part of the clause governed by oa. So I have placed it in the evilprep
column.
In Lev 14:19 the crucial question arises again: what is the syntactic func-
tion of the preposition o ? In this context, Milgrom renders the formula
\nxooo oo"v oa\ : and effect purgation for the one being puried for
his impurity (emphasis mine).
18
He explains:
for his impurity. miumat, in other words, which he inicted on the sanc-
tuary. The mem here is causative (e.g., Gen 16:10; 1 Kgs 8:5; Jer 24:2; Prov
20:4; Paran 1989; cf. GKC 1192 [sic 119z]). See especially maat for
17. My conclusion here agrees with that of A. Rodrguez, Substitution in the
Hebrew Cultus (AUSDS 3; Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press,
1979) 1045.
his wrong (4:26; 5:6, 10; 16:34; Num 6:11); mizzb for his discharge
(15:15).
19
It is true that the causative sense of o is solidly attested. It is also true that in-
dividuals who offer outer-altar or outer-sanctum purication offerings need
oa because of or for their imperfections. But is this the meaning in Lev
14:19? If it is, the same meaning should work in the result clause of 12:7,
which contains parallel syntax to express a parallel concept: remedy for evil
belonging to the offerer. Plugging a causative sense of o into 12:7, we try ren-
dering o ;oo: because of (or for) her source of blood. This is accept-
able by itself. But add the preceding word: o ;oo o\ , and then she
shall be pure because of her source of blood. This is nonsense that inverts the
intended meaning. Only privative from ts here.
Is it possible that o means one thing in 12:7 and another in 14:19? Unlike
the latter, 12:7 has o + evil in a separate result clause that begins with o\.
But because these formulas are parallel in terms of kind of obj. (O = offerer)
and kind of case (P = physical ritual impurity), they express goals that are
functionally equivalent, to the extent that these cases are similar. The cases
differ in terms of the kinds of offerers (parturient versus person healed from
scaly skin disease) and the kinds of impurity (genital ow of blood versus scaly
skin disease) to be remedied, but the basic dynamics are the same. So even if
we took the o in 14:19 to be causative, comparison with 12:7 shows that we
would still need to understand a privative kind of result, which in the case of
14:19 would be: \nxooo o\, and then he shall be pure from his impurity.
Conrmation that oa for the offerer in 14:19 results in the change of his state
to one of purity (root o) is found in identication of the offerer as oo,
the one who is being puried. Compare the next verse, where the summary
formula following instructions for accompanying burnt and grain offerings
that complete the same ritual complex is: o\ a \"v oa\ , And the priest
shall make expiation for him. Then he shall be pure (v. 20).
20
The bottom line for Lev 14:19 is that a privative meaning of o in \nxooo
makes perfect sense in this context, where the idea of removing evil from the
offerer is implied anyway. Therefore, there is no reason to complicate the
plain sense by understanding this preposition differently than in 12:7, where
the privative meaning is positively required.
Reinforcing our conclusion with regard to 14:19 is N. Kiuchis cogent ob-
servation that, because the scale-diseased person is declared pure (o) at
19. Ibid., 85758.
Chapter 6 116
each of three successive stages of ritual purication (vv. 8, 9, 20), meaning
that he is pure enough for that stage, it must be the person himself who is un-
dergoing purication. If at the outset only the sancta, but not the person,
needed purication, why would the second and third stages be necessary?
21
Thus far we have concluded that o + evil has the same privative force
whether it appears in the evilprep. column as part of the oa process itself
or as part of the result. It is logical that an offerer who receives oa from a
physical ritual impurity becomes pure from that impurity.
In Lev 14:31 \ :o" oo "v a oa\ parallels 14:19 in terms of
wording, except that the locus \ :o" appears instead of evilprep.
\nxooo, but it parallels v. 20 (a \"v oa\ o\) in terms of usage as a sum-
mary formula following completion of the purication, burnt, and grain offer-
ings. The basic meaning of the formula is the same: the priest performs oa
on behalf of the offerer, thereby purifying him from residual impurity.
In Lev 15:15 and 30, dealing with genital discharges, we nd fuller for-
mulas: o + evil as an evilprep. component (\z\Io and nxoo z\Io , re-
spectively) as in 14:19, in addition to \ :o". Regarding v. 15, since the
man has already been cleansed/healed (o) in the sense that his physical
malady has ceased (v. 13), \z\I (his discharge) in v. 15 must refer to residual
ritual impurity resulting from the discharge.
22
Not only is the formerly un-
well person the owner of the ritual impurity, this impurity resides in his
body, which has been a source of contamination to persons and objects with
whom/which he has come in contact (vv. 412). So when the priest effects
purgation on his behalf from his discharge, the ritual impurity is removed
from the individual himself.
23
As H. C. Brichto has recognized, the preposition o in Lev 15:15 and 30 is
privative.
24
He is consistent in that he similarly interprets this preposition in
Lev 16:16, where the inner sanctum is purged of/from (o) the uncleannesses
and moral faults of the people.
25
Brichtos understanding of o as privative ac-
cords with Milgroms interpretation of the noun nxon, purication offer-
22. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 921; cf. idem, Ablutions, Die Hebrische Bibel
und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte: Festschrift fr Rolf Rendtorff zum 65. Geburtstag
(ed. C. M. E. Blum and W. Stegemann; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,
1990) 90; Y. Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel (trans. and abridg. M. Greenberg;
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960) 107.
23. Cf. Hills, A Semantic and Conceptual Study of the Root KPR, 209.
24. Brichto, On Slaughter and Sacrice, 33.
25. Ibid., 34.
ing, as derived from the privative piel verb xon, purify, which can describe
the effect of the nxon sacrice (Exod 29:36; Lev 8:15; Ezek 43:20, 22, 23;
45:18).
26
A purication offering accomplishes some kind of purication,
that is, removal of something undesirable, and o indicates what is removed.
Since the factors relevant to o in 14:19 also apply in 15:15 and 30, I agree
with Brichto that the preposition must be privative here. This means that the
priest effects purgation on his/her behalf from his/her (impure) discharge,
against Milgroms for his discharge and for her impure discharge.
27
No-
tice that these formulas refer to the specic kind of impurity removed from
the offerer, as in 12:7, rather than simply using the general term for impurity
by itself, as in 14:19 (\nxooo).
Milgroms note on effect purgation on his behalf, for his discharge in
15:15 is fascinating and revealing:
To my knowledge there are only four cases in which the expression kipper
al is followed by min: meaat for his wrong (4:26; 5:6, 10); miumat
for his impurity (14:19); mizzb for his discharge (15:15; cf. v. 30b); and
miumot bn yirael mippishem of the impurities of the Israelites and
their transgressions (16:16). The mem is causative (see the NOTE on
14:19). The fact that all four cases deal with the aat rather than the other
expiatory sacrices (asam, ol, and min) is signicant. They explain that
the aat is required because it has adversely affected the sanctuary. The
individuals ethical wrong (see the NOTES on 4:2), the impurity of the
person with scale disease (chap. 14) or abnormal discharge (chap. 15), and
the physical impurities and moral iniquities of collective Israel (chap. 16)
have this in common: they are responsible for the pollution of the sanctuary
(see chap. 14, COMMENTS A, B, C; chap. 16, COMMENT F).
The fact that the text pinpoints the reason for the sacrice as mizzb
(and in the case of scale disease, miumat, 14:19) merits notice. One bear-
ing physical impurities, even the most severe kind, is not accused of sin; his
sacrice is not meaat for his wrong (4:26). Above all, the purpose of
the sacrice is not wnisla l that he may be forgiven (4:31, 35).
28
The second paragraph is completely on target: o + physical ritual impurity
identies the reason for the sacrice, and this reason is distinguished from
sin that requires forgiveness (see further below). I would add that for me the
26. J. Milgrom, Sin-Offering or Purication-Offering? VT 21 (1971) 237; idem,
Leviticus 116, 253; cf. D. Wright, Day of Atonement, ABD 2:72; On the privative
piel, see GKC 52h.
27. Translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 129192; cf. idem, Leviticus 116,
9023.
28. Ibid., 926.
Chapter 6 118
reason is specied in a privative framework expressing the need to get rid of
the evil in question.
Milgroms rst paragraph is problematic. First, there are other instances of
"v oa followed by o. Two are in the evilprep. category immediately fol-
lowing the object of the preposition "v:
Lev 16:34a: cnxon"ao "xO :a"v oa"
Num 6:11: Oo:"v xon Oxo \"v oa\
Perhaps Milgrom did not include Lev 16:34a because he attributes vv. 2934a
to H.
29
In any case these passages, which we will consider later below, do not
affect the outcome of our discussion differently than those cited by Milgrom.
However, we have already found that in Lev 12:7, where o + physical ritual
impurity is embedded in a result clause that is governed by the verb o
following "v oa, the o can only be privative. Another example is 16:30,
canxon "ao canx o" ca"v oa , which Milgrom renders: shall purga-
tion be effected on your behalf to purify you of all your sins (emphasis
mine).
30
As in 12:7, Milgrom translates o as privative because there is no
other choice, without identifying it as such: of all your sins means from all
your sins (cf. 12:7from her source of blood; see above). While 16:30,
which Milgrom also assigns to H, involves factors that are unique to the Day
of Atonement, my point here is that its use of o in language closely following
oa is consistent with what we nd elsewhere in pentateuchal cultic law.
Most likely Milgrom did not include 12:7 and 16:30 because they have o
governed by o rather than oa. But I contend that these passages are rele-
vant and should be taken into account.
The second problem with the rst paragraph of Milgroms note on 15:15 is
inconsistency. He renders o in 4:26; 5:6, 10; 14:19; 15:15, 30 by for, in
agreement with his assertion that this preposition is causative. But when he
comes to 16:16, for suddenly changes to of : of the impurities of the
Israelites and their transgressions.
31
This is the same privative of = from
that we found in his translation of v. 30. Why the switch? Why not stick with
the causative sense of o throughout these instances, as BDB (49798) has
done? Leviticus 16:16 and 30 are in the context of the Day of Atonement
29. Ibid., 62, 106465.
31. See Milgroms translation of 16:16a in Leviticus 1722, 1293: Thus he shall
purge the adytum of the pollution and transgressions of the Israelites, including all of
their sins (emphasis mine); cf. idem, Leviticus 116, 1010.
ceremonies, regarding which vv. 16, 18, 20, and 33 explicitly state that the
sanctuary and its sancta are purged by means of special purication offerings
(see further below). So there is no need for Milgrom to avoid the privative
sense of o here. In fact, this reading reinforces his contention that purica-
tion offerings remove evil from the sanctuary and its sancta. But taking o the
same way in other contexts would be devastating to his thesis that purication
offerings always purge the sanctuary and its sancta rather than the offerer.
The third problem is Milgroms statement that the cases of "v oa fol-
lowed by o explain that the aat is required because it has adversely af-
fected the sanctuary. In light of the next sentence, it here refers to
impurity or sin. How do these cases explain that? All of them deal with the
aat rather than the other expiatory sacrices. So how does this fact ex-
plain that purication offerings in all of these cases function to remove pol-
lution from the sanctuary? This is the function of all purication offerings
according to Milgroms general nxon theory, which has become an assump-
tion. The reasoning is circular, with the evidence shaped to, rather than
shaping, the conclusion.
Milgrom makes a sharp distinction between the sense of oa in the con-
text of the nxon, where it means purify/purge, and other kinds of sacrices,
in which he interprets the verb in the more general sense of atone or ex-
piate.
32
It is remarkably ironic that the privative sense of o, which Milgrom
specically avoids, is strong conrmation, perhaps even the strongest, that he
is right in regarding only nxon sacrices as purication offerings. Other
sacrices, such as burnt and reparation offerings, also accomplish various
kinds of oa on behalf of ("v/vz) offerers (e.g., Lev 1:4; 5:16, 18, 26[6:7]);
16:24), so oa by itself or with "v does not set goal formulas of nxon sacri-
ces apart. What does make purication-offering formulas unique is exactly
what Milgrom points out in his note on 15:15 (see above): o + evil. But it
is not simply that remedying evil is the raison dtre of the purication of-
fering. This goes without saying if a ritual is expiatory, and thus it is implied
for reparation offerings, which also remedy specic evils (Lev 5:1426[6:7]).
The fact that o is privative, expressing the idea of removal, and that o + evil
following and syntactically governed by oa (i.e., in the evilprep. col-
umn of my table) occurs only in formulas of nxon sacrices, which uniquely
have blood applied to the horns rather than sides of an altar, proves that only
these sacrices target specic evils for removal/purication in this way.
32. Ibid., 107983.
Chapter 6 120
What I just stated would appear at rst glance to be negated by Lev 19:22,
which we can analyze by referring to table 3. Although this formula differs
from any encountered thus far in that every slot is lled (including locus),
this is no problem. The difculty is found in the words immediately following
a \"v oa\ , which I left out because they identify the instrument of ex-
piation: cOx "xa, with the ram of reparation offering. As a result of this
prerequisite reparation offering, a man who has had sexual relations with a
betrothed slave girl is forgiven xon Ox \nxono , which Milgrom renders: of
his wrong that he committed.
33
As in Lev 12:7 and 16:30, o + evil can only
be privative because it is embedded in expression of the result. Again, the
privative meaning is reected in Milgroms translation.
Setting aside the matter of authorship, regarding which Milgrom takes the
betrothed slave girl pericope (vv. 2022) to be a P insertion in H anyway,
34
we
are stuck with the dilemma that a reparation-offering formula has a privative
o, which seems to pull the rug out from under the uniqueness of the nxon
sacrice as a purication offering. But this is the apparent exception that
proves the rule and sharpens its parameters. The fact that o shows up here in
the result rather than the evilprep. column of a moral (M) case makes
all the difference: o expresses removal of evil through forgiveness (passive
nipal of n"o) that is accomplished directly by God, not through the prereq-
uisite sacricial oa process itself. The fact remains that only formulas of
nxon sacrices have privative o + evil in the evilprep. slot governed by
oa, meaning that only nxon sacrices purify.
Concluding our investigation of formulas in cases of physical ritual impu-
rity, Num 8:12 and 21 express the goal of the same nxon sacrice, which is
supplemented by an accompanying burnt offering. This combination of sac-
rices forms a small ritual complex contributing oa to the larger complex in-
volved in purication of the Levites work force.
If we needed a clincher for our argument that nxon sacrices purify their
offerers in some instances, Num 8:21 would be it. Uniquely among formulas
of nxon sacrices for physical ritual impurity, this one expresses the result of
oa with the preposition " + the innitive of o + pronoun referring to the
(collective) offerer, in this case the Levites as a group: co", to purify
them. Here the verb o does not simply express the resultant state of purity
from evil belonging to the offerer(s), as the qal form does in Lev 12:7 and 8
33. Translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1298.
34. Ibid., 1676.
(o ;oo o\ and o\, respectively). Nor does o in Num 8:21 ap-
pear in a clause subsequent to the one that is governed by oa. Rather, co"
is in the transitive piel stem, with the pronoun referring to the offerer(s) func-
tioning as direct object, in the same clause as oa. So x c"v oa\
co", and Aaron effected purgation on their behalf to purify them means
that the sacricial oa process acted upon the Levites for the purpose of
(prep. " + inn. cstr.; cf. GKC 114g) removing impurity from them. An al-
ternate rendering, and Aaron effected purgation on their behalf, purifying
them (cf. GKC 114o), would have the same net effect.
Lest there is doubt that the formula in Num 8:21 refers to the purication-
offering component of the ritual complex that puries the Levites work force,
which is explicitly mentioned only in vv. 8 and 12, examination of vv. 621
will conrm this. Verse 6 states that the Levites are the object of the overall
process of cleansing (cnx no\, and purify them). Verse 7 begins to spec-
ify Moses role (cf. v. 5) in the procedures: This is what you shall do to them
to cleanse them: sprinkle on them water of purication, and let them go over
their whole body with a razor, and wash their clothes; thus they shall be
cleansed (njpsv). When the Levites and the community have assembled at
the sanctuary, the Levites are to be presented as an elevation offering,
thereby separating them from the other Israelites for the service of the sanctu-
ary (Num 8:911, 1315). Additionally, two bulls are to be sacriced on be-
half of the Levites, one as a purication offering and the other as a burnt
offering to Yhwh, to expiate for the Levites (v. 12; cf. v. 8).
Verse 21 summarizes the fulllment of Yhwhs instructions: The Levites
puried themselves
35
and washed their clothes; and Aaron designated them
Table 3. The Privative Result of a Reparation Offering
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
oa
+ subj.
L. 19:22 M \" n"o:\
\nxono
xon Ox
\nxon"v
xon Ox
:o"
\
O \"v a . . . oa\
35. The nrsv reads here: puried themselves from sin. But in this context physical
ritual impurity is in view: Bathing cleanses them of minor impurities; the puricatory
water, of corpse contamination; the purication bullof their severe impurities
(Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 278).
Chapter 6 122
as an elevation offering before the LORD, and Aaron made expiation for
them to cleanse them (njpsv). This verse refers to the three components of
the cleansing process:
1. The Levites puried themselves [hitpael of xon] and washed their
clothes refers to the instructions in v. 7, including application of the
water of purication (nxon o).
2. Aaron designated them as an elevation offering refers to vv. 911,
1315.
3. Aaron made expiation for them to cleanse them (x c"v oa\
co") refers to oa, effected by the purication and burnt offerings,
which combine into what constitutes a greater purication offering, the
oa goal of which appears earlier in v. 12: to expiate for the Levites
(c\ ""v oa").
The cleansing (o) at the end of v. 21 cannot refer to or include application
of the water of purication because that was performed by Moses, not
Aaron (see vv. 57). Nor can it refer to the Levites shaving and laundering
their clothes because those activities were performed by the Levites them-
selves, not by Aaron. We cannot escape the conclusion that the oa provided
by the purication offering, supplemented by a burnt offering, puried the of-
ferers (i.e., the Levites themselves) before they began service connected with
the sanctuary and its sancta (v. 15).
Having examined the goal formula of each purication offering dealing
with physical ritual impurity in which the object of the preposition following
oa refers to the offerer, we have found a consistent pattern: the sacrice re-
moves impurity from the offerer. In these instances there is no evidence that
the sacrice purges the sanctuary and/or its sancta.
Anyone who persists in arguing that the sanctuary or one of its compo-
nents is puried will be constrained to admit that this interpretation requires
assumption of an ellipsis, such as nzIo "v/nx immediately following oa, so
that the formulas would be understood to be (reading from right to left):
(offererimpurityo) offerer"v [nzIo "v/nx] oa
He [i.e., the priest] shall purge [the altar] on behalf of the offerer (from his/
her impurity).
However, there is simply no evidence to support such an ellipsis. Although
the biblical text is fully capable of expressions such as nzIo nx oa (Lev
16:20, 33) and nzIo "v oa (cf. 8:15; 16:18), we have not found and will not
nd (see below) a single verse in which such an expression is combined with
offerer"v (or offerervz, also on behalf of the offerer).
Moral faults are puried from offerers
Now we turn our attention to goal formulas of nxon sacrices for moral
faults (M), in which objects of prepositions following oa refer to offerers (O).
Although Lev 6:23[30] has nothing in the obj.prep. column from which we
can specify the kind of obj., this verse clearly ts here because it refers to the
outer-sanctum type of purication offering, for which Lev 4:20 provides the
formula in the case of the community (see table 4).
These formulas differ from those dealing with physical ritual impurities in
ve respects.
1. Whereas oa is always followed by "v in cases of physical impurities,
formulas concerned with moral faults also employ the preposition vz, on
behalf of (Lev 9:7). Milgrom has pointed out that vz appears in contexts
that include ofciating by the high priest on behalf of himself (9:7; 16:6, 11,
17, 24).
36
So it appears that lack of vz in formulas of nxon sacrices that are
solely for physical impurities is due to the lack of a case in which a priest re-
exively removes his own physical impurity by simultaneously functioning as
offerer and ofciant.
2. Whereas the evilprep. element in formulas for physical impurities
uses only the preposition o (14:19; 15:15, 30), the corresponding element
with moral faults can have the preposition "v: \nxon"v, concerning his
sin (4:35); "xo nnxo xonOx \nxon"v , concerning his sin that he
sinned from among one of these (5:13).
3. Some evilprep. elements in formulas for moral faults include rela-
tive clauses consisting of or beginning with xonOx following the word for
evil: xonOx \nxono , from his sin that he sinned (5:10); Ox \nxon"v
"xo nnxo xon , concerning his sin that he sinned from among one of
these (5:13). While it would seem obvious at rst glance that \nxon (his
sin) is xonOx (that he sinned), use of the verb from the same root xon
shows that the moral evil remedied by the oa process is an act rather than an
impure state. Notice that in Num 6:11 the noun nxon is lacking: xon Oxo
Oo:"v, from that which he sinned concerning the corpse. So xon Ox
functions here as the object of the preposition o.
4. Except for Lev 16:30, the result is forgiveness (n"o) rather than purity
(o). This is understandable in light of the difference between the two
36. Ibid., 25556; idem, va/"v oa , 1617.
Chapter 6 124
kinds of cases: whereas a physically impure person needs purication, a sin-
ner needs forgiveness.
37
The exceptional o in 16:30 shows that, once a
year on the Day of Atonement, the Israelites receive purication from their
Table 4. Moral Faults Puried from Offerers
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
L. 4:20 M c" n"o:\ O c"v a . . . oa\
L. 4:26 M \" n"o:\ \nxono O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 4:31 M \" n"o:\ O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 4:35 M \" n"o:\ \nxon"v O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 5:6 M \nxono O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 5:10 M \" n"o:\ \nxono
xonOx
O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 5:13 M \" n"o:\ \nxon"v
xon Ox
"xo nnxo
O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 6:23 M O;a oa"
L. 9:7 M O vz qva
cv
oa\
L. 9:7 M O cva oa\
L. 10:17 M :o"
\
O c"v oa"
L. 16:30 M canx o"
canxo n "ao
\ :o"
\on
O ca"v oa
N. 6:11 M xon Oxo
Oo:"v
O \"v oa\
N. 15:25 M c" n"o:\ O nv"a"v
"xO :a
a oa\
N. 15:28 M O Oo:"v
xona nD
Oz
\ :o"
a oa\
N. 15:28 M \" n"o:\ O \"v oa"
37. Cf. idem, Leviticus 116, 256, 760.
sins (pl. of nxon). This further supports Milgroms conclusion that nxon sac-
rices function as purication offerings: ultimately the Israelites receive
purication (o) from their sins through the special nxon sacrices of the
Day of Atonement, just as they receive purication (o) from their physical
impurities throughout the year.
5. As mentioned in our earlier investigation of the outer-altar purication
offering, the verb n"o, forgive, is always passive nipal, indicating that it is
God rather than the priest who grants forgiveness. Thus the oa process at
which the priest ofciates does not automatically result in forgiveness. Rather,
this process is only prerequisite to the direct divine decision. In nxon sacri-
ces for physical impurities we found no such articulation between the
agency of the priest as Yhwhs representative and that of Yhwh himself: sacri-
cial oa performed by the priest simply results in purity (o).
38
Differences 1 and 35 can be understood in terms of distinctions between
the two kinds of cases: physical states of ritual impurity versus faulty moral
acts. But we have not explained the second difference, which is most relevant
to us here: the preposition "v, concerning, along with o in the evilprep.
column. Milgrom regards the two prepositions as equivalent, supporting his
contention that o is causative.
39
Since there is no privative "v, he must be
right, if they are indeed synonymous. However, we cannot overlook the
strong syntactic parallel between use of o in cases of moral faults and use of
the same preposition in cases of physical ritual impurities, where we have
found a privative sense to be required (see table 5).
In physical and moral cases, o occupies the same position in the evil
prep. column. So like Milgrom (see quotation above),
40
I see no reason to
interpret o differently in moral cases. However, whereas he takes o to be
causative, I have found that in cases of physical ritual impurity the preposi-
tion must be privative. This implies that it is also privative in moral cases.
But Lev 16:30 provides direct evidence that is overpowering: o follows the
verb o in the result column, where it can only be privative, as in 12:7.
Milgrom renders 16:30: For on this day shall purgation be effected on your
behalf to purify you of all your sins; you shall become pure before Yhwh.
41
Leviticus 16:30 is stronger than 12:7 because it has o in piel, followed by
the direct object that refers to the collective offerer (here the entire Israelite
38. Ibid., 760.
39. Ibid., 251.
40. Ibid., 926.
41. Translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1294 (emphasis mine); cf. idem, Le-
viticus 116, 1011.
Chapter 6 126
community) as in Num 8:21 (the Levites). The conclusion is inescapable:
the oa process removes moral faults from the offerer(s). Consequently, o
and "v in the evilprep. formulaic position are not synonymous. While the
former is best rendered from, the latter means concerning, a more indi-
rect idea found only with moral faults, but not with the less abstract physical
ritual impurities.
Milgrom seems to be uncomfortable with the implications of Lev 16:30:
The purgation rites in the sanctuary purify the sanctuary, not the people.
Yet as the sanctuary is polluted by the peoples impurities, their elimination,
in effect, also puries the people. The reference to purication could also
be to the scapegoat, which expressly carries off the peoples sins into the wil-
derness (v 24 [sic, v. 22]). To be sure, purity is effected by the elimination of
impurity (12:8; 14:7, 9, 20, 31; 15:13, 28). Instead, it is the peoples partici-
pation in this day through their self-purgation that is probably meant. . . .
This metaphoric use of iher is another sign of the authorship of H.
42
So which is it? Does purication here result from the purgation of the sanc-
tuary by nxon sacrices, the scapegoat ritual, or the peoples self-purgation by
Table 5. Use of o in Cases of Physical Impurity and Moral Faults
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
objprep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
L. 12:7 P ;o o o\
o
O "v oa\
L. 14:19 P \nxoo o O oo"v oa\
L. 15:15 P \z\I o \ :o" O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 15:30 P Jnxoo z\I o \ :o" O "v a . . . oa\
L. 4:26 M \" n"o:\ \nxon o O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 5:6 M \nxon o O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 5:10 M \" n"o:\ \nxon o
xonOx
O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 16:30 M canx o"
canxo n "ao
\ :o"
on
O ca"v oa
L. 16:34 M cnxo n"a o O "xO :a"v oa"
N. 6:11 M xon Ox o
Oo:"v
O \"v oa\
42. Ibid., 1056.
practicing self-denial (v. 29)? Purgation (oa) is made upon ("v) Azazels
goat (v. 10; see below), but nowhere does the text indicate that this ritual ex-
piates for the people or puries them. In v. 30 the purication of the people
provides the motivation for (a, for/because) rather than being the result of
the peoples self-denial, so this possibility is also ruled out. Therefore we can-
not avoid the implication that ca"v oa, shall purgation be effected on
your behalf, in this verse refers to the goal/function of the special purica-
tion offerings, which effect purgation for the Israelites by purging the sanctu-
ary (v. 33). Use of the piel of o in v. 30 accords with the other evidence
presented above. Purication offerings purge (oa) offerers on the Day of
Atonement, as on other days. The difference is that on the Day of Atonement
the sanctuary and its sancta are also purged, resulting in the purication
(o) of the Israelites from sins for which they had earlier received forgive-
ness (n"o) but not cleansing (e.g., 4:20, 26, 31).
We have found that some formulas dealing with moral faults include "v,
concerning, in the evilprep. position, but for physical impurities only
o appears in this slot. This distinction appears to correlate with the difference
between the respective natures of the two kinds of evils: a moral fault is an act
in historical time, concerning which the sinner bears a load of \v, culpa-
bility (Lev 5:1), and therefore concerning which and from which expia-
tion is required through ritual oa (cf. v. 6\nxono, from his sin, including
the culpable sin in v. 1). A physical ritual impurity, on the other hand, is a lin-
gering state simply located in the body, from which it must be removed.
We now have a conclusion with regard to the chieftains purication offer-
ing (4:26): the function of his sacrice is to purge evil from him (with the njb),
pending forgiveness by Yhwh.
43
In v. 31 a shorter version of the formula with
regard to the commoners purication offering (\"v oa\), which does not in-
clude reference to the sin, expresses the same function.
44
Whereas Milgrom
43. A. Dillmann interpreted the preposition o in \nxono of Lev 4:26 as causa-
tive, because of his sin, and regarded \nxon"v in 4:35; 5:13 (cf. v. 18\nO "v);
and 19:22 as equivalent, thus conrming the causative meaning. But he added that
the privative sense of o (so that his sin is no longer on him) is also possible, and in
passages such as 16:34 and 19:22 this is preferable (Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus
[Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897] 468). Similarly, B. Baentsch suggested the privative as an
alternative to a causative interpretation of \nxono in Lev 4:26 (Exodus-Leviticus-
Numeri [HKAT; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1903] 32526). Note that in
the context of Brichtos interpretation of oa, this verb with privative o would refer
to removal of an imbalance between the sinner and Yhwh by means of a compository
offering that restores equilibrium in the relationship (On Slaughter and Sacrice,
2728).
44. The longer form with evilo appears in 4:26, later than the shorter form in
v. 20. Compare this with the fact that the term zzo, round about, appears only later,
Chapter 6 128
has taken offerer"v oa in v. 31 (cf. v. 20) as the basic formula to which
evilo is an exceptional addition to be interpreted separately,
45
I have
treated the fuller formula eviloofferer"v oa in v. 26 as a unit be-
cause it functions as a unit: "v oa expresses the remedy for the evil that fol-
lows o. Therefore, I have reached agreement with B. Levine regarding an
important aspect of the nxon sacrices in Lev 45: The object of the aat,
usually translated sin offering, was to remove the culpability borne by the of-
fender, that is, to purify the offender of his guilt (4:15:13).
46
H. Maccoby has pointed out that, when a chieftain has a sin removed from
him by his purication offering (4:26), it is the same sin that he committed
(xon; v. 22), not another sin of polluting the altar.
47
Milgrom replies in de-
fense of his theory:
Maccoby fails to take into account that the latter verb is a qal whereas the
former is a piel. The expression \nxono a \"v oa\ (4:26) is precisely
equivalent to \nxooo oo"v oa\ (14:19). Thus, \nxono refers to his
impurity, not to his sin. His repentence (cOx\ ) has wiped out his sin. What
remains is its contaminating effect, necessitating a purication offering.
48
But Milgrom has overlooked a crucial distinction between the two passages.
Although evilprep. is functionally equivalent in the two passages, the na-
ture of the evil is different. Of course Lev 14:19 refers to impurity: it is a case
of purication from physical ritual impurity resulting from scaly skin disease,
which must be removed from the person after he/she has healed. But 4:26 is
a case of moral fault, so it is this kind of evil that must be removed from the
chieftain. If there is any doubt that a purication offering for a moral wrong
removes the same sin that was committed, it is dispelled by Lev 5:10, where
45. Ibid., 85758, 926; cf. R. Rendtorff, Leviticus (BKAT 3; Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener Verlag, 1985) 3:186; Brichto interprets \nxono in Lev 4:35 (sic v. 26)
as an addition to the oa formula but expressing the idea that the offerer is absolved of
(privative sense) his offense (On Slaughter and Sacrice, 31).
46. B. Levine, Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary: Philadelphia: Jewish Publica-
tion Society, 1989) 18; cf. 2324.
48. J. Milgrom, Impurity Is Miasma: A Response to Hyam Maccoby, JBL 119
(2000) 732; see now idem, Leviticus 2327, 2462.
in Lev 8:15 and 16:18. Regarding zz o , A. Rodrguez has concluded that when-
ever the blood is put all around the horns of the altar it cleanses the altar. But when the
blood is simply put on the horns something else is intended (Substitution in the He-
brew Cultus [AUSDS 3; Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979]
138; cf. 137). Milgrom responds that whether or not this term appears is of no conse-
quence; the meaning is the same (Leviticus 116, 255).
the relative clause xonOx identies the sin remedied by a purication of-
fering plus a supplementary burnt offering as that he sinned/committed.
The special Day of Atonement purication offerings remove
moral faults and physical impurities from their offerers
through purgation of the sanctuary
A number of purication offerings that remedy both moral faults and ritual
impurities (M + P) have formulas in which the offerer(s) is/are represented by
the object of the preposition "v or vz following oa (see table 6). All of the
examples in table 6 refer to the special nxon sacrices of the Day of Atone-
ment, which purge (oa/o) the sanctuary from (o) the uncleannesses and
moral faults of the priests and the nonpriestly community (Lev 16:16, 1819;
see below). These formulas do not have anything in the evilprep. or re-
sult columns to indicate that this purgation removes the evil from the offer-
ers themselves. But in our consideration of formulas dealing with physical
impurities or moral faults separately, we have found that the object of the
preposition following oa has consistently referred to the patient of puri-
cation, from which evil is removed. To reinforce the idea that the Day of
Atonement purication offerings remove evil from the people on whose be-
half they are performed, we have already found that Lev 16:30 expresses such
removal of sins (pl. of nxon) from (o) the entire community. So with regard
to these unique purication offerings I agree with Milgrom when he says that,
as the sanctuary is polluted by the peoples impurities, their elimination, in
effect, also puries the people.
49
Table 6. Removal of Evils from Offerers through Purgation of Sanctuary
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
L. 16:6 M+P O \na vz \va oa\
L. 16:11 M+P O \na vz \va oa\
L. 16:17 M+P O \na vz \va
";"a vz
"xO
oa\
L. 16:33 M+P O c:a "v\
"; cv"a"v\
oa . . .
L. 23:28 M+P \ :o"
ca"x
O ca"v oa"
49. Idem, Leviticus 116, 1056 (see above).
Chapter 6 130
Some purication-offering formulas refer to removal of either
moral faults or physical ritual impurities from offerers
Leviticus 7:7 sets forth a similarity between the reparation offering and
the outer-altar purication offering, whether it remedies sin or physical im-
purity: the remainder of the victim belongs to the ofciating priest. In this
verse the preposition following oa is instrumental z, so \a means with it,
that is, the animal by means of which expiation is made. Although "v plus
a sufx referring to the offerer is lacking here, we already know that outer-
altar purication offerings remove sins or impurities from their offerers (see
above). Below we will nd an exceptional outer-altar sacrice that purges
the altar, but it was performed on the unique occasion of consecration by
Moses rather than by an Aaronic priest, and the formulas clearly mark the al-
tar as the beneciary. So it is safe to assume that 7:7 has to do with purgation
of evil from an offerer. In formulas for additional festival purication offer-
ings in the cultic calendar of Num 2829, the offerers receiving the benet
of oa are the Israelites (pl. suff. as obj. of "v). We are not told whether these
calendric sacrices, for which the requirement is detached from specic
circumstances, remove from the people their moral faults, ritual impurities,
or both.
An outer-altar purication offering purges the outer altar
at the time of its initial consecration
A purication offering performed on each of seven successive days purges
the outer altar, which is part of the sanctuary (S), in connection with its initial
consecration (C) by anointing (cf. Lev 8:11; Exod 29:3637). In each of these
verses, the object of the preposition "v following oa refers to the altar in the
court. With the possible exception of Lev 8:15, where "v may indicate the
Table 7. Removal of Either Moral Faults or Physical Ritual Impurities
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
L. 7:7 M/P Ox a
\aoa
N. 28:22 M/P? O ca"v oa"
N. 28:30 M/P? O ca"v oa"
N. 29:5 M/P? O ca"v oa"
location of subsequent sacrices of various kinds upon the altar (see be-
low), these expressions indicate that the altar itself, rather than a human of-
ferer, receives the oa. That application of purication-offering blood purges
the altar itself is conrmed by the fact that in 8:15 naIo, the altar, is the di-
rect object of the piel verb xon: naIonx xon\ , decontaminating the al-
tar.
50
The parallel formulation in Exod 29:36 has the preposition "v, rather
than the direct object, following the verb xon: naIo"v nxon\ , and you
shall perform decontamination on the altar. The next words show that this
decontamination benets the altar itself and constitutes, or at least contrib-
utes to, a kind of oa: \"v qoaa, when you effect purgation for it. This pur-
gation by blood is linked to what follows: \O;" \nx nnOo, and you shall
anoint it in order to consecrate it.
Purgation of the altar at the time of its initial consecration (cf. Lev 8:11)
raises some questions: First, why do the priests perform hand-leaning on the
animal (v. 14) if its blood purges the altar rather than them? It appears that
this gesture, identifying the priests as offerers, implies that they receive some
kind of secondary oa benet, as ch. 16 explicitly indicates with regard to the
Day of Atonement sacrices that primarily purge the sanctuary (vv. 6, 11, 17,
33; see above). However, it is doubtful that the initial decontamination of the
altar can expiate for specic sins of the priests because the altar is undergoing
the process of qualication for its function.
51
Second, what sin or impurity of the priests necessitates purgation of the al-
tar by means of a purication offering on this occasion? The text simply does
not specify. Milgrom suggests the possibility that, during the consecration
week, while the priests were conned within the sanctuary compound in close
Table 8. Purgation of Outer Altar at Consecration
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
E. 29:36 C S \"v qoaa
E. 29:37 C S naIo"v oan
L. 8:15 C S \"v oa"
Note that this instance of the piel must be distinguished from Jnx xono , who offers
it as a purication offering, in Lev 6:19[26], where the direct object (it) refers to the
sacricial animal rather than the altar.
51. Cf. Kiuchi, Purication Offering, 42.
Chapter 6 132
proximity to the altar (cf. 8:3335), they may have incurred some unavoidable
physical impurity that polluted the altar.
52
In any case, there is a close con-
nection between the tness of the priests and the tness of the altar on which
they are subsequently to ofciate. The consecration purication offering at
which Moses ofciated (vv. 1417) uniquely preceded inauguration of puri-
cation offerings at which the Aaronic priesthood ofciated (9:811). Therefore
we cannot assume, as Milgrom does, that every subsequent outer-altar nxon
sacrice works in the same way to purge the altar.
The third problem is the summary at the end of 8:15: \"v oa" O; \ ,
where consecration (O;) effects purgation (oa), reversing the expected or-
der of verbs that is found in Exod 29:3637, where purgation by purication-
offering blood is mentioned before consecration by anointing with oil. Com-
pare also the order in Lev 16:1819, where the altar is puried (oa/o) and
then reconsecrated (O;) by successive blood applications on the Day of
Atonement. Milgrom renders the nal clause of Lev 8:15: Thus he conse-
crated it to effect atonement upon it
53
that is, to effect atonement upon the
altar in the future, when various kinds of sacrices are offered literally upon
it (following Rashi and Ibn Ezra).
54
Whether or not this should be accepted
as the best option is inconsequential to the outcome of the present study, so
we will not expend further energy on the problem except to point out that, if
Milgrom is right, "v oa in Lev 8:15 does not refer to purgation/decontami-
nation of the altar itself, by contrast with usage in Exod 29. Hence, our table
entry for Lev 8:15 would allow for subsequent cases of moral faults or physical
ritual impurities (M/P) remedied by purication offerings (among other sac-
Table 9. The Future oa Option for Leviticus 8:15
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
oa
+ subj.
L. 8:15 M/P \"v oa"
52. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 522. S. R. Driver attempted to explain: the altar,
prior to its consecration, is regarded as affected by the natural impurity of human
workmanship, which has to be removed (Propitiation, A Dictionary of the Bible
[ed. J. Hastings; New York: Scribners, 1911] 4:131). But if Driver were right, we
would expect similar decontaminations for all other parts of the sanctuary, as in the
comprehensive rites of the Day of Atonement.
54. Ibid., 52425.
rices), and we would shift \"v from the obj.prep. or direct obj. slot to
locus (table 9).
Inner-sanctum purication offerings on the Day of Atonement
purge the sanctuary and its sancta
Special nxon sacrices performed once per year on the Day of Atonement
purge the inner sanctum (O;/O; O;o, Holy/Holiest Part), outer sanc-
tum (v\o "x, Tent of Meeting), and outer altar (naIo) from the moral
faults and physical ritual impurities (M + P) of the priests and the nonpriestly
community (table 10). That purgation affects components of the sanctuary (S)
is unambiguously indicated by the syntax: such components are referred to by
the object of the preposition "v (Exod 30:10; Lev 16:16, 18) or direct object
(Lev 16:20, 33) following oa. So in this kind of context following oa, the
constructions with "v and with the direct object appear almost functionally
equivalent, as we found following the piel of xon in the parallel formulations
of Exod 29:36 (naIo"v nxon\ ) and Lev 8:15 (naIonx xon\ ). The differ-
ence is that "v emphasizes that benet is for/concerning something and the
Table 10. Inner-Sanctum Offerings Purge the Sanctuary
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
E. 30:10 M+P \n:;"v x oa\
E. 30:10 M+P S \"v oa
cvOoo "xO
cnxo n"a"
S O;"v oa\
L. 16:17 M+P O;a oa"
L. 16:18 M+P S \"v oa\
L. 16:20 M+P S O;nx
v\o "xnx\
naIonx\
oao
L. 16:27 M+P O;a oa"
L. 16:32 M+P a oa\
L. 16:33 M+P S O;onx
O;
v\o "xnx\
oa\
L. 16:33 M+P S naIonx\ oa . . .
Chapter 6 134
direct object indicates that the ritual goal is accomplished through activity
(blood manipulation) directly applied to the object (part of the sanctuary).
55
While persons benet from nxon sacrices, as indicated by "v (see above),
they never appear as direct objects of oa in purication offering formulas
simply because blood from this kind of sacrice is never applied directly to
persons.
56
We will explore the reason for this in our next chapter.
I have included instances having nothing in the obj.prep. or direct
obj. slot (Exod 30:10; Lev 16:17, 27, 32) because their contexts indicate that
they are dealing with the same kind of oa activity that purges the sanctuary.
Thus Exod 30:10 species oa on the horns of the incense altar (\n:;"v,
upon its horns) by applying purication-offering blood there once a year.
In the same verse, by the same activity, Aaron shall effect purgation for it
(\"v oa)that is, for the golden altar. Leviticus 16:17 and 27 refer to the
blood manipulations located O;a (in the [most] Holy Place), which are
prescribed in vv. 1415 and for which the goal formula appears in v. 16. The
word oa in v. 32 is resumptively repeated in v. 33.
Earlier we pointed out that the repeated preposition o in the evilprep.
column of Lev 16:16 (in nxooo and cvOoo) is privative, in agreement with
Milgroms rendering of the rst part of this verse: Thus he shall purge the
adytum of the pollution and transgressions of the Israelites, including all of
their sins (emphasis mine).
57
Exegeting Milgroms translation, the rst of
(in italics) means from and does double duty to cover o both in nxooo and
in cvOoo: . . . of the pollution and [of the] transgressions. The meaning
of the verse is that the blood manipulations performed by the high priest re-
move the ritual impurities (nxoo) and two kinds of moral faults (cvOo,
their transgressions, and cnxo n, their sins) belonging to the Israelites
from the inner sanctum. Notice that this formulation provides specic iden-
tication of evils removed, in contrast to the verses dealing with the initial
purication of the outer altar (see above).
Leviticus 16:16a parallels but also differs from other formulas having
privative o in the evilprep. position (table 11). Variables that are incon-
sequential to the present discussion include the presence or absence of
a (the priest) as the subject of oa, occasional mention of the location
55. Cf. Levine, Leviticus, 2324, 110. Notice that the only instances of nx oa are
in the summary statements of Lev 16:20, 33, where there are multiple direct objects,
namely, the three components of the sanctuary: inner sanctum, outer sanctum, and
(outer) altar.
56. Cf. Levine, In the Presence, 6465.
\ :o" (before Yhwh), and the result \" n"o:\ (and he shall be for-
given) in cases in which moral faults are removed from individuals. But
signicant for us here are the facts that in each instance the preposition "v
follows oa, the object of this preposition refers to the beneciary for
whom/which the oa activity is performed, and the object of the privative
preposition o refers to moral (M) or physical (P) evil that the oa activity
removes from the beneciary. Furthermore, in each case except for Lev
16:16, the beneciary (obj. of "v) is the same as the one to whom the evil
belongs, as indicated by the possessive sufx on the term for evil (Lev 4:26,
etc.), and/or the subject of the verb xon in a relative clause following o
(5:10; Num 6:11). So evil is removed from its personal source. Leviticus
16:16, however, is unique in two interrelated respects: First, the beneciary
is part of the sanctuary (S) rather than a person in the role of offerer (O).
Second, that which is removed from the sanctuary to benet it does not
belong to the sanctuary and was not caused by it. As Milgrom has elo-
quently afrmed, the source of the sanctuarys delement is the Israelites.
58
Table 11. Leviticus 16:16a and Parallel Formulas with Privative o
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
L. 4:26 M \" n"o:\ \nxono O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 5:6 M \nxono O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 5:10 M \" n"o:\ \nxono
xonOx
O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 15:15 P \z\Io \ :o" O \"v a . . . oa\
L. 15:30 P Jnxoo z\Io \ :o" O "v a . . . oa\
"xO
cvOoo
cnxo n"a"
S O;"v oa\
N. 6:11 M xon Oxo
Oo:"v
O \"v oa\
58. Ibid., 26061.
Chapter 6 136
On the Day of Atonement, a nonsacricial goat for Azazel
is an instrument to purge the moral faults of the Israelites
by carrying them away
We will investigate the unique ritual of Azazels goat (the so-called scape-
goat ritual) in ch. 11, nding that although it is a nxon, here sin ritual
(Lev 16:5), it is not a sacricial purication offering. We will also nd that
\"v oa" in Lev 16:10 means that purgation is performed on it (i.e., lo-
cated on the goat; table 12) when the high priest confesses over it the accu-
mulated moral faults of the Israelites while leaning both his hands on its
head and then dispatches the animal to Azazel in the wilderness (vv. 10, 21
22). Obviously it would make no sense to interpret \"v in 16:10 in the usual
sense of on behalf of it, which would mean that the sins of Israel would be
purged from the goat itself.
Following initial decontamination of the altar, purication
offerings throughout the year, except for the inner-sanctum
sacrices of the Day of Atonement, only purge their offerers
Having systematically analyzed the oa formulas relevant to nxon sacri-
ces, we can sharpen our conclusions through some counterpoint with and
between the positions of Milgrom, N. Kiuchi, and J. Gammie regarding the
oa prepositions. Milgrom argues:
Finally, a study of the kipper prepositions is decisive. . . . In the context of
the aat, kipper means purge and nothing else, as indicated by its syn-
onyms ie and ihar (e.g., 14:51; cf. chap. 16, COMMENT F; Ezek
43:20, 26). When the object is nonhuman, kipper takes the preposition al
or b or a direct object. For example, all three usages are attested in the
purging of the adytum on the Day of Purgation (16:16, 20), and they must
be understood literally, for the kipper rite takes place on (al) the kapporet
and on the oor before it, in (b) the adytum, or it can be said that the entire
room (et) is purged (kipper; cf. also 6:23; 16:10, 33; Exod 30:10). . . . When
the object of kipper is a person, however, it is never expressed as a direct ob-
ject but requires the prepositions al or bead. Both signify on behalf of
(16:6, 24, 30, 33; Num 8:12, 21), but they are not entirely synonymous. The
Table 12. Azazels Goat on the Day of Atonement
ref.
kind
of
kind
of
obj.
obj.prep.
or
direct obj.
1bo
+ subj.
L. 16:10 M \"v oa"
difference is that al can only refer to persons other than the subject, but
when the subject wishes to refer to himself he must use bead (e.g., 9:7;
16:6, 11, 24; Ezek 45:22). This distinction is conrmed by Job 42:8: Offer
a burnt offering for yourselves (badkem) and Job, my servant, will inter-
cede on your behalf (lkem). . . . This means the purgation rite of the
aat is not carried out on the offerer but only on his behalf.
59
Most relevant to our discussion is the usage of the preposition "v in relation
to the direct object (which can be marked by nx) and the preposition vz,
on behalf of.
60
As Milgrom points out, nx oa is only used with nonhuman
objects and refers to applying purgation directly to them (Ezek 43:26; 45:20;
cf. 43:20). The phrase vz oa is only used with persons and indicates that
purgation is done on behalf of them even though the physical activity of pur-
gation is not performed directly on them. The expression "v oa appears with
both objects and persons. The question is: what does "v oa mean?
For Milgrom, the deciding factor is whether "v oa is used with nonhu-
man objects or persons. With nonhuman objects he takes "v in this context
to mean literally on (Lev 16:16),
61
but he understands "v oa with persons
as almost synonymous with vz oa. Thus, in formulas such as those of 4:26,
31 and 35, which express goals of outer-sanctum and outer-altar purication
offerings performed throughout the year, he interprets "v oa with persons as
on behalf of.
62
59. Ibid., 25556; cf. idem, Israels Sanctuary, 391, repr. Studies in Cultic Theol-
ogy, 76; idem, nxon z; ;on, 23; cf. idem, va/"v oa, 1617. Janowski does
not nd the difference between "v and vz to be as great as Milgrom claims (Shne,
18889 n. 23). But Kiuchi acknowledges that it cannot be denied, as Milgrom has ob-
served, that, unlike "v oa, vz oa appears in contexts where its subject is the object
of atonement, though atonement is made for the whole people as well (Purication
Offering, 89).
60. Use of the preposition z is not in question. Following oa it either has a loca-
tive function, relating to a place in/at which purgation is performed (Lev 6:23[30];
16:17, 27), or an instrumental function that relates to the animal victim with which
atonement is made (7:7; Num 5:8).
61. Kiuchi nds this meaning to t Exod 29:36, 37; 30:10; Lev 8:15; 16:18, but he
nds it problematic for Lev 16:16, where the object of the preposition is O;, the
(most) holy place, apparently a room. He reacts: Since on, over is unlikely to be
the meaning of "v in this passage, it is also dubious whether the general distinction
between human and non-human objects can be justied (ibid., 90). However, the
objection that O; is a room is not sustainable because v. 16 provides the goal of
the blood applications performed in and for the inner sanctum, which are literally/
spatially on ("v) (the surface of ) the ark cover and before that objectthat is, on
the ground of the inner sanctum in front of it (vv. 1415; with Milgrom, above).
62. Translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 127273; cf. idem, Leviticus 116,
22728.
Chapter 6 138
It is true that purication offerings operate on behalf of their offerers, as
shown, for example, by the use of vz in Lev 9:7.

It is also true that nxon
blood is not physically applied to offerers, which explains why nx oa cannot
be used in such contexts.
63
But Milgrom goes further by importing excep-
tional aspects of meaning/function from the consecration and Day of Atone-
ment casesin which the sanctuary and its sancta are purged on behalf of
the offerer(s)into all other purication offerings. Consequently, he denies
that oa "v has to do with removal of evil from offerers.
Kiuchi tentatively concludes that the meaning of "v oa is the same
atone forwhether it is followed by a sanctum or a person, and that the se-
mantic range of this expression covers that of the more specic expressions
nx oa and vz oa, which also mean atone for but are used with sancta
alone and persons alone, respectively.
64
Thus, while Kiuchi recognizes some
difference between human and nonhuman objects, he nds Milgroms
clearly dened semantic distinction between "v with nonhuman objects and
"v with persons to be articial and argues that Aaron can make atonement
(or expiate) for sancta.
65
He maintains that nx is required simply because it
is followed only by sancta and not because kipper denotes purging.
66
Kiuchi also objects to Milgroms sharp distinction between the meaning of
oa in the context of the purication offering, where Milgrom says that it
means purge, and in the contexts of other sacrices, where he interprets the
verb as having evolved into the more general meaning atone/expiate (see
above). Kiuchi argues instead for a homogeneous understanding of oa as
dealing both with impurity and guilt.
67
63. Garnet suggests: Neither persons nor sins are construed as the direct object.
The reason seems to be that cultic atonement is still a propitiation, albeit conceived
in a rather spiritual way. Man cannot be the object of it. He is only the beneciary.
The action of the verb takes place on behalf of (al) the offerer and it can be thought
of as clearing or cleansing him from (min) his sin (Atonement Constructions, 141).
Regarding the instances in which the sanctuary and the altar are direct objects of oa
(Lev 16:20, 33), Garnet suggests that the idea of propitiation is also present, since the
reason for the need to cleanse this is the contamination due to Israels sin (viz. that
which displeases God) (p. 140). He nds no difference in meaning between use of
nx oa and "v oa with sancta, both of which appear in Lev 16:1820, since the
clause in vs. 20, where kipper is used with eth, simply summarizes the statements of
vss. 16 and 18, where it is used with al (p. 142; cf. 144).
65. Ibid., 92; cf. 91, 93.
66. Ibid., 93.
67. Ibid., 101.
Kiuchis idea that "v oa always means essentially the same thing avoids
Milgroms hypothesis that oa in the context of the purication offering rep-
resents an earlier stage of conceptual evolution than oa in the context of
the burnt offering,
68
which is complicated by the fact that the burnt offering
is the earlier sacrice.
69
Furthermore, Kiuchis argument for consistency is
supported by the parallel in Lev 14 between the formulas for persons and for
houses: o\ a \"v oa\ , Thus the priest shall make oa for him, and
he shall be clean (v. 20; cf. v. 31), and o\ na"v oa\ , so he shall make
oa for the house, and it shall be clean (v. 53). Here "v oa with a person
and "v oa with a nonhuman object are functionally equivalent.
On the debit side, Kiuchi has not adequately taken into account Lev
16:16a, where "v oa followed by O;, the [most] holy place, is then fol-
lowed by o + evils that are removed by the oa activity. Here "v oa with a
nonhuman object clearly means purge/purify, as Milgrom says it does. So if
the meaning of "v oa within the context of the nxon sacrice is consistent,
as Kiuchi claims, "v oa followed by a human object should indicate purga-
tion/purication of the person(s), as we have found conrmed by privative o
in these kinds of instances (e.g., 4:26). Thus we could render "v oa: effect
purgation for/on behalf of . . . , as Milgrom does, but with the understanding
that the relevant evil is removed from the human or nonhuman object re-
ferred to by the object of the preposition "v. The phrase vz oa means the
same thing, but is only used with persons. The expression nx oa means (di-
rectly) purge and appears only with nonhuman objects because for some
reason, to be considered in ch. 8 of the present study, nxon blood cannot be
physically applied to persons.
While "v oa in purication-offering formulas refers to removal/purgation,
it does not have this meaning with other kinds of sacrices. Only in purica-
tion-offering formulas is "v oa colored by the additional privative idea: oa
(o) . . . "v. Since the privative sense of removal is an addition indicated by
the explicit or implied presence of o, it seems obvious that the most funda-
mental sense of "v oa does not include the concept of removal/purgation;
instead, (o) . . . "v oa is subsumed under basic "v oa. In other words, al-
though the basic force of "v oa can remain consistent, its usage with puri-
cation offerings is unique. We cannot pursue the fundamental sense of "v oa
69. The burnt offering is attested in early patriarchal narratives (Gen 8:20; 22:2, 7,
8, 13) before the purication offering was introduced in the context of texts dealing
with services of the wilderness sanctuary. Milgrom himself afrms the well-known
chronological priority of the burnt offering (ibid., 17477).
Chapter 6 140
here, but it would probably look something like make amends on behalf
of. . . .
70
Kiuchi nds the following:
there exist two types of hattat ceremony behind the various constructions.
One could be called the usual kipper rite in which the priest (or Aaron)
makes atonement for himself, the whole congregation, the leader and the
individual (e.g., Lev 4). The other could be called the special kipper rite
in which Aaron (or Moses) makes atonement for sancta on special occa-
sions such as the consecration days and the day of Atonement. Each of
these two types of ceremony also forms its text-group. The former includes
Lev 4:15:13 and the relevant sections in Lev 1215; the latter includes
Exod 29; Lev 89 (10), 16.
71
While I basically agree, I would more precisely distinguish between the two
groups of rituals according to whether persons or sancta appear as indirect ob-
jects of oa. On this basis, the only rituals that t in the sancta-purication
category are the initial purication of the altar (Exod 29:3637; Lev 8:15) and
the purgation of the sanctuary and its sancta on the Day of Atonement (Exod
30:10; Lev 16:16, 18, 20, 33).
72
In these cases the sanctuary and/or its sancta
follow nx oa as direct object (Lev 16:20, 33) or "v oa as indirect object
(Exod 29:3637; 30:10; Lev 8:15; 16:16, 18). In all other instances, including
the inaugural sacrices of Lev 9 (see v. 7; cf. 10:17; correcting Kiuchi), "v oa
or vz oa is followed by one or more persons as indirect object.
In support of the special nature of and correspondence between the initial
purication of the outer altar and the nxon sacrices on the Day of Atone-
ment, I observe that the altar undergoes sanctication (piel of O;) only in
the rituals represented by Exod 29:3637 (cf. v. 44; 40:10); Lev 8:15 (cf. Num
7:1), and Lev 16:19.
73
Notice that, whereas the initial purication of the altar
is expressed with the piel of xon, purify (Exod 29:36; Lev 8:15), Lev 16:19
70. Compare Milgroms understanding of oa in the context of sacrices other
than the nxon: The meaning here is that the offerer is cleansed of his impurities/sins
and becomes reconciled, at one, with God (ibid., 1083).
72. Cf. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 17980.
73. Cf. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 129. However, Kiuchi takes the excep-
tional use of "v with xon in Exod 29:36 to refer to the offering of the nxon sacrice
rather than to the purication of the altar (pp. 9596). Nevertheless, the parallel with
Lev 8:15 makes it clear that the altar is indeed puried on this occasion. Notice that
the piel of O; does not appear in connection with the purgation of the inner and
outer sanctums on the Day of Atonement, apparently because their holiness was
more protected from the imperfections of the people than the outer altar in the court
(cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 103940).
has the piel of o as functional equivalent ( below). Thus the order of piel
verbs used in goal formulas for the initial purication of the altar (8:15) and
the order for the altars purication and reconsecration on the Day of Atone-
ment (16:1819) exhibit the following pattern, in which oa chiastically
frames the verbs for purication (xon/o) and consecration (O;).
In purication-offering formulas, we have found that oa and xon can be
followed by nonhuman direct objects. While oa in such a context never
appears with a human direct object, in Num 19:19 the direct-object sufx
following xon refers to a person puried from corpse contamination who re-
ceives direct physical application of water containing ashes from the red cow,
which is a nxon sacrice (v. 9).
74
Unlike oa and xon, o has persons as di-
rect objects even when physical ritual actions do not come in direct contact
with them (Lev 16:30; Num 8:21). So o denotes the purication process on
a level of interpreted meaning that does not make distinctions based on the
directness or indirectness of physical activity relative to the ritual goal.
J. Gammie nds that Milgrom has failed to establish (1) that human be-
ings are not purged with the purgation offerings and (2) that every purgation
offering purges a portion of the sanctuary or sancta.
75
Gammie contends that
purication offerings purge from their sins or uncleannesses the person or
persons in whose behalf they were presented (see esp. Lev. 4:20, 26, 31, 35;
5:6).
76
I agree with Gammies overall conclusion regarding purication offer-
ings throughout the year, not including the initial decontamination of the
altar and the inner-sanctum sacrices of the Day of Atonement, which pri-
marily purge the sanctuary. However, I would take issue with two details of his
interpretation: (1) Following a traditional view, Gammie incorrectly regards
the altar in Lev 16:1819 as the altar of incense, so that there is purication
of the outer altar only at the time of its initial consecration (Exod 29:3637),
Leviticus 8:15 16:1819
oa
xon o
O; = O;
oa
74. The phrase "v xon + person(s) is not attested in the Bible.
75. J. Gammie, Holiness in Israel (OBT; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989) 39; cf. Kiu-
chi, The Purication Offering, 60, on stages in Lev 14, cited above.
76. Gammie, Holiness in Israel, 39.
Chapter 6 142
but not on the Day of Atonement.
77
(2) Gammie argues the following with re-
gard to passages such as Lev 4:15:13:
kipper takes the preposition al instead of et for a very good linguistic rea-
son, namely, to remind the reader that from which the person or thing has
been purged, namely, sin or uncleanness. Thus al is frequently followed
by min (e.g., Lev. 4:26; 5:6) and even when min is absent the very use of al
carries with it the reminder that there is a purgation from something; the
particle et would not convey this meaning. See also Lev. 12:8; 14:19.
78
The phrase "v oa could serve as a reminder that something is removed
only because it serves as the functional equivalent of a longer version of the
formula in which o carries a privative sense. It is the presence or implied
presence of o, not a difference between "v and nx, that is the determining
factor.
Gammie concludes with a fascinating observation, which tracks with my
earlier remarks to the effect that some interpretations rejected by Milgrom ac-
tually provide strong support for aspects of his overall understanding of the
purication offering.
Under Milgroms view the slate was constantly being wiped clean, so to
speak, with every sin offering. Under the view argued above, the sanctuary
for the priestly writers was far more a portrait of Dorian Gray than Mil-
groms own theory would allow. The sin offerings purged the people from
their sins, but only the sin offerings once a year on the Day of Atonement
purged the tent of meeting and only the sin offerings at ordination purged
the outer altar. Thus we may conclude: Sanctuary and sancta indeed re-
ected the state of the peoples sinfulness precisely because the uncleannesses
that the former accrued were not removed at every aat offering.
79
Conclusion
I agree with Milgrom that the nxon sacrices at the intitial consecration
of the altar (Exod 29; Lev 8) and on the Day of Atonement (Exod 30:10; Lev
16) have the function of purging the sanctuary and its sancta on behalf of
their offerers. But controlled syntactic analysis of the oa formulas that state
the goals/functions/meanings of the various kinds of purication offerings
has forced me to the inescapable conclusion that all other purication offer-
ings (discounting the ritual of Azazels goat, which is not an offering) remove
evil from their offerer(s), rather than from the sanctuary, as Milgrom claims.
77. Ibid., 3941.
78. Ibid., 40 n. 61.
79. Ibid., 41.
In subsequent chapters we will nd reinforcements for this conclusion, the
implications of which reach to the core of the dynamic meaning behind the
Israelite sacricial system. Regarding the relative positions of Milgrom, Kiu-
chi, and Gammie, I am in basic agreement with Gammie, and I am in some
respects between Kiuchi and Milgrom.
144
Chapter 7
Pollution of the Sanctuary:
Aerial or Only by Direct Contact?
How does the sanctuary become contaminated so that it must be purged
(nx/"v oa) on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:1618, 20, 27, 3233)? Our
analysis of prepositions and objects following oa (ch. 6 of the present work)
both points to this question and narrows the range of solutions.
Some serious moral faults pollute the sanctuary from a distance
when they are committed
In Lev 20:3 and Num 19:13, 20 (cf. Lev 15:31), where evils pollute the
sanctuary from a distance when they are committed, J. Milgrom has found
his answer to the question of how the sanctuary becomes polluted. Leviticus
20:3 presents Gods reaction to a person who gives any of his children to the
deity Molek: And I myself will set my face against that man and cut him off
from among his people, because he dedicated his offspring to Molek, thus
deling my sanctuary and desecrating my holy name (emphasis mine).
1
Numbers 19:13 expresses the results of disobeying Yhwhs command to
have oneself puried from corpse contamination:
Whoever touches a corpse, the body of a person who has died, and does
not cleanse himself, deles the Lords Tabernacle; that person shall be cut
off from Israel. Since the water of lustration was not dashed on him, he re-
mains unclean; his uncleanness is still upon him. (njpsv; cf. v. 20; empha-
sis mine)
Here the evil that deles the sanctuary when it occurs is not the physical rit-
ual impurity of corpse contamination itself
2
but the moral fault of wantonly
neglecting to remedy the impurity. Incurring the ritual impurity of corpse
contamination is not a sin except for priests and Nazirites (Lev 21:14, 11;
1299, except that I have added to Molek ("o" ), which was somehow left out.
2. Contra B. Levine, Numbers 120 (AB 4; New York: Doubleday, 1993) 457.
Pollution: Aerial or Only by Direct Contact? 145
Num 6:67).
3
But neglecting purication when Yhwh requires it constitutes
disobedience. This is no mere inadvertence expiable by a purication offer-
ing; as in Lev 20:3 the individual is cut off (nipal of na) from Israel, that
is, he/she suffers the divine penalty of extirpation.
4
Compare Lev 15:31,
where neglect to be separated from genital impurity through the ritual proce-
dures prescribed in ch. 15 carries the penalty of death for delement of the
sanctuary, apparently including delement from a distance.
As recognized by Milgrom and N. Kiuchi, in Num 19:13 and 20 the
sanctuary is not deled unless a corpse-contaminated person commits the
serious sin of wanton neglect to undergo purication.
5
Although the hu-
man corpse is a powerful source of impurity,
6
there is no indication that
corpse contamination by itself deles the sanctuary albeit to a lesser degree
than wanton neglect. Only if a person fails to avail himself/herself of the rit-
ual remedy does the condemnation of extirpation fall for failure to obey
Yhwhs command regarding decontamination. So in this case delement of
the sanctuary is a delayed reaction. There is no delayed reaction in Lev
20:3, however, because Molech worship is a sin of commission rather than
neglect.
3. Compare Num 6:11, where a Nazirite has sinned (xon) inadvertently by incur-
ring corpse contamination through circumstances out of his control when someone
suddenly died in close proximity to him (cf. v. 9). Here performance of a purication
offering and a burnt offering provide oa (v. 11), but this is not to purify the Nazirites
physical ritual impurity from him (cf. N. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering in the
Priestly Literature: Its Meaning and Function [JSOTSup 56; Shefeld: JSOT Press,
1987] 55) or to purge this evil from the sanctuary (contra J. Milgrom, Cult and Con-
science: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance [SJLA 18; Leiden: Brill,
1976] 127; idem, Numbers [JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1990] 47). Nor does the physical ritual impurity itself constitute a kind of sin,
an idea that blurs the distinction between the two categories (contra Kiuchi, The Puri-
cation Offering, 55; cf. A. Rodrguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus [AUSDS 3;
Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979] 104). Rather, the Nazirite
has committed a moral fault by violating Yhwhs command not to incur corpse con-
tamination (cf. vv. 67). True, he did not intend to violate the command, but it was a
violation nonetheless. As a nondeant fault, it is expiable by sacrice.
4. Cf. D. Wold, The Meaning of the Biblical Penalty Kareth (Ph.D. diss., Univer-
sity of California at Berkeley, 1978) 25155; cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New
York: Doubleday, 1991) 45760; idem, Leviticus 1722, 142021, 172930, 173334. In
Lev 20:23 the Molek worshiper incurs two terminal punishments: na in addition to
death by stoning (vv. 23). So na goes beyond death by stoning.
5. J. Milgrom, The Paradox of the Red Cow (Num. XIX), VT 31 (1981) 71;
Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 124.
Chapter 7 146
While I agree with N. Kiuchi that the sevenfold sprinkling of blood from
the red cow toward the sanctuary (Num 19:4) has to do with purication
rather than consecration,
7
his idea that this can be viewed as an indirect way
of purifying the Tent
8
does not follow. The red cow ritual, including the
sevenfold sprinkling, could not purify the sanctuary even indirectly, whatever
that means. The reason is that delement from a corpse would not affect the
sanctuary unless the decontamination rite were not performed, a circum-
stance punishable by extirpation (na), for which there is no ritual remedy
(see further below).
Like a corpse-contaminated person, an individual who has committed an
expiable moral fault has an opportunity to utilize the appropriate ritual remedy
and thereby escape the condemnation that is otherwise inevitable (e.g., Lev
45). However, if a sinner who is aware of his sin wantonly neglects to bring
the proper sacrice, he continues to bear his culpability (\v xO:; cf. Lev 5:1)
and presumably the penalty would be terminal, as in Num 19:13 and 20.
9
By
analogy it appears that such wanton neglect in a case of expiable sin would
dele the sanctuary when it occurred, as in a case of corpse contamination,
but the biblical text does not say this.
H. Maccoby attempts to qualify the requirement for purication from
corpse contamination: Only before entering the Temple was it imperative for
the average person to perform the sprinklings which puried from corpse-
impurity.
10
This agrees with his view of the purity code as a kind of palace
protocol or etiquette, observed in the court of a monarch, but not required out-
side the connes of the palace.
11
Maccoby admits that there might be some
urgency even away from the sanctuary in cases of major impurity: a leper had
to expedite his purication so that he might return to the community, and a
pelvic discharger so that he (she) might resume normal intercourse.
12
It is true that the sanctuary was the palace of Yhwh and that in signicant
respects its protocol could be compared with that of a palace belonging to a
8. Ibid., 124.
9. Cf. B. Schwartz: Since no penalty is ever spoken of along with bearing sin
other than death (by divine or human agency) and karet (always a divine punishment),
it must be that sin-bearing, unremedied, may lead to death (The Bearing of Sin in
the Priestly Literature, in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish,
and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom [ed. D. Wright,
D. N. Freedman, and A. Hurvitz; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995] 13).
10. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 27; cf. 170.
11. Ibid., 9, 206.
12. Ibid., 170.
human king. It is also true that the primary relevance of impurities was the
necessity to keep them separate from the holy realm (see, e.g., Lev 7:2021;
12:4). But Maccobys assumption that ordinary Israelites were required to pu-
rify themselves only when they were about to contact sacred areas or objects
is not in the biblical text.
13
The community dened in relation to Yhwhs
sanctuary/temple was to observe distinctions between the pure and the im-
purenot that life outside the sacred precincts could be totally pure at all
times, but apparently so that the people would treat purity as the state of equi-
librium compatible with the nature of the holy deity residing among them.
In Lev 15:31 obedience to Gods instructions regarding ritual impurities is
a serious matter: You shall set apart the Israelites from their impurity, lest
they die through their impurity by polluting my Tabernacle which is among
them.
14
D. Hoffmann interpreted this to mean that only an impure person
who enters the sacred precincts is condemned to death.
15
Similarly, since Lev
15:31 refers to death rather than extirpation, H. C. Brichto suggests that the
verse anticipates death as a possible risk incurred by deling the sancta by
making contact with them in a state of impurity.
16
However, Kiuchi rightly
challenges as unnecessary the assumption that death results from actual entry
of the impure person into the sanctuary.
17
How do persons in the above cases pollute the sanctuary? Simply by dis-
obeying Gods cultic commandments, either by (apparently wanton) neglect
of the purity rule that protects the holy realm from corpse contamination
(Num 19:13, 20) or by participation in an alternate worship system that hon-
ors another deity, such as Molek, at the expense of their children (Lev 20:3).
Ezekiel 23:3739 speaks of the temples delement when wanton sinners
come there to worship Yhwh, thereby adding hypocrisy and direct pollution
of the sanctuary to their sins (cf. Jer 7:911, 3031). But there is no indication
in Lev 15:31; 20:3; Num 19:13 and 20 that delement of the sanctuary occurs
13. Maccobys view raises problems, such as the rationale for purication of an im-
mobile leprous house (Lev 14:3353), unless it is assumed that something sacred
would be brought into the house.
Kiuchi argues that in this verse, as in Num 19:13, 20, pollution of the sanctuary is
caused by failure to observe the purity laws rather than by contraction of the physical
ritual impurity itself (Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 6162).
15. D. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus (Berlin: Poppelauer, 19056) 430. Hoffmann
connected Lev 15:31 with the warning in 16:2 regarding the high priests entrance into
the holy of holies (cf. p. 433).
16. H. C. Brichto, On Slaughter and Sacrice, Blood and Atonement, HUCA 47
(1976) 33.
Chapter 7 148
only if wrongdoers physically enter the sacred precincts, whether during or
after the time when they commit their sins.
18
In Lev 20:3 and Num 19:13 and 20 the offenders are cut off (na) because
(a; Num 19:20) thus/thereby (vo"; Lev 20:3) they have deled (piel pf. of
xoo; Num 19:13, 20) the sanctuary. The effect is simultaneous with the
cause.
19
It is this effect on the sanctuary, which does not depend on the sin-
ners direct contact with sacred places or things, for which he/she receives
punishment.
If deling the sanctuary depended on going there, a person neglecting pu-
rication could avoid extirpation simply by staying away. But the teeth of
the law reach further: punishment for delement of the sanctuary resulting
from neglect is inevitable, implying that such neglect inevitably deles the
sanctuary.
We must remember that we are investigating the world of ritual. In the
material realm, an object or person is necessarily moved from point A to
point B and then from point B to point C, and so on. But the genius of rit-
ual is that it can involve human interaction with transcendent or non-
material entities such as God, sins, and ritual impurities, which are not
subject to mundane material constraints. This stretches our imagination,
even in our modern technological age. Although we have telephones, ra-
dios, television, and now the Internet, human physical contamination can-
not be instantly transmitted in this way. Your computer may contract a
devastating digital virus spawned halfway around the world, but your
body cannot even catch a minor cold when you talk to a sick person on the
telephone.
If we entertain the possibility that the real point of ritual is not physical
movements but changes in relationships between parties and other entities
belonging to the mundane and supramundane realms, we can nd analo-
gies for instantaneous transfers. For example, when members of President
Reagans government engaged in illegal Iran-Contra activities, they simul-
taneously created a problem for Reagans reputation. Similarly, a Molek
18. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 25758; cf. idem, Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly
Picture of Dorian Gray, RB 83 (1976) 394; idem, The Graduated aat of Leviti-
cus 5:113, JAOS 103 (1983) 251; D. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination
Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (SBLDS 101; Atlanta:
Scholars, 1987) 19 n. 10; Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 6162.
19. It appears that the Qumran community made an additional application of
this principle: sexual intercourse with a menstruating woman pollutes the temple
(CD 5:6).
worshiper in the land of Israel would automatically, by his very actions, cast
the divine ruler of his land into disrepute.
In defending the rabbinic understanding of Num 19:13, according to
which a corpse-contaminated individual deles the sacred precincts only if he
or she enters it without proper purication (t. Sebu. 1.8; cf. Rashi on Num
19:13),
20
Maccoby does not see why the Torah should prohibit entrance into
the sanctuary/temple in an unclean state (Lev 12:4) if impurity behaves as Mil-
grom postulates (Since impurity acts at a distance, it is just as offensive to be
impure outside the Temple as in it).
21
Milgrom responds that deliberate con-
tact with holy things in the sacred precincts while in a state of impurity results
in immediate death by divine or human agency (Lev 10:13; Num 18:17)
rather than the delayed penalty of extirpation incurred for such contact out-
side the sanctuary (Lev 7:20, 21).
22
I must agree with Milgrom that there is a great difference between having
a state of impurity inside the sanctuary versus outside it. The former necessar-
ily brings impurity into direct contact with the sacred; the latter does not.
There is no punishment simply for being impure outside the sanctuary. Even
though sacrices are required for purication from severe physical impurity,
this is not punishment for wrongdoing and the cost is far less than death or ex-
tirpation, indicating a much lower degree of offensiveness to Yhwh.
Related to the rabbinic view of Maccoby is that of G. Wenham: Thus the
death of someone in the camp could pollute all those in it, and this would
dele the tabernacle of the Lord (13, 20) unless preventive measures were
taken.
23
Presumably Wenham means that the contamination would spread
through the camp by physical contact and sooner or later an affected person
would unknowingly contaminate the sanctuary. But the text does not hint at
such an indirect effect on the sanctuary. Milgroms conclusion with regard to
Lev 20:3 and Num 19:13, 20 remains unrefuted: sins pollute the sanctuary
from a distance when they are committed.
Maccoby justies inclusion of the rabbinic qualication that in Num
19:13 the corpse-contaminated person deles the sanctuary only if he should
20. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 167. This view is also accepted by A. Rodrguez,
Transfer of Sin in Leviticus, in The Seventy Weeks, Leviticus, and the Nature of
Prophecy (ed. F. Holbrook; DARCOM 3; Washington, D.C.: Biblical Research Insti-
tute, 1986) 169, 17376.
21. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 170.
22. J. Milgrom, Impurity Is Miasma: A Response to Hyam Maccoby, JBL 119
(2000) 731.
23. G. Wenham, Numbers: An Introduction and Commentary (TOTC: Leicester:
Inter-Varsity, 1981) 145.
Chapter 7 150
enter it, which Milgrom rejects, by referring to other biblical passages in
which Milgrom allows for ellipses.
24
But Milgrom counters that the principle
of ellipsis is dangerous if applied indiscriminately to make arguments from
silence. He demonstrates that purported ellipses are not created equal but
must be considered on a case by case basis and can be accepted as genuine
only if they are either derivable from the text or are eshed out elsewhere,
which Maccobys 19:13 ellipsis is not.
25
Because Maccoby contends that sin with regard to impurity is incurred
only when a person who knows himself to be impure enters sacred areas or
comes in contact with sacred foods (see above), he concludes with regard to
other circumstances: Even to remain in a state of impurity is not a sin.
26
So
he regards Milgroms idea that impurity grows to become sinful if purication
is delayed as an eisegetical assumption of an ellipsis: if purication is de-
layed.
27
Milgrom effectively counters that the principle of delay is derived
from the text: Lev 5:23 and 613 require a graduated (= rabbinic ascend-
ing and descending) nxon sacrice for minor impurities, which ordinarily
need no sacricial remedy, implying a delay between initial contraction of
the impurity and the time when the Israelites awareness of it reawakens.
28
In
17:16 there is serious culpability for neglecting to purify oneself from the mi-
nor impurity of eating from a carcass. Why? Not because he might enter the
sanctuary while impure. His very neglect to purify himself is sinful and pun-
ishable. The only possible reason, I submit, is that his minor impurity will be-
come major and pollute the sanctuary.
29
At this point we must be careful to avoid confusing the categories of physi-
cal ritual impurity and sin. Milgroms theory that delayed purication of
physical ritual impurities causes/allows them to become major impurities
could be taken to assume quantitative growth of the same impurities. But he
recognizes that in Lev 5 the graduated purication offering is for the inadvert-
ent (and therefore expiable) disobedience of neglecting purication,
30
as
shown by the fact that it effects purgation with regard to the sin that the per-
son has committed (emphasized by xon Ox, that he has sinned/commit-
ted), prerequisite to forgiveness (vv. 6, 10, 13), rather than from physical
25. Milgrom, Impurity Is Miasma, 72930.
26. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 38, cf. 172, 174.
27. Ibid., 174; cf. 18991.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 731.
impurity so that he/she becomes pure (cf. 12:78; 15:15, 30). So the growth of
impurity during delay is not simply quantitative; it involves a qualitative trans-
formation from physical ritual impurity to moral fault.
Milgroms miasma theory is based on his general theory
of the tafj sacrice, which generalizes from specic cases
of automatic delement
Generalizing from the special cases of cultic sin in Lev 20:3 and Num
19:13 and 20, Milgrom deduces that other kinds of imperfections, including
expiable inadvertencies and some serious physical impurities, always dele
the sanctuary when they occur.
31
Integrating this concept with the gradation
of locations in which purication-offering blood is applied to the sanctuary
outer altar, outer sanctum, and inner sanctumhe concludes that the more
serious the sin, the deeper it penetrates into the sanctuary, where its pollution
must subsequently be remedied by nxon blood applied to the same loca-
tions.
32
This accords with his conclusion regarding oa with prepositions or
direct objects: purication offerings always purge components of the sanctu-
ary to which their blood is physically applied. Thus Milgrom crystallizes his
general theory of the nxon sacrice:
The dynamic, aerial quality of biblical impurity is best attested by its
graded power. Impurity pollutes the sanctuary in three stages: (1) The in-
dividuals inadvertent misdemeanor or severe physical impurity pollutes
the courtyard altar, which is purged by daubing its horns with the aat
blood (4:25, 30; 9:9). (2) The inadvertent misdemeanor of the high priest
or the entire community pollutes the shrine, which is purged by the high
priest by placing the aat blood on the inner altar and before the pa-
roket (4:57, 1618). (3) The wanton unrepented sin not only pollutes the
outer altar and penetrates into the shrine but it pierces the veil and enters
the adytum, housing the holy Ark and kapporet, the very throne of God
(cf. Isa 37:16). Because the wanton sinner is barred from bringing his
31. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 25658; idem, Israels Sanctuary, 39294; interest-
ingly, long ago A. F. Ballenger reached the same conclusion with regard to expiable
sins by generalizing from the same passages (Cast Out for the Cross of Christ [River-
side, California: A. F. Ballenger, 1911?] 5862).
32. In Two Kinds of aat, VT 26 (1976) 336, Milgrom explains the difference
between eaten and burnt nxon sacrices in terms of degrees of purgation. The sacri-
ce that is eaten by the ofciating priest purges only the outer altar after it is affected
by a minimal incursion of impurity caused by the inadvertentent fault of an individ-
ual. But the burnt purication offering removes dangerously contagious impurity that
has penetrated into the outer sanctum and adytum. Because the carcass may be in-
fected during the process of purgation, it cannot be eaten by the priest.
Chapter 7 152
aat (Num 15:2731), the pollution wrought by his offense must await
the annual purgation of the sanctuary on the Day of Purgation, and it con-
sists of two steps: the purging of the adytum of the wanton sins and the
purging of the shrine and outer altar of the inadvertent sins (Lev 16:1619).
Thus the entire sacred area or, more precisely, all that is most sacred . . . is
purged on Purgation Day (ym hakkippurm) with the aat blood.
In this way the graded purgations of the sanctuary lead to the conclusion
that the severity of the sin or impurity varies in direct relation to the depth
of its penetration into the sanctuary.
33
I agree that moral faults have a deling effect that must be removed and that
this pollution affects the sanctuary.
34
Even H. Maccoby, who argues that rit-
ual is about holiness, not about morality, acknowledges: yet it is also about
morality at a second remove, for holiness is for the sake of morality.
35
With
Milgrom, I would contend that holiness and morality are more integrally con-
nected because morality is part of holiness and some Israelite rituals are about
morality.
36
According to Milgrom, three sources of severe ritual impurity automati-
cally (i.e., apart from human will) generate impurity that affects the sanctu-
ary aerially as a kind of miasma (i.e., from a distance without direct
contact): the parturient (Lev 12), the person with an abnormal genital dis-
charge (ch. 15), and the scaly-skin diseased (so-called leprous) person (chs.
1314). Milgroms conclusion that these sources automatically generate mi-
asma is based on his general purication-offering theory, according to which
pollution of the sanctuary has already taken place whenever the nxon sacri-
ce is prescribed.
37
Since purication offerings at the sanctuary are normally
required to remedy these three impurities, even though no sin of neglect is
involved, Milgrom concludes that these physical impurities themselves pol-
lute the sanctuary.
Milgrom regards the corpse-contaminated person as a bearer of weaker im-
purity than the sources of automatic miasma because the former is not
obliged to offer a purication offering at the sanctuary.
38
It makes sense that
corpse contamination is weaker because, unlike the other cases of major im-
purity, it is secondary. The primary source is the corpse itself, which is dead,
33. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 257; cf. idem, Israels Sanctuary, 393.
34. Against Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 171, 176, 19192.
35. Ibid., 204; cf. 205.
36. See, for example, J. Milgrom, Leviticus 2327 (AB 3B; New York: Doubleday,
2001) 244046.
38. Idem, The Paradox of the Red Cow, 7172; idem, Numbers, 443.
and thus only deles within an enclosed space (Num 19:1415; cf. v. 18), so
that it does not threaten the sanctuary.
39
Milgrom concludes:
Only live humans generate unbounded miasma. The miasma is created
not through magic, but by disobedience. Either the person violates (even
inadvertently) any of the divine commandments . . . or he refuses or ne-
glects to undergo purication (e.g., 5:213; Num 19:13, 20). Only if he
himself is the source of severe (ritual) impurity (e.g., bearing certain genital
or skin diseases) do we nd a residue of automatically generated miasma.
Otherwise, it is only the product of the human will.
40
While corpse contamination carried by living persons is secondary, its
power should not be underestimated.
41
For one thing, it is only in connection
with corpse contamination that purication procedures necessitate a prior
nxon sacrice (the red cow to provide ashes) performed outside the camp
(Num 19:110a), which suggests caution to keep this kind of delement away
from the sanctuary.
42
Furthermore, it is precisely here that automatic dele-
ment is attested in connection with treatment of a specic kind of physical rit-
ual impurity (vv. 13, 20).
Also based on Milgroms general nxon theory is his deduction that, while
Lev 17:16 does not say that the bearing of culpability for neglecting to purify
oneself from the impurity of eating from a carcass is due to pollution of the
sanctuary from a distance, it may be assumed on the basis of Num 19:13 and
20, where this mode of contamination is explicit.
43
However, in order to
39. Idem, Impurity Is Miasma, 731; see now idem, Leviticus 2327, 2460.
40. Ibid.
41. T. Frymer-Kensky emphasizes the extreme severity of corpse contamination,
which brought a person in contact with the world of death (Pollution, Purication,
and Purgation in Biblical Israel, in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth [ed. C. L.
Meyers and M. OConnor; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1983] 399400.
Cf. D. Wright on Num 19:13, 20: Since corpse contamination does not normally
pollute the sanctuary, one might think the sanctuary pollution here is on a par with
the sanctuary pollution that is caused by inadvertently delayed non-sacricial impu-
rities according to the implications of Lev. 5.23that is, that the outer altar of the
sanctuary is what is polluted. But the rhetoric of Num. 19.13, 20 is much stronger
than that in Lev. 5.23 and hints that a greater pollution occurs (The Spectrum
of Priestly Impurity, in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel [ed. G. A. Anderson
and Saul M. Olyan; JSOTSup 125; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1991] 161). On the rab-
binic view of the corpse as the Father of Fathers of Impurity, see H. Harrington,
The Impurity Systems of Qumran and the Rabbis: Biblical Foundations (SBLDS
143; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993) 14750.
Theology (JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990) 196, 199.
Chapter 7 154
control the transfer of information from Num 19 to Lev 17, it is appropriate to
ask the question: does Lev 17 have to do with the same kind of pollution as
Num 19? It is true that both are delayed physical ritual impurities, but the
former is initially a minor, one-day impurity (Lev 17:15), and the latter is ini-
tially a major, seven-day impurity (Num 19:1112, 14, 16, 19). The fact that
pollution of the sanctuary at a distance is only mentioned in connection with
the initially severe case of corpse contamination means that assuming this dy-
namic in the initially minor case of Lev 17 is to argue on shaky ground be-
cause it is the reverse of a fortiori reasoning. But Milgrom has another
argument left: In Lev 17:16 the impurity for which purication is delayed has
become sinful and dangerous, which shows that it has grown into a form that
pollutes the sanctuary from a distance as miasma.
44
How does he know this?
Because according to his foundational general nxon theory, all sins pollute
the sanctuary in this way.
Only inner-sanctum purication offerings on the Day of
Atonement can remove automatic delement
Milgrom holds that all purication offerings throughout the year remove
pollution that has already reached the sanctuary automatically/aerially at
the time when a sin or severe ritual impurity occurred. However, this dy-
namic of delement is attested only in certain kinds of serious cultic offenses:
Molek worship and non-indadvertent neglect to undergo purication from
severe physical ritual impurity. The penalties for these offenses are terminal,
whether extirpation (Lev 20:3; Num 19:13, 20) or death (Lev 15:31).
45
Fol-
lowing condemnation to such punishment, no sacricial expiation prereq-
uisite to forgiveness is available to benet the individual offender, even
though contamination of the sanctuary must be removed by the special pu-
rication offerings on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:16). It is true that these
inner-sanctum sacrices purge the sanctuary on behalf of the priestly and
lay communities. However, contrary to ubiquitous misconception, no cor-
porate or individual forgiveness (n"o) is attested in the Bible as a goal of the
Day of Atonement rituals (see ch. 10 of the present volume).
The fact that automatic delement and sacricial expiation beneting the
sinner are mutually exclusive rules out importation of the former into pas-
44. Ibid., 730.
45. Rodrguez, Transfer of Sin, 105 n. 1. On the seriousness of such cases, see
D. Wright, Two Types of Impurity in the Priestly Writings of the Bible, Koroth 9
(1988) 186; idem, The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity, 16163.
sages such as Lev 45, 1215 to explain how the sanctuary becomes deled in
connection with purication offerings for expiable inadvertent offenses or
severe physical ritual impurities. The fact that automatic delement does not
operate in cases of sin or impurity for which the sinner or impure person can
receive the benet of oa excludes this dynamic from all cases remedied by
purication offerings performed on days other than the Day of Atonement.
In Lev 15:31 and Num 19:13 and 20, punishable delement of the sanctu-
ary occurs only when physical ritual impurity is not handled properlythat
is, when there is a sin with regard to this impurity. Therefore, there is no clear
evidence for automatic delement of the sanctuary by any kind of physical
ritual impurity itself.
46
My conclusion regarding automatic delement is conrmed by the puri-
cation-offering formulas analyzed in the previous chapter (ch. 6) of this book:
outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings purge (oa) evils from
(privative o) their offerers, rather than from the sanctuary. So in these kinds
of cases, moral faults or physical ritual impurities could not have affected the
sanctuary from a distance when they occurred. Following the initial conse-
cration of the sanctuary, only the inner-sanctum sacrices of the Day of
Atonement, which purge the sanctuary, could remedy automatic delement.
So although the tripartite gradation of Milgroms general nxon theory (see
above) is neat and symmetrical, the rst two gradations (outer altar and outer
sanctum polluted automatically by expiable inadvertent faults) do not work.
I agree with Maccoby that the purpose of purication offerings for sin
throughout the year is to expiate the sin of the offerer as part of a process of
atonement or reconciliation with God
47
rather than to cleanse the sanctu-
ary. In the next chapter (ch. 8), I will also agree with him that the cleansing
of the sanctuary includes removal of delement that has affected it through
the operation of the sacricial services themselves.
48
But I do not restrict the
mode of the sanctuarys pollution in Num 19:13 and 20, as Maccoby does, to
the knowing or unknowing entrance of impure priests or lay Israelites into the
sacred precincts.
49
Leviticus 20:3 and Num 19:13 and 20 deal with dele-
ment of the sanctuary when certain serious cultic sins occur. However, there
46. With Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 6162.
47. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 171; cf. 17880, 192.
48. Ibid., 180.
49. Ibid. Interestingly, according to m. ag. 3:78, which Maccoby cites (pp. 187
88), contamination of movable Second Temple vessels by direct contact was removed
by immersion in water (cf. Lev 6:21[28]; 11:32; 15:12, 17; Num 31:23) rather than by
the blood of purication offerings.
Chapter 7 156
is no contradiction with the formulas of outer-altar and outer-sanctum puri-
cation offerings because these formulas do not apply in Lev 20:3 and Num
19:13 and 20. Here the wrongdoers are simply condemned to extirpation
(na), with no possibility of receiving the benet of sacricial expiation. Nei-
ther do such formulas apply to Lev 17:16, where the person who neglects pu-
rication simply bears his culpability (\:\v xO:\ ), which would presumably
lead to terminal punishment (see above). So if we were to establish a con-
nection between Num 19:13 and 20 and Lev 17:16 in order to argue with
Milgrom for automatic transfer of evil in the latter (see above), it would be
on the basis that both deal with inexpiable offenses.
The bottom line is that I continue to agree with Milgrom that Lev 20:3
and Num 19:13 and 20 involve some kind of automatic dynamic. My differ-
ences with him concern the mode of the sanctuarys delement by evils that
are expiated by outer-altar and outer-sanctum nxon sacrices.
Whether Milgrom continues to agree with himself is another question. In
his recently released Leviticus 1722 commentary, he now shows surprising
ambivalence concerning the idea of pollution from afar in Lev 20:3:
Whereas physical impurity in P pollutes the sanctuary from afar (vol.
1.25461), Hs metaphoric impurity apparently pollutes only by direct
contact. This can be deduced from the fact that the land can be polluted
only by those living in it. To be sure, the worship of Molek pollutes the
sanctuary (20:3), ostensibly from afar, but Ezek 23:29 [sic 23:39] relates
that Molek devotees (in the Valley of Hinnom below the Temple) would
also worship in the Temple on the same day and thereby pollute by direct
contact.
50
To complicate matters further, while Milgrom has continued to defend aerial
miasma in Num 19:13 and 20 against Maccoby (see above), he agrees with
I. Knohl that v. 13 probably belongs to H, although he does not nd adequate
evidence for Knohls opinion that v. 20, where the terminology is somewhat
different, should also be attributed to H.
51
In Leviticus 1722 Milgrom re-
gards Lev 15:31, regarding the physical ritual impurity of genital discharges,
as Ps only explicit statement that evil pollutes the sanctuary.
52
However,
earlier in the same volume he attributes this verse to H, again with Knohl.
53
If Lev 15:31; 20:3; and Num 19:13 go to H, and if Hs metaphoric impurity
50. Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1353; cf. 1374, 137980, and esp. 173435.
51. Ibid., 1344; cf. I. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the
Holiness School (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 9394, 105.
53. Ibid., 1343; cf. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence, 6970, 105.
apparently deles only by direct contact, Milgrom is left with Num 19:20 as
unambiguous evidence for his miasma idea.
Without entering the debate with respect to attribution of material to P or
H, I note that Lev 16:16 strongly implies support for the existence of one kind
of pollution that affects the sanctuary from a distance. It is called vOo, usually
translated transgression. In pentateuchal ritual law, this term appears only
in 16:16 and 21, where the transgressions of the Israelites are purged from
the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement by inner-sanctum purication offer-
ings and from the camp by the ritual of Azazels goat. In ch. 13 we will pursue
the trajectories of the various categories of evil, but here it sufces to ask rhe-
torically: How did the transgressions get to the sanctuary if not in the
aerial manner indicated by the plain sense of Lev 20:3; Num 19:13 and 20?
By plain sense I mean: without importing assumptions from sources such as
Ezekiel.
P. Jenson recognizes that Milgroms immediate delement may apply to
some kinds of cases but not others, and Kiuchi may also be correct that the
sanctuary is contaminated when a person comes there to be puried. Jenson
suggests: It may be that Milgrom is right for general corporate contexts
(e.g., Lev. 15.31), whereas Kiuchi is right for the ritual response to individ-
ual impurity.
54
While I think Jensons idea is potentially productive, the corporate versus
individual distinction here can be misleading because Lev 15:31 undoubt-
edly also refers to the obligation of individuals to be puried when necessary.
Moreover, 20:3 and Num 19:13 and 20 address individual sins that are explic-
itly said to dele the sanctuary, that is, simply by their commission. Neverthe-
less, the corporate/individual distinction could hold up in the sense that all
sins for which individual expiation at the sanctuary is allowed dele the sanc-
tuary when that ritual remedy is performed (with Kiuchi), but sins that are in-
expiable on the individual level and thus can be ritually dealt with only by
corporate removal from the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement dele the
sanctuary when the sin is committed (with Milgrom).
55
(JSOTSup 106; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1992) 157 n. 2, referring to Kiuchi, The Puri-
cation Offering, 61.
55. Outside the corpus of pentateuchal ritual texts, Jeremiah describes the effect of
idolatrous sins perpetrated by Judah:
The guilt (nxon) of Judah is inscribed
With a stylus of iron,
Engraved with an adamant point
On the tablet of their hearts,
And on the horns of their altars. (Jer 17:1; njpsv).
Chapter 7 158
Automatic delement is nonmaterial in nature
As an alternative to Milgroms miasma approach, Maccoby offers the fol-
lowing possibility:
if, at one time, the whole camp (not just the sanctuary) was regarded as
holy, then it is understandable that, when this view was reigning, to remain
in a state of impurity was regarded as undesirable. Even minor impurities
would need to be washed off quickly, not because such delayed impurities
accumulated and formed a miasma that ew through the air until it
reached the sanctuary, but because they polluted a holy area (the camp)
just by staying where they were.
56
The fact is that the Pentateuch simply does not specify the way in which the
serious cultic offenses of dedication to Molek and neglect to purify from
corpse contamination are transferred to the sanctuary. This gap in our knowl-
edge need not trouble us, however, because we are dealing with the world of
ritual, which is not limited by constraints operating in the mundane material
sphere.
That Israelite rituals are not bound by mundane rules of physical cause
and effect is conrmed by other examples:
1. In Num 19:1415, persons and open vessels in a tent where someone
has died become unclean, whether or not they directly contact the
corpse.
57
56. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 186; compare A. Bchler, who held with regard
to Num 19:20 that the mere presence of the corpse-contaminated individual in Gods
camp deles the sanctuary (Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of
the First Century [LBS; New York: KTAV, 1967] 265).
57. While Maccoby rejects Milgroms miasma theory in Num 19:13 and 20 and
elsewhere, he acknowledges communication of corpse impurity at some distance
through empty space by the tent principlethat is, being present in the same en-
closed space (Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 4, 67, 16, 2022, 3233, 14148). Mac-
coby also points out that delement by carrying an object that has been under a
person with a pelvic discharge (Lev 15:10), regarded by the rabbis as applying a forti-
ori in cases of corpse impurity, can occur even without direct contact (pp. 78).
At rst glance this could be taken to mean that according to Jeremiah idolatry in gen-
eral, without restriction to Molek worship, pollutes the horns of the altar. However,
apart from the fact that this is a prophetic metaphorical expression rather than a goal
formula of a ritual text, it is their altars that are polluted, rather than Yhwhs legiti-
mate altar belonging to the centralized cult of the temple in Jerusalem. Nevertheless,
this passage is interesting in that it suggests Jeremiahs awareness of correspondence
between the peoples moral condition and the ritual state of cultic objects, to which
Milgrom has eloquently drawn our attention (Israels Sanctuary, 39798; Leviticus
116, 260; cf. 288 on Jer 17:1).
2. Uncleannesses (nx oo) of the Israelites must be purged from the
inner and outer sanctums on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:16), even
though purication offerings for physical ritual impurities throughout
the year only involve the outer altar.
3. On the Day of Atonement, applying blood of inner-sanctum
purication offerings to limited parts of each sanctum and of the outer
altar (Lev 16:1419) cleanses the entire tripartite sanctuary (vv. 20, 33).
4. Carcasses of inner-sanctum purication offerings, which are never
brought in direct contact with the sanctuarys pollution inside the
Tent or on the outer altar, are nevertheless polluted by the sanctuarys
delement and so contaminate those who dispose of them (Lev
16:2728).
5. Those who participate in the burning of the red cow become ritually
impure even though its ashes only contact corpse contamination at a
later time (Num 19).
6. A scale-diseased (so-called leprous) house contaminates all that is
contained in it,
58
but this contamination does not take effect until the
priest inspects the house and veries that it is, in fact, ritually impure.
Anything removed from the house before that point is exempt from
delement (Lev 14:36). So, although this pollution has a physical
manifestation (cf. vv. 3435), its contagious effect on contents of the
house is legal rather than physical in nature.
59
No material change in
the contents is wrought by impurity suddenly unleashed at the moment
of the priests pronouncement. Rather, the status of the contents simply
goes with the status of the house. A partial analogy could be found in
modern real estate law, according to which movable property belonging
to a seller must be removed from his house before the close of escrow
transfers ownership of the house, and any contents thereof, to the buyer.
That dynamics such as these defy ordinary norms of cause and effect is simply
symptomatic of the fact that rituals reect a conceptual system that transcends
physical considerations. Consequently, with H. Maccoby I feel no compul-
sion to regard delement as a kind of physical substance or force, such as gas,
miasma, radiation, or electricity.
60
However, although I do not accept Mil-
groms view of Israelite impurity as a physical substance, an aerial miasma
58. For contamination within an enclosed space, compare communication of
corpse impurity by the tent principle in Num 19:1415.
59. Ibid., 12628.
60. Ibid., 1922, 169.
Chapter 7 160
that possessed magnetic attraction for the realm of the sacred,
61
I could agree
that it is quasi-physical, and his recognition of impuritys dynamic nature
helps to put us on a productive track: because the delement in question is
conceptual, it can have an effect through space in the sense that it causes a
change of state to occur at a distance.
62
Words such as miasma or ray
63
may
be helpful as metaphors for explaining to the modern mind a dynamic that
connects objects located at some distance from each other, provided it is clear
that in our ritual context they do not refer to literal physical substances subject
to physical constraints in the material world, such as the time it takes for
miasma or even radiation to spread.
64
Legal and biological approaches to sin are intertwined
in the purication-offering system
Already in Studies in Sin and Atonement, published in 1927, A. Bchler
used miasma, a Greek word for pollution, to describe an early Hebrew con-
ception of sin as a kind of deadly sickness that infects the sinner and his
whole neighborhood, creating a need for cleansing and healing.
65
This ap-
proach to sin reects the realization that sin is something deeper than an
offense at law, a breach of a regulation. . . . The sin and the sinner were iden-
tied, and must be separated. Much more drastic and positive remedies were
required than legal process could supply. It was more than the anger of an
offended deity that sin involved, or the damage done his honor that must be
offset by placating words or deeds (as in mediaeval theology).
66
Rather than attempting to separate the legal and biological/purica-
tory approaches to sin in pentateuchal ritual law by establishing that one or
the other is correct or original,
67
I see both as inextricably interwoven to-
gether. The legal aspect has quasi-biological ramications, and the biolog-
ical is at the same time legal.
62. J. Porter recognized: In the priestly theology, sin is an objective, quasi-physical
thinghence, even if committed inadvertently, its consequences cannot be avoided
and so not sharply distinguished from delement or uncleanness (Leviticus [CBC;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976] 37).
63. Ray is Maccobys suggested analogy (Ritual and Morality, 1819, 22), which
Milgrom regards as even better than his own miasma (Impurity Is Miasma, 733).
64. Cf. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 22.
65. Bchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement, xxvixxvii.
66. Ibid.; cf. xxviiixxix.
67. Bchler suggests on the basis of comparative history of religion that the earliest
conception of sin was contamination and that this preceded and underlay both the
ancient Hebrew and the ancient Greek religions (ibid., xxvi).
For example, inadvertently breaking one of Yhwhs laws (e.g., Lev 4:2, 13,
22, 27) clearly has legal implications. But the remedy is a purication offering
that purges (oa) the moral pollution from (privative o) the offerer, following
which he/she is forgiven (n"o) by Yhwh (4:20, 26, 31, 35). Also, on the Day
of Atonement, the accumulated moral faults of the Israelites are purged from
(o . . . oa) Yhwhs sanctuary, resulting in the moral purication of the
people, provided that they obey Yhwhs commandments to practice self-
denial and abstain from work (ch. 16). Perhaps the clearest symbiosis between
the legal and puricatory aspects is found in the ritual of Azazels goat: the
high priest (legally) confesses while leaning both hands on the goat, thereby
transferring the sins of Israel to it (16:21). After the goat carries away this toxic
load, the man who has come in close contact with it by leading it into the wil-
derness must purify himself (v. 26).
Since the cult uses animals and application of material substances at a
physical structure, it naturally lends itself to expression of the biological.
But the legal is also physically represented at the sanctuary, indeed in the
most revered location, in the form of law tablets encased within the ark of the
covenant (Exod 25:16, 21; 40:20).
Why should the cult treat sin with such ambivalence? Sin is a complex
phenomenon, so its effects must be addressed in a complex way. The legal
and biological are metaphors for a larger reality, in which sin affects rela-
tionships and states involving the sinner and God, Gods law, and the sinners
environment, including consequences that can occur in the physical world.
Remedies for sin address these relationships and states. It is not enough to
speak of freedom from legal condemnation on the one hand, nor does recog-
nition of physical or psychological healing sufce on the other hand. Legal
terminology in the context of relationships involved in cultic expiation refers
to, or at least implies, more than it would in the nonritual realm of human
jurisprudence. Conversely, terms of pollution, implying a kind of sickness,
refer to more than physical curses eventuating from sin. They also have to
do with the deleterious effects of human evil on divine-human relationships.
This explains why sin can pollute like miasma, but in cases such as the lep-
rous house, this pollution can behave more like a legal category than a
physical substance subject to constraints operating in the material world (see
above on Lev 14:36).
As Bchler keenly observed, expressing the remedy for sin in terms of
contamination and cleansing keeps its legal aspects from becoming lega-
listic. When Isaiah uses language of cleansing to urge for repentance and
conversion (1:1620), it is no legalistic notion of release from penalty, or
Chapter 7 162
cancellation of guilt, but something vastly deeper in human experience, and
far deeper in the history of the human race, namely cleansing within, the
resolution to sin no more, the power to cease from sinning and be accepted
before the God of all Righteousness and Goodness.
68
By bringing together the views of sin as legal wrong and sin as pollution,
the Israelite ritual system addressed not only the legal standing of Yhwhs
people but also their moral state. It showed the way not only to freedom from
condemnation, but also to development of healthy character. We will nd the
climax of this combination in observances of the Day of Atonement, which
afrmed freedom from condemnation for those of loyal character (Lev
16:2931). In the process, the great Day afrmed the just character of Israels
divine King.
Conclusion
Some cultic sins dele the sanctuary when they are committed, that is, au-
tomatically, by what could be called a metaphorical/conceptual miasma or
ray that is not subject to physical constraints (Lev 20:3; Num 19:13, 20; cf.
Lev 15:31). However, sacricial oa through outer-altar or outer-sanctum pu-
rication offerings, prerequisite to forgiveness, is not available to the offenders
in such cases. While the sanctuary and camp are cleansed of such evils on the
Day of Atonement (cf. Lev 16), the sinners themselves are condemned to ter-
minal punishment. Therefore, in harmony with our prior conclusion regard-
ing oa formulas (ch. 6 above), Milgroms theory that purication offerings
throughout the year (Lev 45, 1215, etc.) cleanse the sanctuary from evils
that function as miasma to aerially pollute it when they occur does not work.
We must look for another way that the sanctuary can be affected by expiable
sins and physical ritual impurities.
68. Ibid., xxx.
163
Chapter 8
Blood or Ash Water:
Detergent, Metaphorical Carrier
Agent, or Means of Passage?
J. Milgrom has pointed out an important correlation between the physical
activity of purication offerings and their ritual goals: purication-offering
blood is never physically applied to a person, and persons are never direct ob-
jects of the verb oa in goal formulas of purication offerings. From this he
concludes that these sacrices never purify their offerers.
1
Rather, their blood
is the ritual detergent employed by the priest to purge the sanctuary of the
impurities inicted upon it by the offerer of the sacrice.
2
In our study of the purication-offering formulas (ch. 6), we concluded
that in most instances these rituals do purify their offerers. This raises the
question: Why dont formulas of nxon sacrices that purify their offerers have
these persons as direct objects of oa in the same way that nonhuman objects
can function as direct objects (cf. Lev 16:20, 33)? Is this because purication-
offering blood is not physically applied directly to persons as it can be to non-
human objects? If so, what prevents its application to persons?
We have found that purication-offering blood purges the sanctuary only
in two exceptional cases: initial decontamination of the outer altar, prereq-
uisite to its consecration, and the inner-sanctum sacrices of the Day of
Atonement.
Another purication offering that is exceptional in terms of the function of
its blood is the red cow ritual. Although explicitly labeled a nxon (Num
19:9, 17), the entire cow is burned outside the camp, away from the sanctuary,
after the ofciating priest sprinkles some blood seven times toward the sanc-
tuary (vv. 45). If we continue to identify purication-offering paradigms ac-
cording to the loci of their blood applications, this is an outside the camp
purication offering. The ashes of the cow, which include the rest of the
1. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 25556; cf. idem,
Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray, RB 83 (1976) 39091.
2. Idem, Leviticus 116, 256; cf. idem, Israels Sanctuary, 392.
Chapter 8 164
blood (v. 5), are stored and later applied in water directly to persons who in-
cur corpse contamination.
In the present chapter, we will rst investigate dynamics involved with
blood of outer-altar and outer-sanctum offerings, which remove moral faults
or physical ritual impurities from their offerers at the sanctuary. In the pro-
cess, we will address a question raised by our conclusion regarding automatic
delement of the sanctuary (ch. 7): If expiable evils do not pollute the sanc-
tuary at the time when they occur, do they subsequently pollute it, and if so,
how? Then we will examine the unique and paradoxical red cow ritual.
Purication-offering blood uniquely serves to
carry away contamination
Why is nxon blood never physically applied to persons? On certain oc-
casions, bloods of several other kinds of sacrices are applied to persons.
These include burnt and well-being offerings when the covenant between
Yhwh and Israel was established at Sinai (Exod 24:58), a cx"o , ordina-
tion, sacrice for the priests (Lev 8:2224), and a reparation offering (cOx)
for a person who has been healed of scaly skin disease (14:1214, 25).
3
It is clear why the covenant and priestly ordination sacrices include ap-
plication of blood to persons. In these cases the blood is also applied to an altar
of Yhwh. Thus the rituals establish a blood connection, with life or death con-
sequences, between the human parties and Yhwh.
Like the priests when they are ordained, the person healed of scaly skin
disease receives blood on his extremities: right ear, right thumb, and right
big toe. Also like the priests, he has oil applied to him along with blood
(Lev 14:1718, 2829; cf. 8:30). Oil is applied to the same extremities of the
formerly scale-diseased person, thereby overlaying the blood. But the priests
and their vestments are sprinkled by a combination of anointing oil and
blood taken from the altar, which convey sanctity and consecrate the priests
(8:30). For the formerly scale-diseased person, who receives neither anoint-
ing oil nor blood from the altar, the goal is to effect oa for ("v) him (14:18,
3. In Lev 14:67 the blood of a slain bird, diluted in living (i.e., fresh) water,
is sprinkled seven times on a person healed from scale disease as part of his rst-
day purication ritual. But this is not a sacrice. It is not labeled as such, it is per-
formed away from the sanctuary, and no ritual connection with the sanctuary is
made (cf. D. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and
in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature [SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987]
79 n. 10; F. H. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the
Priestly Theology [JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990] 171).
Blood or Ash Water? 165
29).
4
Notice that, even though the blood of the reparation offering is di-
rectly applied to the body of the offerer, the goal formulas in 14:18 and 29
refer to the person indirectly by a pronoun following the preposition "v,
rather than as the direct object.
Like the reparation offering of the formerly scale-diseased person, most pu-
rication offerings effect oa for ("v) persons. In fact, such a purication of-
fering immediately follows application of reparation-offering blood and oil to
the formerly scale-diseased person (v. 19; cf. vv. 3031). So why is purication-
offering blood never physically applied directly to persons?
In the chapter on oa formulas (ch. 6 above), we have already found a
clue: only nxon sacrices have privative o + evil in their oa goal formulas.
A reparation offering can have privative o + evil as a result provided by Yhwh
directly (following n"o in Lev 19:22) but never as a oa goal of the sacrice
itself. So although my argumentation differs from Milgroms, my conclusion
agrees with his on this matter: only a purication offering accomplishes pur-
gation of evil. The ritual complex for the formerly scale-diseased person is
particularly instructive: of the three animal sacrices that effect oa for ("v)
him (i.e., reparation, purication, and burnt offerings), only the purication
offering accomplishes purgation \nxooo, from his impurity. Here, then, is
incontrovertible proof that the aat decontaminates, puries, and must be
rendered purication offering, . . . and the verb kipper in this context has the
specic meaning of purge.
5
The idea that purication offerings have unique dynamic properties is con-
rmed by Lev 6:2021[2728], which provides instructions concerning the
outer-altar nxon sacrice:
20
Whatever touches its esh shall become holy; and if any of its blood is
spattered on a garment, the bespattered part shall be laundered in a holy
place.
21
An earthen vessel in which it is boiled shall be broken; if it has been
boiled in a copper vessel, that shall be scoured and ushed with water.
6
Milgrom comments on the spattering of blood on a garment in v. 20[27]:
The garment does not become holy by coming into contact with the blood
of the purication offering. Instead of being conscated by the sanctuary, as
4. The text does not say what is done with the remainder of the reparation-offering
blood. Presumably it is dashed on the sides of the altar to complete the sacrice (cf.
Lev 7:2). So it appears that at least in some sense this would (re-)establish a connection
between Yhwh and the offerer.
Chapter 8 166
would any object that is rendered holy, it is restored to its former status by
having its so-called holiness effaced through washing. Thus the garment is
actually treated as if it were impure, for it is impure clothing that always re-
quires laundering (e.g., 11:25, 28, 40; 15:58, 1011). This ambivalence of
the purication offering, which will be present in even sharper form in the
following verse, should occasion no surprise. The ability of the purication
offering to impart impurity has already been noted. . . . For its blood, hav-
ing absorbed the impurity of the sanctum upon which it is sprinkled, now
contaminates everything it touches. This characteristic of the purication-
offering blood is the key that resolves the paradox of the Red Cow in Num
19 . . . and it is vital to understanding the annual purgation of the sanctuary
on Yom Kippur.
7
From Milgroms perspective, purication-offering blood always removes pol-
lution from that to which it is physically applied, in this case the outer altar.
For him this explains why such blood is treated as as an impure controlled
substance in Lev 6:20, even though, paradoxically, it belongs to a most holy
sacrice: the blood has purged the altar by absorbing its impurity. Because
the blood now carries impurity, when it spatters on a garment, it contami-
nates a spot that must be washed off in order to cleanse the garment.
8
In Mil-
7. Ibid., 4034; The Paradox of the Red Cow (Num. XIX), VT 31 (1981) 64; cf.
Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 12932; in the Temple Scroll (26:10), on the Day of
Atonement the high priest must wash the blood of the peoples inner-sanctum puri-
cation-offering goat from his hands and feet. Milgrom points out that this innovation
corroborates the idea that purication offerings carry delement (Leviticus 116, 1064).
8. Cf. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 12931. Notice Milgroms argument,
quoted above (Leviticus 116, 403), that impurity rather than holiness is removed be-
cause the latter would cause the garment to belong to the sanctuary permanently. To
support the idea that contagious holiness cannot be removed, M. Haran cites Num
17:3[16:38], where the censers of Korah and his company were hammered into sheets
as plating for the altar because they had become holy and therefore could not be taken
from the sacred precincts (Temples and Temple-Service in Ancient Israel [Winona Lake,
Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1985] 176). Thus Haran and Milgrom counter the popular the-
ory that the washing in Lev 6:2021 is to remove holiness. For example, C. F. Keil and
F. Delitzsch regarded this washing as avoiding profanation of holy blood that would
occur if it were carried out of the sanctuary on sprinkled clothes, or holy esh if com-
mon food were prepared in the same vessel (Biblical Commentary on the Old Testa-
ment [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952; orig. 1874] 2:32122. For the holiness-removal
theory, cf. M. M. Kalisch, A Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testament,
Dyer, 186772) 1:335; A. Dillmann, Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus (Leipzig: Hirzel,
1897) 486; S. R. Driver and H. A. White, The Book of Leviticus (SBONT 3; New York:
Dodd, Mead, 1898) 69; B. Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri (HKAT 1; Gttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1903) 336; D. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus (Berlin: Pop-
pelauer, 19056) 23839; P. Heinisch, Das Buch Leviticus (HSAT 1; Bonn: Hanstein,
1935) 3738; R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (trans. John McHugh;
groms system it is logical that such blood is never applied to a person, be-
cause its function is to purify part of the sanctuary rather than the offerer.
9
In outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings, the offerer
is the source of delement carried by the blood
Milgrom assumes that the blood becomes impure from contact with the
altar before it spatters on the garment, most likely that of the priest who
performs the blood rite.
10
But the text does not qualify the spattering in
this way. Moreover, it is hard to imagine how spattering from an altar onto
9. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 25556. According to Milgrom, contact between a per-
son and a nxon sacrice would be inconsequential because "a in Lev 6:20 ("a O;
JOza vOx ; cf. v. 11[18]) means whatever, not whoever: Whatever touches its
esh shall become holy. For Milgrom, in P sancta transmit holiness only to inanimate
objects, not to persons (pp. 44351; idem, Sancta Contagion and Altar/City Asylum,
in Congress Volume: Vienna, 1980 [VTSup 32; Leiden: Brill, 1981] 27891; cf. D. Hoff-
mann, Das Buch Leviticus, 238). Levine interprets "a here (cf. v. 11) as referring to
persons but not because they would contract sancta contagion. Rather, anyone who
touches nxon esh must already be in a holy state before this contact occurs (Leviti-
cus, 3738, 40). However, this is not the sense conveyed by the imperfect of O; (Mil-
grom, Leviticus 116, 445).
10. Ibid., 403.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans / Livonia, Michigan: Dove, 1961) 461; J. Porter, Leviticus
(CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 131. N. Kiuchi argues that
since only the affected part of the garment must be washed in v. 20, that which is
cleansed away must be holiness rather than impurity. For if it were uncleanness, this
law might well have prescribed that all the clothes should be washed (The Puri-
cation Offering in the Priestly Literature: Its Meaning and Function [JSOTSup 56;
Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1987] 136; cf. R. Pter-Contesse and J. Ellington regarding
the scouring and rinsing of a bronze vessel in v. 21[28] (A Handbook on Leviticus
[UBSHS; New York: United Bible Societies, 1990] 89). It is true that elsewhere whole
garments must be laundered (piel of oza) because they have been worn by impure
persons (11:25, 28, 40; 13:6, 34; 14:8, 9, 47; 15:58, etc.) or because of disease that
originates in the garments themselves (13:54, 58). But in 6:20 the situation is different:
something coming from outside a garment contacts part of it. A. Baumgarten places
this verse within the context of his theory that impurity is deviation from a normal
level of purity: If someone contacts the excessive holiness of sacricial blood in the
course of fullling his ritual role, he and his garments must be cleansed (The Par-
adox of the Red Heifer, VT 43 [1993] 445). His approach raises a serious question:
Why does this cleansing apply only to the purication offering and not to other most-
holy sacrices as well? Without arguing for sancta contagion, B. Levine explains that,
because blood or esh of the nxon sacrice could only be used for its intended sacri-
cial purpose, leftover material (cf. 7:1518 of well-being offerings) could not remain
on other objects (Leviticus [JPS Torah Commentary: Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1989] 40; cf. Rashi on 6:21; Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus, 23940). This
makes good sense, but again, why isnt the rule formulated in such a way that it is
generally applicable to other sacrices as well?
Chapter 8 168
a garment could occur within the context of a purication offering.
11
Because blood is a sticky substance, when a priest would use his nger to
put/daub (n:) it on the horns of the outer altar (Lev 4:25, 30, 34) or incense
altar (vv. 7, 18), it would not ricochet off one of the horns onto another ob-
ject. Given the small amount of blood that can be applied with a nger, it
might run down the horns a little but would not drip from them onto an-
other object.
It is true that the priest disposes of the remaining blood at the base of the
outer altar (4:7, 18, 25, 30, 34), but he does this by pouring it out (oO) rather
than dashing it (;I), as he does in burnt, well-being, and reparation offerings
(e.g., 1:5, 11; 3:2, 8, 13; 7:2). Although nxon blood on the horns of an altar or
at the base of the outer altar could get on the garment of a person by direct
touching, whether careless or otherwise, this is not what Lev 6:20 is talking
about. The verb is I:, spatter or sprinkle (HALOT 1:683; cf. BDB 633),
which means that the blood travels at least some distance through the air.
Here I: is qal, as in 2 Kgs 9:33 and Isa 63:3, indicating that the blood simply
spatters, without the control by human action that would be indicated if the
verb were causative hipil (e.g., when the priest sprinkles blood seven times
before the veil; Lev 4:6, 17). So in 6:20 the spattering on a garment is simply
an accident.
The time when spattering on a priests or laypersons garment could occur
is when blood spurts from the animal at the moment of slaughter or splashes
from the collection vessel on the way to the altar.
12
So we must seek another
explanation for the way in which nxon blood becomes a carrier of impurity.
N. Zohar contends that the purication offering, including its blood, can-
not be deled by absorbing impurity from the sanctuary because Lev 6:20
refers to contamination caused by blood that has not yet been used for puri-
cation. The esh and blood bear impurity before part of the blood is applied
to part of the sanctuary. Therefore the source of the impurity is not the sanc-
11. The instruction for purifying a blood-spattered garment appears in connection
with the outer-altar purication offering, of which the esh is cooked in a vessel and
eaten. However, because this rule is set in the context of a paragraph that applies to
purication offerings in general (Lev 6:1723[2430]), it would also regulate acciden-
tal spattering of blood in an outer-sanctum purication offering (cf. m. Zeba. 11:1).
12. According to m. Zeba. 11:3, only blood that has been collected in a vessel and
is t for sprinkling must be washed from a garment. But other ways in which blood
could get on a garmentincluding spattering from the neck of the animal, from the
horn or foundation of the altar, or someone gathering blood that was poured on the
pavementdo not require washing.
tuary but the offerer himself.
13
This is part of his argument toward the conclu-
sion that purication offerings throughout the year remove sin contamination
from their offerers rather than from the sanctuary.
Zohars other points of support for his conclusion are as follows:
1. Whereas Milgrom and others restrict the reference of Lev 17:11 to the
well-being offering, this verse applies to the purication offering and
indicates that blood, by virtue of its nature as animation-essence, was
appointed by God to be applied to the altar, to atone before him on
behalf of the peoples Oo:.
14
2. In the purication offering, laying one hand on the head of the animal
has basically the same meaning as when the high priest lays two hands
on the head of the live goat on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:21): it
marks the transference of the sin-contamination from the person to the
animal.
15
The distinction between the two hand gestures reects the
difference of intensity involved. To the scapegoat intentional sins are
being transferred, sins that are more deeply imbedded in the sinners
Oo: and require stronger dissociation, as opposed to the unintentional
sins involved in the nxon ritual, for which the laying of one hand
sufces.
16
3. Sin/impurity would reside in the Oo: (spiritual) aspect of a sinner more
than in his physical aspect. Therefore, when this evil is transferred to
the animal, thereby contaminating the whole animal, it would
especially affect its Oo:, which is equated with its blood (Gen 9:4,
etc.).
17
Zohar interprets the transfer to the animal as a process of
dissociation: the sinner, regretting his sin and wishing to be rid of its
residual impurity, casts it away from his person and objecties it in a
receptacle of blood. The spiritual purging which Milgrom rightly
stresses in his Cult and Conscience is not an external precondition for
ritual atonement, but rather is coextensive with it and indeed
13. N. Zohar, Repentance and Purication: The Signicance and Semantics of
nxon in the Pentateuch, JBL 107 (1988) 612.
14. Ibid., 617; cf. 611.
15. Ibid., 61213.
16. Ibid., 615 n. 31; cf. 613 n. 24; E. Gerstenberger also explains the double hand-
leaning as intensied transference of sins (Leviticus: A Commentary [trans. D. Stott;
OTL; Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 1996] 220).
17. Zohar, Repentance and Purication, 613.
Chapter 8 170
inseparable from it.
18
By presenting God with the disowned sin in the
blood, the sinner shows his remorse and seeks forgiveness.
19
4. In light of his interpretation of :onx in Gen 31:39 as referring to
Jacobs having brought/transferred another animal to take the place of
one of Labans ock that was killed, Zohar takes the basic meaning of
the verb xon to be replace/displace/transfer. Hence the cultic usage:
the purication process effected by the nxon involves a series of
substitutions/transfers. The contamination is transferred from the
sinner to the animal (which is thereby substituted for him), and thence
to the blood, and nally to the sanctuary.
20
Zohar suggests two possibilities for the fate of delement once it has been
transferred to Yhwhs altar. Either Yhwh completely annihilates the impurity
on contact or the residues of contamination, having been disowned and thus
rendered less powerful, are heaped up at the altar, contained (but not eradi-
cated) by Gods superior spiritual power, and nally removed to Azazel by the
yearly general cleansing of the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement.
21
Milgrom counters Zohar with seven points:
22
1. The explicit context of Lev 17:11 is that of the well-being offering.
2. Zohars dichotomy between body and soul is foreign to the Hebrew
Bible.
3. Zohars claim that hand-leaning implies transfer of contamination does
not accord with the facts that some sacrices motivated solely by joy
require this activity and some expiatory sacrices do not require it.
4. The word :onx in Gen 31:39 is a notorious crux in a nonpriestly
text, which contextually and linguistically does not support Zohars
idea that the piel of xon means replace/displace/transfer rather
than remove sin.
5. Zohar fails to recognize the fundamental ritual principle of pars pro
toto (part for all) by which absorption of impurity by the blood of a
purication offering could result in delement of the entire
carcass.
23
18. Ibid., 614.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 616. In n. 34 Zohar makes the qualication that he refers to substitution
only in the sense that the delement adheres to the animal rather than to the offerer.
21. Ibid., 615.
22. J. Milgrom, The Modus Operandi of the aat: A Rejoinder, JBL 109 (1990)
11113.
23. Cf. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 130.
6. Against Zohars argument that the source of delement must be the
sinner himself because the purication offering deles before its blood
is applied to the altar, Milgrom cites the red cow nxon sacrice (Num
19), in which the pars pro toto principle operates in time as well as
space: subsequent use of the ashes for purication deles those
involved in their preparation (vv. 78, 10).
24
Therefore, there can be
no difculty with the notion that the infected aat blood acts
retroactively to impart impurity to objects which it (or the carcass)
contacts even before it puries the altar (Lev 6:2021).
25
Milgrom also
argues that the sinner could not be the source of contamination
because he must be puried before bringing his sacrice to the
sanctuary.
7. Zohar obscures the basic antithesis of holiness and impurity in ancient
Israelite cult.
I agree with Milgrom on his points 25 but would heavily qualify point 1. It
is true that in context the primary focus of Lev 17:11 is on the well-being of-
fering. However, the rationale in this versethat blood carries life and there-
fore the Lord has assigned it to ransom human lives on the altarstands not
only behind the prohibition against eating the blood of well-being offerings
but also behind the prohibition against eating blood in general (vv. 10, 12; cf.
vv. 1314; 3:17; 7:2627).
26
The same rationale is also logically behind the command to bring offerings
in general to the Lords altar in the sanctuary (17:39). It is true that the
matter of offerers eating (meat with) blood is irrelevant to sacrices other
than well-being offerings, especially burnt offerings (v. 8), from which noth-
ing at all is eaten, not even by ofciating priests. However, bringing these
sacrices to the sanctuary is of crucial importance (cf. 1:3, 5, 11, 15; 4:4, 14,
29, 33; 7:2).
27
I agree with B. H. McLean that Zohars exegesis is awed by his interpreta-
tion of the sacricial purication offering in light of the nonsacricial ritual
of Azazels goat.
28
Furthermore, I nd Zohars treatment of the need to
24. Cf. Milgrom, The Paradox of the Red Cow, 6272.
25. Milgrom, The Modus Operandi, 113.
26. Cf. W. Gilders, Blood Ritual in the Hebrew Bible: Meaning and Power (Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004) 2122, 168.
27. R. Gane, LeviticusNumbers (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004) 304;
cf. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 18689; A. Schenker, Das Zeichen des Blutes
und die Gewissheit der Vergebung im Alten Testament, MTZ 34 (1983) 203, 213.
28. B. H. McLean, The Interpretation of the Levitical Sin Offering and the Scape-
goat, SR 20 (1991) 35156.
Chapter 8 172
cleanse the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement to be fuzzy. He explains:
What Gods presence in the sanctuary cannot tolerate is people clinging to
their sins, refusing to disown them. Such wanton indelity is unbearable,
andif Milgroms notion of magnetic contamination is correctit is this
which necessitates the purging of the sanctuary. But the purging is not
achieved magic-wise by sprinkling a myseriously efcacious ritual deter-
gent (= blood), but by presenting God with the concretely disowned sin
invested in the blood.
29
This approach raises several questions that Zohar does not answer: Are wanton
sins the only category of sins that dele the sanctuary? If so, why are two terms
for moral faults used in Lev 16:16 (vOo and nxon) and three in v. 21 (\v, vOo,
and nxon), and where do we see evidence that the blood used to cleanse the
sanctuary on the Day of Atonement represents sin that is disowned? Disowned
by whomthe wanton sinners themselves? Can non-wanton sins also dele
the sanctuary? If so, how does this happen, given that they are disowned and
thus tolerable in Gods presence?
Despite all the above criticisms of Zohars argumentation, in the following
discussion I will reach agreement with his overall conclusion, albeit by a sig-
nicantly different route. There is a functional parallel between washing
blood from a garment (Lev 6:20[27]) and treatment of a vessel in which puri-
cation-offering esh is boiled. Like the blood in relation to a garment, the
edible esh is implicitly treated as impure because it imparts impurity to
vessels (v. 21[28]; cf. 11:3133),
30
even though it is most holy. The esh that
is boiled for the ofciating priest to eat is contaminated in spite of the fact that
it never goes on the altar; only the suet is placed there (see, e.g., 4:26, 31, 35).
So, whereas it was necessary to ask whether the blood becomes impure before
or after it is applied to the altar (see above), the same question with regard to
the esh is preempted by the fact that it never touches the altar and therefore
cannot receive impurity from this source by direct contact.
We have found that both the blood and the esh carry some kind of pollu-
tion. The esh also imparts holiness (Lev 6:20a[27a]),
31
apparently by virtue
of prior contact by other parts of the same animal, that is, the blood and
Yhwhs suet portion, with the altar (pars pro toto).
32
But the remainder of the
same verse does not say that the blood similarly conveys holiness to a garment
on which it spatters. If the esh, which itself does not contact the altar, be-
30. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 132.
31. Compare with Lev 6:1011[1718] about a baked grain offering.
32. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 44344; idem, Sancta Contagion, 27879.
comes holy when other parts of the same animal contact the altar, the blood
would also become holy when some of it is applied to the horns of the altar.
So why does the text not speak of the blood conveying holiness to a garment
on which it sprinkles? The simplest answer is that from the time when the
blood is applied to the altar it stays there, so any contact with a garment is be-
fore that pointthat is, before the blood gains contagious holiness from the
altar.
Milgrom has pointed out the ambivalent/paradoxical nature of the puri-
cation offering, which is a most holy sacrice (Lev 6:18[25]):
33
its blood and
esh contaminate, but at the same time they are holy. So holiness and impu-
rity, which elsewhere in the Israelite cultic system are opposites that are not
to be brought together (e.g., Lev 7:2021; 15:31),
34
converge in the nxon sac-
rice: Thus Scripture was forced to tolerate the contradictory notion that
the technique of purging the sanctuary of its impuritiesthe purication of-
feringcould simultaneously be a most sacred offering and a source of
impurity.
35
A special instance of this paradox is found in the uniquely holy
34. See, e.g., ibid., 61617, 73132; idem, Rationale for Cultic Law: The Case of
Impurity, Semeia 45 (1989) 106; H. Ringgren, xoo ame, TDOT 5:331.
35. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 406; cf. idem, The Paradox of the Red Cow, 64;
repr. Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology (Leiden: Brill, 1983) 87; idem, Num-
bers (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1990) 439;
A. Rodrguez, Transfer of Sin in Leviticus, in The Seventy Weeks, Leviticus, and the
Nature of Prophecy (ed. F. Holbrook; DARCOM 3; Washington, D.C.: Biblical Re-
search Institute, 1986) 196; Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 12934; idem, Purica-
tion from Corpse-Contamination in Numbers XXXI 1924, VT 35 (1985) 216 n. 9.
Contra the heated assertion of S. A. Geller: Surely the contact of the impurity of sin
with the purity of sanctity would, like the collision of matter and anti-matter, destroy
the cosmos! (Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the
Pentateuch, Prooftexts 12 [1992] 106). Also against the argument of N. Snaith that, be-
cause nxon blood was holy, it had to go to God, but it could not go on to the altar
because it was bad (sin) and thus was disposed of at the base of the altar (The Sin-
Offering and the Guilt-Offering, VT 15 [1965] 76). He mistakenly views the disposal
(oO) of purication-offering blood at the base of the altar as the functional equivalent
of dashing (;I) blood against the sides of the altar in other sacrices and does not ad-
equately take into account the fact, which he mentions on the previous page, that
some of the same blood was applied to the altar itself on its horns (p. 75). That the
blood was contaminated (not bad) did not prevent its application to the altar. In a
later publication Snaith attempted to reconcile this difculty by interpreting the appli-
cation of purication-offering blood to the horns of the altar: to render the sin-blood
ritually clean enough to be disposed of and got rid of at the base of the altar of burnt-
offering (The Sprinkling of Blood, ExpTim 82 [197071] 24). However, he has no
biblical support for this idea. Working from an assumption similar to that of Snaith,
de Vaux holds that the delement of an animal, for example, the scapegoat, with the
Chapter 8 174
inner-sanctum purication offerings of the Day of Atonement, in which the
blood absorbs delement from the sanctuary, and the carcasses subsequently
contaminate those who dispose of them (Lev 16:2728).
36
D. J. McCarthy has brought attention to the equivocal signicance of
blood in the ancient Near East (including Israel): it is associated with life/
strength on the one hand and bloodshed/death on the other.
37
At rst glance
this contrast would appear to support the coexistence of holiness and impu-
rity in the purication offering, with holiness linked to life and impurity con-
nected with death. But McCarthy goes on to argue that in Israel the darker
symbolism of blood remained outside the cult and Israel always associated
blood with life in a ritual context.
38
Accordingly, since a purication offering
is most holy, it is associated with life. Nevertheless, it also somehow carries
human impurity in a way/form that does not neutralize its holiness, just as lit-
eral blood in a living organism sustains life with oxygen and nutrients but also
through purication by carrying away waste products.
We cannot avoid Zohars main point: purication-offering blood is not
rendered impure by contact with the altar. Therefore, its delement must
come from the offerer.
39
This agrees with the evidence I have presented ear-
37. D. J. McCarthy, Further Notes on the Symbolism of Blood and Sacrice, JBL
92 (1973) 205.
38. Ibid., 208.
sins of the people makes it unworthy to be sacriced (Ancient Israel, 416, 419, 459,
509; cf. R. J. Burns, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers [OTM 3; Wilmington, Delaware: Mi-
chael Glazier, 1983] 200). But what about the inner-sanctum purication offerings,
the blood of which purges the sanctuary? These holiest of all sacrices are not disqual-
ied by their intended function of purging from the sanctuary the vOo faults (trans-
gressions) of the Israelites in addition to their uncleannesses (pl. of xoo) and
nxon faults (sins; Lev 16:16, 19), as a result of which they convey impurity to those
who incinerate their carcasses (v. 28). A fortiori the outer-altar and outer-sanctum pu-
rication offerings performed throughout the year, which remedy only faults of the
nxon category or impurity (root xoo) but not vOo faults, and which do not require
purication of those who dispose of their carcasses (cf. 4:12, 21), would not be dis-
qualied by their sin-bearing role. A. Mdebielle contended that, although purica-
tion offerings are charged with sins, they are not contaminated by them because that
which the victim bears is punishment (within the context of penal substitution) and
the sins are obliterated when the sacrice contacts Yhwhs altar (Le symbolism du
sacrice expiatoire en Isral, Bib 2 [1921] 29495). However, he does not take into ac-
count the contamination of the sacrice implied in Lev 6:2021[2728]. It is true that
the handler of Azazels goat also becomes impure (16:26). But it is not the bearing of
evil that disqualies this live goat from being a sacrice. Rather, it is not a sacrice be-
cause it is sent away from Yhwh as a vehicle of elimination rather than given over to
him for his utilization.
lier that outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings remove evil from
their offerers. P. Jenson also recognized that priestly atonement results in the
cleansing of persons and observed: While blood is not applied to the person
requiring purication, there may have been practical reasons for this.
40
Now we can identify a conceptual (if not practical, in physical terms)
reason why the blood of a purication offering would not be physically ap-
plied to its offerer: this blood is already carrying his/her delement, whether
it results from sin or ritual impurity.
Since the exceptional purication offering that initially decontaminates
the altar (Lev 8:1417) apparently does not remove evil from its offerers, at
least not primarily (cf. ch. 6 above), its blood can absorb from the altar impu-
rity that is assumed to be present before the common becomes holy.
41
In
any case, it is clear that this ritual, which is ofciated by Moses, is not in view
in 6:20[27], where Aaron and his sons ofciate (v. 18[25]).
The corporate inner-sanctum sacrices on the Day of Atonement are ex-
ceptional in that they purge the sanctuary and its sancta by direct application
of blood, thereby cleansing the people from their sins (Lev 16:30).
42
Before
the blood is applied to the sanctuary, it is not contaminated by imperfections
removed from the people because in this case their cleansing is a secondary
result of the sanctuarys purgation.
43
The cleansing (o) of the people from sin on the Day of Atonement
(Lev 16:30) differs from removal of imperfections through individual offer-
ings during the year because on the Day of Atonement those who know
that they have sinned are already either forgiven (n"o) through sacrice
(e.g., Lev 4:20, 26, 31) or bearing condemnation for which there is no rit-
ual remedy, as a result of deant/wanton sinning (Num 15:3031; cf. Lev
20:3). Persons who know that they have had severe physical ritual impuri-
ties during the year are already either pure (o) from application of ap-
propriate remedies (e.g., Lev 12:7, 8) or condemned to death or extirpation
as a result of neglecting the remedies provided by Yhwh (15:31; Num 19:13,
20). So the moral cleansing on the Day of Atonement does not purge sin as a
prerequisite to forgiveness, nor does it provide physical ritual purity by
purging persons of their impurities.
41. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering in the Priestly Literature, 43.
42. Contrast Lev 14, where treating persons and houses requires separate applica-
tions of blood.
Chapter 8 176
How does an outer-altar or outer-sanctum purication offering become
contaminated by the offerer so that its blood somehow pollutes part of the
sanctuary? Apparently it is because the offerer has a connection with his of-
fering as its owner and transfers ownership to Yhwh, as afrmed by the
hand-leaning gesture when this is required (see ch. 3 above). It is true that
in a private sacrice of a herd or ock animal the offerer physically contacts
his animal at least by leaning his hand on its head (e.g., Lev 4:4, 15, 24, 29,
33). If the sacrice is a bird or a grain item, the offerer holds it in his hand
before giving it to the priest (5:8, 12). However, I argue that it is the depart-
ing ownership connection rather than the physical contact itself that is the
point. Remember that we are dealing with ritual, which involves meaning/
function that transcends the physics otherwise operable in the material
world. In any case, the fact that hand-leaning is not required in every case
shows that this gesture is not indispensable for transferring evil from the of-
ferer to his/her offering.
44
Now we can understand how the purication offering could purify its of-
ferer without direct physical application of blood to the person. It is not sim-
ply the blood that acts as a detergent. Rather, the offering material as a whole,
whether it consists of an animal or grain item, absorbs evil from the offerer,
thereby purifying him/her.
A purication offering transfers imperfection in mitigated form
from the offerer to Yhwhs sanctuary
If an offerer is already pure before coming to the sanctuary, what is
there left for a nxon sacrice to remove from him/her? As we have seen in
ch. 6 above, N. Kiuchi has pointed out that a scale-diseased person is de-
clared pure (o) at each of three successive stages of ritual purication
(Lev 14:8, 9, 20). This means that he is pure enough for that stage, but his
purity at an earlier stage does not make a later stage unnecessary.
45
Signif-
icantly, while the rst and second stages involve various nonsacricial rit-
uals, including ablutions, it is the third and highest stage on the eighth
day that is achieved through a complex of sacrices (vv. 1020), including
a purication offering (v. 19). So a purication offering removes a kind of
residual impurity that is left even after other means of purication have
been carried out.
44. Against A. Rodrguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus (AUSDS 3; Berrien
Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979) 218.
Through outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings performed
at the sanctuary, imperfection removed from offerers is transferred to
Yhwhs sanctuary. Now the imperfection, in a contained/controlled form, is
in his ball park, that is, it is his problem.
46
This would readily explain at
least some of the need to purge the sanctuary and its sancta on the Day of
Atonement.
I have come by a different route to the same conclusion as Zohar: nxon
sacrices purge their offerers of pollution that is transferred to Yhwh at his
sanctuary, and this delement is later removed from the sanctuary on the Day
of Atonement.
47
Consequently, with Zohar, I am stuck with the dilemma of
the incompatibility between Yhwhs holiness and the imperfection of the Is-
raelites. C. Hayes articulately enunciates the problem:
Essentially Zohar would have us believe that the aat sacrice is pre-
mised on the idea that the Israelites, in order to rid themselves of the con-
tamination caused by their sin or certain physical conditions, carry that
contamination continually into the sanctuary, the abode of the holy God
whose very essence is incompatible with that which is impure!
48
B. van der Merwe voices an objection similar to that of Hayes: if sin were
transferred to an animal, it would become ritually impure and therefore unt
for sacrice on the altar.
49
In response, Hayes and van der Merwe do not take into account the indi-
cation of Lev 6:2021[2728] that nxon sacrices carry some kind of impu-
rity (see above), perhaps in a weakened, residual form, or the possibility that
the ritual tness of the victim could be immune to the evil targeted by the
sacrice. We have found that Milgroms theory, like mine, also paradoxically
requires purication-offering blood to be a carrier of contamination caused
46. A. A. Bonar explained that the altar needed to be puried because every sin had
been laid down there (A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus, Expository and Practi-
cal [5th ed.; London: Nisbet, 1875] 310). The notion of substitutional exchange/inter-
change, according to which there is a bidirectional transfer of purity from the animal
to the offerer and impurity from the offerer to the animal and thence to the sanctuary
(E. Jacob, Theologie de lAncien Testament [BibT; Neuchtel: Delachaux et Niestl,
1968] 236; A. Treiyer, The Day of Atonement as Related to the Contamination and
Purication of the Sanctuary, in The Seventy Weeks, Leviticus, and the Nature of
Prophecy [ed. F. Holbrook; DARCOM 3; Washington, D.C., Biblical Research Insti-
tute] 23436) is unnecessary.
48. Cited by Milgrom, The Modus Operandi, 113.
49. B. van der Merwe, The Laying on of the Hands in the Old Testament, New
Light on Some Old Testament Problems: Papers Read at 5th Meeting of Die O.T.
Werkgemeenkap in Suid-Afrika (1962) 39.
Chapter 8 178
by the Israelites, even though the offering is most holy.
50
The difference is
whether the delement goes aerially from the people to the altar and then
into the blood (Milgrom) or from the people into the blood and then to the
altar (Zohar and myself ). In either case Yhwhs sanctuary, the sphere of holi-
ness, survives an incursion of human delement that accumulates through-
out the year. Were this not the case, there would be no reason to cleanse the
sanctuary on the Day of Atonement from the ritual impurities and moral
faults of the Israelites (Lev 16:16). Human pollution does not negate the ac-
ceptability, holiness, or purity of the purication offerings, interrupt the holy
function of the sanctuary,
51
or disqualify its priests.
52
However, the immunity
of the cult has its limits: the sanctuary must be puried once per year.
J. Matthes criticized the idea that purication offerings carry sin, citing the
fact that they must be eaten in a holy place or incinerated in a pure place.
53
But his argument founders on the fact that the carcasses of the inner-sanctum
purication offerings are also incinerated outside the camp, undoubtedly at
the same pure place specied in Lev 4:12, and those who dispose of them be-
come impure through this contact (16:2728). So delement of these ani-
mals, which in any case must be much more severe than that carried by other
purication offerings, does not rule out their disposal in a pure place.
54
It is true that one who brings a purication offering to the sanctuary should
already have undergone preliminary physical purication or the moral puri-
50. Compare the physical function of blood as a carrier in living organisms. The
paradoxical nature of the nxon sacrice answers objections of J. Kurtz (Sacricial
Worship of the Old Testament [trans. J. Martin; Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1980;
repr. of 1863] 22830) and D. Kidner (Sacrice: Metaphors and Meaning, TynBul 33
[1982] 13435) to the idea that sins are transferred to most holy sacrices.
51. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 119; G. F. Hasel, Studies in Biblical Atone-
ment II: The Day of Atonement, in The Sanctuary and the Atonement: Biblical, His-
torical, and Theological Studies (ed. A. Wallenkampf; Washington, D.C.: Review and
Herald, 1981) 99; Treiyer, The Day of Atonement, 220; cf. J. Calvin, Commentaries
on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1996) 1:318.
52. Rodrguez, Substitution, 13334, 21718; Transfer of Sin, 195. Gorman de-
scribes the hazardous liminal function of the priests as mediators between the cate-
gorically distinct states of the holy and the profane, the pure and the impure (The
Ideology of Ritual, 139). On the high priests immunity to the effects of purgation rites,
see Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 105152 . Wright views this as a concession and cites
similar concessions in the priestly legislation, such as not requiring priests to bathe
after they perform purication offerings (The Disposal of Impurity, 132).
53. J. Matthes, Der Shnegedanke bei den Sndopfern, ZAW 23 (1903) 112.
54. Compare Milgroms distinction between the purity of the place where purica-
tion offerings are incinerated (Lev 4:12; cf. 6:4[11]; Num 19:9) and the contamination
of the purication offerings themselves (Two Kinds of aat, VT 26 [1976] 33435).
cation of repentance, but this by no means rules out the offerer as the source
of the delement.
55
Rather, preliminary purication downgrades the toxicity
of pollution so that, although Yhwh permits it to be temporarily present at his
house, which is highly sensitive to impurity, it does not create the damaging
reaction that otherwise accompanies interaction between impurity and holi-
ness (e.g., 7:2021).
The concept that pollution is permitted in the sanctuary only at trace lev-
els and in eviscerated, contained form accords with Rodrguezs observation
that nowhere in Leviticus are we told that the blood of the t is un-
clean.
56
Kiuchi concludes that impurity produced by physical causes or
moral faults should be distinguished from impurity in sancta: For sancta (in-
cluding sacrices) are never said to be unclean (xoo), though they can be
so envisaged (e.g., Lev 15:31; 16:16). Moreover, the distinction seems neces-
sary to avoid the contradiction that sancta are simultaneously holy and un-
clean.
57
The fact that sancta are not described as unclean even though they
can be deled (piel of xoo in Lev 15:31) and uncleannesses can be removed
from them (nxoo in 16:16) indicates the sensitivity of the biblical text in
avoiding the implication that the sancta are disqualied.
The texts sensitivity does not wipe out the paradoxical implication that
most holy sancta can bear impurity in some form. That delement of the
sanctuary is signicant is indicated by the tremendous weight attached to the
purgation rituals of the Day of Atonement, whereby the imperfections of the
Israelites are removed from the sanctuary.
58
Yhwhs holiness cannot tolerate
an excessive accumulation of delement.
59
Once per year his sanctuary must
be made totally clean.
Why would Yhwh mandate the delement of his sanctuary through
outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings? Obviously it is not a
good thing for the sanctuary to be deled,
60
as shown by the facts that other
modes of deling it, which are not controlled by sacrice, are to be strenu-
ously avoided (cf. Lev 15:31; 20:3; Num 19:13, 20), and its pollution must
be removed on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16). Yhwh prefers that evils be
acknowledged, brought meekly to the sanctuary, and turned over to him
rather than left to run wild and rampage into the sphere of holiness. Further
55. Contra Milgrom, The Modus Operandi, 113.
56. Rodrguez, Substitution, 191 n. 2.
58. Cf. Zohar, Repentance and Purication, 615.
60. Cf. Jenson, Graded Holiness, 207.
Chapter 8 180
on, we will explore the profound implications of the necessity to turn expi-
able evils over to Yhwh.
Now we can address Kiuchis question: But why does the priest apply
blood to sancta, if the sancta are not deled? His answer is to assume that
uncleanness is envisaged in the sancta when an unclean person stands before
the Lord, i.e., at the entrance of the Tent, and that when the priest puries
the sancta, the unclean person becomes clean concurrently.
61
But we have
found no evidence that outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings
purify the sancta at all. My answer is that the priest applies blood to sancta be-
cause sacricial purication of the offerer necessarily involves transfer of his/
her evil to Yhwh.
My answer gives birth to a further question. If the moral faults that must
be removed from the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:16) include
wanton sins transmitted to the sanctuary from a distance during the year (cf.
20:3; Num 19:13, 20), it is easy to see how these could affect the inner sanc-
tum as Milgrom has proposed.
62
But how do the uncleannesses (nxoo) of the
Israelites get into the inner sanctum and outer sanctum so that they must be
purged from there (Lev 16:16)? Purication offerings for physical ritual impu-
rities throughout the year only involve the outer altar; they never include ap-
plication of blood inside the Sacred Tent, let alone in the inner sanctum. In
this regard it makes no difference whether delement of the outer altar by rit-
ual impurities occurs aerially (Milgrom) or through outer-altar nxon sacri-
ces (Gane). The question is: How do these impurities affect the rest of the
sanctuary?
The pars pro toto (part for all) principle resolves the problem: the outer
altar is an integral part of the sanctuary, so when it is affected, the whole sanc-
tuary is affected.
63
The same dynamic principle functions on various levels in
the Israelite ritual system. Thus, according to my theory, applications of blood
to parts of the outer altar (horns) and outer sanctum (before the veil and
horns of the incense altar) result in contamination of the entire outer altar
62. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 257; idem, Israels Sanctuary, 393; cf. Wright, The
Disposal of Impurity, 20.
63. Kiuchi attempts to explain the delement of the inner sanctum with the sins of
lay Israelites by arguing (1) that these individuals make up the whole people and (2) in
Lev 4 the outer-sanctum purication offering of the whole community foreshadows
the Day of Atonement ritual in that its sevenfold sprinkling before the veil (vv. 6, 17)
is directed toward the inner sanctum (The Purication Offering, 15758; cf. 12526).
However, Kiuchis easy transition from the individual level to that of the entire com-
munity and his interpretation of the sprinkling as virtually if not physically located in
the inner sanctum are forced.
and outer sanctum as units. This corresponds to the fact that when the pars
pro toto principle operates in reverse on the Day of Atonement, applications
of blood to limited parts of the inner sanctum, outer sanctum, and outer altar
cleanse each of these components as units (Lev 16:1416, 1819; cf. vv. 20,
33). Exodus 30:10 clearly shows how the pars pro toto principle works on an
individual sacred object: by putting blood on the horns of the incense altar
once a year with the purication offering of purgation, the high priest (Aaron)
purges the altar. That is, by applying blood to its extremities, he cleanses the
whole altar.
64
Given the lack of an explicit biblical statement, A. Rodrguez speculates
on the way that sin transferred to the priest by eating the esh of the nxon
sacrice (cf. Lev 10:17) is transferred to the sanctuary: It is quite probable
that there was another ritual by which the sin the priest bore was transferred
to the sanctuary. This could have been easily done through a t offered by
him.
65
But the outer altar is an integral part of the sanctuary, and recognition
of the pars pro toto principle liberates us from the need to suppose that an evil
for which blood is applied only at the outer altar (and the esh is not eaten by
a priest if he is the offerer [9:11]!) must make its way into the Sacred Tent via
some kind of physical transfer.
66
Water mixed with ashes of the red cow can be directly applied
to persons because it is not already carrying their impurity
The red cow ritual produces ashes to be later mixed with water and applied
directly to persons in order to remove their corpse contamination (Num 19:9
12). The ashes contain the hide, esh, blood, and dung of the cow, along with
cedar wood, hyssop, and crimson yarn (vv. 56).
67
The reddish hide of the
cow, crimson yarn, and perhaps also the cedar wood emphasize the color red,
64. Cf. Milgrom, The Modus Operandi, 112.
65. Rodrguez, Substitution, 14243 n. 1.
66. A. A. Bonar suggested that delement of the inner sanctum occurred on the
Day of Atonement. When the high priest, representing the guilty Israelites whose pres-
ence at the sanctuary deled its courts, brought their case before the Lord, this act
was reckoned as a delement. Therefore, there was need of a cleansing; and this took
place when their representative was accepted, and all he confessed was thoroughly for-
given (A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus, 308; cf. G. Bush, Notes, Critical and
Practical, on the Book of Leviticus [New York: Ivison & Phinney, 1857] 159). However,
there is no evidence that purgation of the Sacred Tent was necessitated by the en-
trance of the high priest or that he came there to obtain forgiveness. He approached
Yhwh to purge a sanctuary already deled because it resided with the Israelites in the
midst of their impurities (16:16).
67. Compare the use of cedar wood, crimson yarn, and hyssop in the nonsacricial
ritual for purication of a scale-diseased person (Lev 14:4, 6).
Chapter 8 182
in keeping with the fact that the water of purication (: o; vv. 9, 13, 20
21) contains and functions like blood.
68
Use of this liquid is unique for a pu-
rication offering in that it is applied directly to the body of the person carry-
ing the evil to be remedied. Unlike blood applications to parts of the
sanctuary in other nxon sacrices, this lustration constitutes the rst contact
between the person receiving the benet and the animal victim. Clearly the
special ash water functions as a ritual sponge to absorb contamination from
the person.
Even though the burning of the cow takes place before the rehydrated
ashes are applied to the person, those who participate in the burning of the
cow and storage of the ashes contract a mild impurity (Num 19:7, 8, 10). This
is the paradox of the red cow: it deles pure persons but later puries impure
persons.
If the relative chronology were reversed, we could say that contamination
removed from impure persons is absorbed by the cow and secondarily deles
the ritually pure persons who are involved in burning it. In fact, this is how
Milgrom interprets the ritual.
69
But there are two major questions: First, how
is impurity transferred to the whole cow from the small amount of ashes sepa-
rated from it and applied to the corpse-contaminated person? Second, how
does burning the cow make pure persons impure before the ashes come in
contact with the person carrying corpse contamination?
The two questions are related. Both have to do with gaps involved in the
transfer of impurity, one in terms of space and the other in terms of time. Re-
68. J. Milgrom, The Paradox of the Red Cow, 63; idem, Numbers, 440. In Israel-
ite cult, this ritual is unique in that it involves burning blood (G. Wenham, Num-
bers: An Introduction and Commentary [TOTC; Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1981] 146).
H. Maccoby attempts to resolve the unique relationship between purity and impurity
in the red cow ritual by resorting to diachronic speculation supported by comparison
with other religions. Emphasizing the femaleness of the cow and the fact that else-
where in Leviticus : refers to menstruation, he arrives at the notion that the Red
Cow is the last vestige in the religion of the Israelite Sky-God of the earth-goddess
(Ritual and Morality: The Ritual Purity System and its Place in Judaism [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999] 112; cf. 10511, 11317). But in Num 31:23, as in
ch. 19, : o refers to water for eliminating corpse contamination rather than men-
strual impurity (D. P. Wright, Purication from Corpse-Contamination, 21415
n. 6). Compare the functionally equivalent nxon o in 8:7. B. Levine suggests that
Hebrew : is cognate to Akk. nad, hurl, cast off, and is therefore a variant of I:,
to spatter. If so, when : signies menstruation (e.g., Lev 12:2, 5; 15:19, 20, 24
26, 33) it could refer to the physiological process of spilling blood (Numbers 120
[AB 4; New York: Doubleday, 1993] 46364).
69. Milgrom, The Paradox of the Red Cow, 6272; idem, Numbers, 43843.
garding the latter, D. Wright has suggested that the burning of the red cow
deles prospectively, before actual use in purication.
70
This idea is related
to the fact that on the Day of Atonement the carcasses of inner-sanctum
nxon sacrices dele their handlers (Lev 16:28) even though the carcasses
are not brought into contact with the deled sanctuary or with the blood that
is brought in to cleanse it. According to Milgrom, this is because the dele-
ment of the sanctuary is dangerously contagious. In being purged by the
aat blood it is likely to infect the carcass itself, which therefore has to be
burned.
71
So in effect, delement leaps from the sanctuary to the carcasses.
If it can leap in space (Milgrom), then it can presumably leap in time
(Wright).
In my view, the red cow ritual is not an exceptional purication offering in
the sense that it is for the purication of persons
72
but because it involves di-
rect application of liquid to persons. This liquid, consisting of rehydrated
ashes, contains blood (Num 19:5) and serves as an indirect functional equiv-
alent of blood in other purication offerings.
73
It could be argued that direct
application of the ash water is possible because, unlike manipulation of blood
in other purication offerings, it is done outside the sanctuary precincts. But
more to the point is the fact that this water is not already carrying impurity
before it is applied to the corpse-contaminated person. When the contact oc-
curs and the ash water absorbs the impurity, it is as though this pollution is
transmitted back through time and space to the burning of the cow so that
those involved in the process, including the ofciating and supervising priest,
become impure (vv. 78, 10).
Corpse contamination is transferred from the infected person to the ash
water and to the whole cow of which the ashes are a part (pars pro toto), and
from there to the persons involved in the ritual process of burning the red cow.
In other purication offerings, moral faults or physical ritual impurities follow
the same overall trajectory from the offerer to the animal, but in these cases
an offerer contacts his whole animal at the outset rather than part of it in liquid
form. Then the liquid, blood, is applied to the outer altar or outer sanctum
and incense altar, rather than to the person. In this way the blood, carrying
the moral or physical impurity, affects the sanctuary. Since these outer-altar
or outer-sanctum purication offerings are performed at the sanctuary, the
70. D. Wright, Heifer, Red, ABD 3:116.
71. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 263; cf. idem, Two Kinds, 336.
72. Against Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 205.
73. Cf. ibid., 21213.
Chapter 8 184
ofciating priest is immune to the impurity. However, if he eats the esh of a
purication offering for a moral fault, he does secondarily bear \v, culpabil-
ity (Lev 10:17; cf. 5:1).
Why in the red cow ritual does the absorption of impurity go from the liq-
uid part back to the whole animal rather than the reverse, as in other puri-
cation offerings? Aside from the economy of using one animal to treat many
cases of corpse contamination so that grieving relatives of dead Israelites are
spared expenses of offering sacrices, the red cow ritual avoids bringing corpse
contamination into any contact with the sanctuary. This nxon (Num 19:9, 17)
is performed outside the sacred precincts, and the only interaction with the
sanctuary, which is necessary to make the ritual a sacricial one, is aerial in
nature: the priest sprinkles some blood from the cow seven times toward the
sanctuary (Num 19:4).
74
Correspondingly, the only way corpse contamination
can affect the sanctuary is also aerially, through the moral fault of neglecting
to receive purication by means of the ash water (Num 19:13, 20). If this in-
terpretation is correct, it nails down the exceptional nature of automatic de-
lement and its inapplicability to expiable evils, for which we argued in the
last chapter (ch. 7): the red cow ritual is the only nxon sacrice in connection
with which automatic delement is mentioned, and this delement only oc-
curs when the impure person does not receive the benet of the sacrice.
Milgroms recourse to the red cow ritual (Num 19) to preserve the idea
that delement of the blood in Lev 6:20[27] comes from the altar (see above,
against Zohar) is beset by a factor that renders it inapplicable to the temporal
dynamics of other purication offerings. He identies the problem himself:
The priest who throws the cedar, hyssop, and crimson yarn into the re
(v. 6) is unclean as are the persons who set the cow on the re (vv. 5, 8) and
collect the ashes (v. 10). However, neither the slaughterer of the cow (v. 3)
nor the priest who consecrated its blood (v. 4) is said to have become un-
74. On the sacricial nature of the red cow ritual, see Kurtz, Sacricial Worship,
423; Milgrom, The Paradox of the Red Cow, 6368; repr. Studies in Cultic Theology,
8690; cf. idem, Numbers, 43842. Wright points out the exceptional nature of the
sacrice in having some elements that occur elsewhere in nonsacricial rituals
(Heifer, Red, 115). Those who have (in my opinion wrongly) concluded that the red
cow is not a sacrice include G. B. Gray (Sacrice in the Old Testament: Its Theory
and Practice [Oxford: Clarendon, 1925] 5960), A. Schenker (Recht und Kult im Alten
Testament [OBO 172; Freiburg: Universittsverlag / Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 2000] 15), and S. Weng, who condently dismisses the words x\ nxon , it is
a purication offering, in Num 19:9 as secondary (Beobachtungen zum Ritual mit
der roten Kuh [Num 19.110a], ZAW 93 [1981] 354; cf. 349).
clean. The difference is one of time: Only those who come into contact
with the red cow after the consecration of its blood become unclean.
75
Since Milgrom regards the sprinkling of blood toward the tabernacle, which
he interprets as consecration of the blood, as the functional equivalent of ap-
plying blood to the altar in other purication offerings,
76
we would expect pro-
leptic delement in altar sacrices to begin from the point when the blood is
applied to the altar. But as we have seen earlier, the blood is deled before it
comes into contact with the altar. Why? Perhaps it could be argued that this
is due to a difference in ritual function. The ashes of the red cow, which con-
tain blood (Num 19:5), are later applied directly to persons and objects out-
side the sanctuary (vv. 1122), unlike the blood of other purication offerings,
which is applied to the altar.
77
But if this is the rationale for proleptic dele-
ment, it would undermine the equation between sprinkling the blood of the
red cow toward the sanctuary and putting blood on the altar in other purica-
tion offerings, which is important for Milgrom to establish that the red cow rit-
ual is a sacricial form of nxon.
78
There is a good reason for proleptic delement in the red cow ritual.
Uniquely in Israelite cult, the ashes of this animal have not yet been brought
into contact or identication with any of the cases of impurity that they are
to remedy. This dynamic does not operate in other purication offerings.
Milgrom acknowledges the uniqueness of the red cow: That the aat sys-
tem was articially imposed upon this ritual is betrayed by the fact that those
who prepare the ashes . . . become unclean even though the ashes have not
yet been used.
79
Whether we accept the notion of articiality or not, it is
problematic to impose this unique proleptic quality on the rest of the puri-
cation-offering system.
75. Milgrom, The Paradox of the Red Cow, 67; idem, Numbers, 44041.
76. Idem, The Paradox of the Red Cow, 66; idem, Numbers, 440. On sevenfold
sprinkling as consecration of the blood, see T. Vriezen, The Term Hizza: Lustration
and Consecration, OtSt 7 (1950) 20135, esp. 21418. Similarly, Gorman suggests
that this sevenfold sprinkling is to prepare the blood and cow for further ritual use (The
Ideology of Ritual, 84).
77. Milgrom nds that this unique aspect of the red cow ritual has pre-Israelite par-
allels (The Paradox of the Red Cow, 68; Numbers, 441).
78. Milgrom, The Paradox of the Red Cow, 6667; idem, Numbers, 44041;
cf. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 2023. Contrast the goat for Azazel, which is a
nonsacricial nxon (Lev 16:5), and the nonsacricial elimination ritual outside
the camp in Deut 21:19, which is not a nxon at all.
79. Milgrom, The Paradox of the Red Cow, 72.
Chapter 8 186
Impurity of participants in the red cow ritual comes from
persons to whom the ash water is subsequently applied,
rather than constituting some kind of super-sanctity
Judging as implausible the proleptic delement suggested by Milgrom
and Wright (see above), A. Baumgarten turns instead to a possibility he nds
in Milgroms interpretation of the second bath of the high priest on the Day
of Atonement (Lev 16:24).
80
Milgrom sees no evidence that the high priest
washes because he has been contaminated by the preceding ritual activities,
including the ritual of Azazels goat.
81
Rather, he understands the bath as
removing super-holiness contracted by the high priest when he entered the
inner sanctum.
82
This is an exceptional case because he holds that P has
effectively and permanently eliminated the contagion of sanctums to persons
by its formula kol-hannogea yiqdas whatever (not whoever) touches (it) will
become sanctied (Exod 29:37; 30:2629; Lev 6:11, 20).
83
F. Gorman agrees with Milgrom regarding the high priests second bath.
He places it within the context of a rite of passage as marking the high priests
exit to normality from a marginal status, during which he had entered the in-
ner sanctum and confessed over Azazels goat, thereby contacting the diamet-
rically opposed dynamic qualities of holiness and delement.
84
Baumgartens innovation is to relate the concept of excessive sanctication
to the anthropological theory of M. Douglas that impurity is a state occupying
an anomalous position with regard to the sacred
85
and then to bring together
within a coherent theoretical framework the various cases in which this con-
cept applies.
86
For him impurity is understood as deviance from the norm
80. Baumgarten, The Paradox, 44244, 446.
81. Contra, e.g., Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary, 405; A. Clamer, L-
vitique, Nombres, Deutronome (La Sainte Bible 2; Paris: Letouzey et An, 1946)
129; H. Cazelles, Le Lvitique (La Sainte Bible; 2d ed.; Paris: Cerf, 1958) 8182;
R. Clements, The Broadman Bible Commentary (Nashville: Broadman, 1970) 2:46.
82. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1048; cf. Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri, 38586;
Porter, Leviticus, 131; Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 137; Gerstenberger, Leviticus,
223. Because the high priest, unlike the handler of Azazels goat, must bathe in a holy
place, Matthes concluded that he must wash off holiness rather than impurity (Der
Shnegedanke, 113).
85. Cf. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and
Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966).
86. By expanding the scope of desanctication rituals, Baumgarten follows de Vaux,
who placed in this category the washing of vessels used for boiling nxon esh, the high
priests second full washing on the Day of Atonement, and the personal purications of
in either of the two possible directions.
87
Thus Baumgarten takes the high
priests second bath to be a rite of passage needed to return the High Priest
to the level of normalcy after his encounter with the sacred. For him to put
on his own clothes and rejoin the people without such a rite would be an in-
tolerable intrusion of the sacred into non-sacred realms.
88
Applying the same principle to the red cow, Baumgarten reasons that its
burning does not pollute the participants with the impurity of the corpse-
contaminated person, whose equilibrium is restored to the normal/pure
level by sprinkling with the ashes of the cow. Rather, the impurity of the par-
ticipants results from the fact that they begin the burning ritual from a state
of purity, that is, from the line of normalcy in relation to the sacred, and the
ritual raises them further above the line than they ought to be; hence they
are rendered impure. They therefore need to undergo bathing, washing their
clothes and waiting until sunset before they are pure, i.e., back at the safe
point of lack of anomaly.
89
Along the same line, the inner-sanctum nxon carcasses are incinerated
outside the camp
because they are so sacred, and burning them in the normal manner would
introduce a higher degree of holiness into the camp than can be tolerated.
Furthermore, the man who incinerates them needs to cleanse himself in or-
der to remove the high level of sanctity (not impurity) he has acquired in
the process, a degree too high with which to live in normal realms.
90
Baumgartens theory of rituals that raise status, by means of adding vital
sacred power,
91
which he thinks may apply to the entire category of nxon
sacrices except that of the Nazirite when his/her term is completed (Num
6:14),
92
is attractive in that it provides a consistent explanation for several
87. Baumgarten, The Paradox, 44546.
88. Ibid., 446; cf. Porter, Leviticus, 131; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 104849; J. Hart-
ley, Leviticus (WBC 4; Dallas: Word, 1992) 242; D. P. Wright, Day of Atonement,
ABD 2:73.
90. Ibid., 447. When Baumgarten says here sanctity (not impurity), I assume that
he limits his use of the term impurity to the kind that falls below the line of normalcy.
Otherwise he would contradict his earlier assertion that either of two extremesbeing
closer to or farther from the sacred than appropriatecan appropriately be classied
as impure (p. 445).
91. Ibid., 449.
92. Ibid., 44950.
the assistants who lead Azazels goat into the wilderness and incinerate the inner-sanc-
tum nxon carcasses, as well as the participants in the red cow ritual (Ancient Israel, 461).
Chapter 8 188
problematic ritual phenomena without postulating gaps in space or time.
However, aside from incorrectly obscuring the fundamental distinction be-
tween the impure and sacred domains in Israelite cult,
93
Baumgartens the-
ory raises several serious questions. First, why does the high priests second
bath (v. 24) come after he performs the ritual of Azazels goat in the court-
yard (vv. 2022)? If Baumgarten were correct, we would expect the bath to
occur immediately after application of the purication-offering blood to the
altar (vv. 1819)that is, as soon after his emergence from the Sacred Tent
to rejoin the people as possible.
The delay between the high priests completion of the purication offer-
ings and his washing simultaneously weakens an alternative view that the
high priest puries himself from delement contracted in the course of purg-
ing the sanctuary by the two special purication offerings.
94
Another factor
neutralizes both this alternative and the notion that the high priest puries
himself from delement contracted through placing the sins of the Israelites
on Azazels goat. The high priest is immune to the impurity that he re-
moves,
95
as shown by the fact that he subsequently deposits his special linen
vestments in the outer sanctum and bathes in the sacred precincts (vv. 2324).
Gorman tries to rescue the desanctication theory from the problem of de-
lay by saying that the high priest must perform the ritual of Azazels goat
while in his marginal status. But he acknowledges the conceptual complexity
involved in the high priests becoming polluted with sin while carrying super-
sanctity.
96
His explanation is: Aaron embodies the breakdown of the normal
93. J. Milgrom, Confusing the Sacred and the Impure: A Rejoinder, VT 44
(1994) 55557.
94. See references above in n. 81. At one time Milgrom held this view (Two
Kinds, 336). However, he has subsequently adopted the interpretation of desanctica-
tion (see above). A. Treiyer attempts to mitigate the problem of delay by stressing con-
tinuity between the purication offerings and the ritual of Azazels goat: After having
puried himself and the priesthoodby the blood of the bull from all the sins of the
people that the priests had assumed during the yearand the sanctuary by the blood
of the goat, the high priest would bear upon himself all the sins taken from the sanc-
tuary. In this manner he would be viewed as being lightly contaminated. His hands,
still bloodstained, would be placed upon the head of the scapegoat. All the sins would
be transferred in this way to the desert, blotted out completely from sanctuary and
people (The Day of Atonement and the Heavenly Judgment from the Pentateuch to Rev-
elation [Siloam Springs, Arkansas: Creation Enterprises, 1992] 199; cf. 57, 171). How-
ever, Treiyer does not take into account either the high priests immunity or the
difference between the lists of evils removed by the purication offerings and Azazels
goat, respectively (Lev 16:16, 21).
boundaries of order and structure in his marginal status in order that through
the ritual he enacts he may reconstruct the world of order and meaning and
well-being.
97
A second problem with Baumgartens theory concerns his assessment of
the inner-sanctum nxon carcasses as the remains of sacrices which pro-
vided the extraordinary powerful cleansing agents used to purify the sanctu-
ary.
98
How did these carcasses, which were not taken into the sanctuary or
brought into contact with the outer altar, become so sacred? Third, if the
inner-sanctum animals are so extraordinarily sacred that they are regarded
as impure, how could suet from the same animals be burned on the outer
altar (v. 25)? Fourth, why is the one who leads away Azazels nonsacricial
goat, a kind of nxon (cf. Lev 16:5), required to purify himself (v. 26)? Baum-
garten admits that in this case delement contracted by the handler may be
impurity from the goat.
99
It is true that Ezek 44:19 requires priests to remove their vestments when
they go out from the temple to the people, so that they may not transmit ho-
liness to the people. But whatever the precise meaning here may be, there is
no solid evidence for Baumgartens theory in pentateuchal ritual law. All of
the cases that he adduces can be explained more simply. To start with the
high priests second washing (Lev 16:24a)this is required to renew his puri-
cation preparatory to subsequent ofciation at the altar (vv. 24b25) because
the nonsacricial ritual of Azazels goat has interrupted the continuity of his
sacricial ofciation (cf. Exod 30:20). Compare the fact that a physician must
scrub again before resuming surgery. This is not a unique case of immersion
after sacrice;
100
it is immersion before sacrice.
Gorman is right in pointing out the correspondence between the rst
bathing of the high priest, before he puts on his special linen garments (Lev
16:4), and his second bathing, after he takes them off (vv. 2324). These baths
bracket the unique inner sanctum and Azazels goat nxon rituals, during
which the priest wears special linen garments and following which he returns
to his usual ornate garments.
101
So it does appear that in some sense the high
97. Ibid., 94.
99. Ibid.
100. Contra Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1048. It is true that in the Temple Scroll
(26:10) there is washing after the blood-manipulation segment of the inner-sanctum
sacrice and before the ritual of Azazels goat, but it is an additional purication, and
the high priest only washes his hands and feet.
Chapter 8 190
priest is involved in a communal rite of passage. But there is no rm ground
for Gormans idea that this ritual complex radically violates normal rules by
bringing dynamic holiness from the most holy place into contact with dele-
ment in the court. Methodologically, it is appropriate to look for a solution
within the rules of the ritual system itself before lling the void with anthro-
pological theory of marginality/liminality derived from study of other ritual
systems.
The inner-sanctum nxon carcasses can easily be explained by the pars pro
toto (part for all) principle. The animals are viewed as units, so that some-
thing affecting part of an animal impacts the entire animal. When purica-
tion-offering blood is applied to the contaminated sanctuary on the Day of
Atonement, the carcasses are affected by that contact, and those who handle
them contract ritual impurity because the animals are viewed as units even
though their components are separated.
102
Like the carcasses on the Day of Atonement, the entire red cow is affected
by application to that which is contaminatedin this case, persons. However,
it is a unique instance of the pars pro toto principle in that the cows unity tran-
scends not only a gap in space but also in time so that the burning sacrice
bears future impurity, as if treatment of persons with its ashes has already oc-
curred. As G. Andr puts it, Clearly the uncleanness that the ashes are meant
to remove is associated with them proleptically.
103
It is as though corpse con-
tamination travels back in time and space through the ashes of the cow to its
incineration, where the impurity goes up in smoke. As in the disposal of inner-
sanctum carcasses, this incineration takes place outside the camp, destroys a
ritual sponge that is polluted (cf. Lev 16:27) because a derivative of the same
animal is applied to something/someone in order to remove delement, and
those who participate in the burning become impure.
104
Like automatic de-
102. Cf. Milgrom, Confusing, 55758. On the pars pro toto principle in Israelite
cult, see Milgrom, The Modus Operandi, 11213; Wright, The Disposal of Impurity,
130; Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 81. This kind of ritual synecdoche is a promi-
nent feature of the ritual system. For example, applying blood to part of an altar affects
the entire altar (Exod 30:10; Lev 8:15). In the consecration ceremonies described in
Lev 8, applying anointing oil or blood to parts of priests affects them as whole persons.
With regard to the carcasses, Gilders suggests a simpler answer: impurity driven
from sancta found its way inevitably to the carcass of the animal (Blood Ritual, 130).
In any case, the net effect is the same.
103. G. Andr, xoo ame, TDOT 5:333. Kiuchis suggestion that the person
who burned the heifer became unclean because he had had contact with the sym-
bolic death of the red heifer (The Purication Offering, 138; cf. 13940) is unneces-
sary and lacks support.
104. There are also differences between the inner-sanctum and red cow nxon pro-
cedures: The inner-sanctum nxon carcasses are simply disposed of after they absorb
lement, the pars pro toto dynamic transcends constraints of time and space
operating in the material world. Remember that we are in the world of ritual
here.
105
The verb rpk metaphorically expresses removal of an
impediment to the divine-human relationship
Milgroms hypothesis that outer-sanctum and outer-altar purication offer-
ings purge the sanctuary and its sancta rather than their offerers is founded to
a signicant extent on the idea that nxon blood purges that which it directly
contacts. This, in turn, is largely based on the assumption that similar appli-
cations of purication-offering blood must mean the same thing in Lev 4 as
they do in Lev 16, where they explicitly purge that to which the high priest
physically applies the blood, namely, the sanctuary. The underlying presup-
position is that a given ritual action carries the same meaning in one context
as it does in another.
106
However, we should keep in mind a fundamental
principle of ritual theory: a physical action has no inherent meaning, and
therefore, a given action can carry different meanings in different contexts,
even within the same ritual.
For example, whereas a sevenfold sprinkling in the inner sanctum on the
Day of Atonement purges an area of the Sacred Tent (Lev 16:1416a), the
same activity performed on the outer altar in the course of the same ritual re-
consecrates it (v. 19).
107
The fact that the sanctuary and its sancta are purged
when blood is applied to them on the Day of Atonement does not necessarily
mean that applications of blood to them at other times have the same func-
tion. The decisive factor for the meaning/function of a ritual activity system
is the goal assigned to it by the authority governing the ritual tradition to
105. Milgrom, Confusing, 55758.
106. Rodrguez is off target when he attempts to distinguish between the sevenfold
sprinkling before the veil in Lev 4 and the eight sprinklings in the inner sanctum pre-
scribed by Lev 16 (Substitution, 129). In Lev 16 there is a single sprinkling on the ark
cover, due to the fact that it was not an altar with horns, followed by a sevenfold sprin-
kling in front of it (vv. 1415), which is comparable to the sevenfold sprinklings before
the veil in Lev 4:6, 17.
ritual impurities and moral faults that have already been purged out of the sanctuary.
The ashes of the red cow, on the other hand, are saved and later applied to persons
in order to purify them from corpse contamination. Burning the red cow constitutes
the core of its ritual, but disposal of the inner-sanctum carcasses is only a postrequisite
ritual task. On the Day of Atonement, sevenfold sprinklings of blood are directly ap-
plied to parts of the sanctuary (Lev 16:1416, 1819), but in the red cow ritual a sev-
enfold sprinkling of blood is only in the direction of the sanctuary (Num 19:4).
Chapter 8 192
which it belongs. When it comes to an ancient Israelite ritual, we are depen-
dent on the biblical text to interpret the activities for us (see ch. 1 above).
A. Schenker has noticed that in the Israelite cult the same sacricial cate-
gory can serve different functions. So nothing obligates us to interpret the pu-
rication offering in Lev 4 as purifying the sanctuary, which this chapter does
not mention, simply because this kind of sacrice has that function else-
where.
108
Nevertheless, I retain the rendering purication offering for nxon
because a ritual carrying this designation always has a purifying function of
one kind or another, whether to purify a person from sin
109
or severe bodily
impurities or to purge the sanctuary and camp on the Day of Atonement.
In the context of the purication offering, the piel verb oa always indi-
cates the goal of activity rather than prescribing a specic physical activity,
such as application of blood to sancta.
110
This distancing between oa and
the physical act through which it is accomplished distinguishes the Hebrew
verb from the Akkadian cognate kuppuru, which in ritual contexts generally,
but not always, refers to physical-wiping activity directly applied to the per-
sons or things from which evil is removed.
111
There is a close connection be-
tween medical and ritual uses of kuppuru.
112
I suggest that the distancing of
Hebrew oa from the concrete sense of wiping is due to the fact that the force
of oa combines two models for dealing with evil: the medical/biological and
the legal (see above, ch. 7).
Mary Douglas argues that cleanse is a misleading translation of oa and
prefers the old rendering cover on the basis that in Leviticus the things
that are listed as needing atonement are exemplied by bodily leakages and
108. A. Schenker, Interprtations rcentes et dimensions spciques du sacrice
aat, Bib 75 (1994) 60.
109. Cf. R. Rendtorff, Leviticus (BKAT 3; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Ver-
lag, 1985) 3:220.
110. F. Maass, oa kpr pi. to atone, TLOT 2:626.
111. S. Hills, A Semantic and Conceptual Study of the Root KPR in the Hebrew
Old Testament with Special Reference to the Accadian Kuppuru (Ph.D. diss., Johns
Hopkins University, 1954) esp. pp. 14749, 214, 29193. On kuppuru, cf., e.g., B. Le-
vine, In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms in Ancient
Israel (SJLA 5; Leiden: Brill, 1974) 123; B. Janowski, Shne als Heilsgeschehen: Stu-
dien zur Shnetheologie der Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im
Alten Testament (WMANT 55; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982) 29
60; Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 29199; CAD K 179. Wright points out some in-
stances of kuppuru that appear to reveal an abstraction of the literal meaning yielding
purify, purge without indication of actual wiping (The Disposal of Impurity, 292).
112. Hills, A Semantic and Conceptual Study, 9495, 147; Wright, The Disposal
of Impurity, 29192; CAD K 179.
disease, so clearly not cases in which dirt has to be removed or surfaces pol-
ished.
113
According to the illustrative cases from Leviticus, to atone means
to cover, or recover, cover again, to repair a hole, cure a sickness, mend a rift,
make good a torn or broken covering.
114
In a ring composition structure of
Leviticus that has ch. 19 as its midpoint, Douglas nds a series of damaged
covers, including human skin, garments, and walls of a house. These lead up
to and serve as gures for the violated sanctuary, which stands for the protec-
tive covering of Gods righteousness.
115
The meaning of physical purity and
delement would be to model the protective covenant with God and its
breach.
116
In Douglass view, the purpose of sacricial blood is to repair the breach in
the covering/protection provided by Yhwhs covenant, which is assailed at
certain vulnerable points by sins against righteousness.
117
When the cover-
ing of the universe has been rent, it is not the person who did the deed who
needs urgently to be washed but the covering that needs repair.
118
The thesis of Douglas is profound and carefully worked out from an an-
thropological perspective. I could also cite other biblical passages where sin
results in a need to be covered or recovered, such as Gen 3:67 and Zech 3:3
5, and mention the fact that Neh 3:37 uses the piel verb oa, cover (oan"x
c:\v"v) as the functional equivalent of oa in Jer 18:23 (c:\v"v oan"x ).
119
We can certainly agree that moral or physical evil damages the protective
divine-human relationship. But the crucial linguistic fact remains that in Le-
viticus, oa goal formulas of purication offerings include privative o + evil,
referring to removal of evil from the offerer (see above ch. 6). This meaning is
closer to that of Akkadian kuppuru than to Arabic kafara, cover.
Whether the origin of the verb oa should be sought outside Hebrew,
within Hebrew as a denominative of the noun oa, ransom or compository
payment (see, e.g., Exod 30:1116),
120
or both, it seems impossible to ex-
plain the semantic range of oa without allowing for the possibility that some
meanings of the word are derived by extension or metaphorical usage, a factor
113. M. Douglas, Atonement in Leviticus, JSQ 1 (199394) 116.
114. Ibid., 11718.
115. Ibid., 123.
116. Ibid., 126.
117. Ibid., 129; cf. 128.
118. Ibid., 123.
119. Maass, oa, 625.
120. See, e.g., L. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1955) 14748; cf. 14346, 14951; H. C. Brichto, On Slaughter and Sacrice,
Blood and Atonement, HUCA 47 (1976) 2628, 3435.
Chapter 8 194
that diminishes the relevance of etymology.
121
As S. R. Driver sagely observed
with regard to the Arabic and Akkadian derivations, it does not greatly sig-
nify, in explaining it, whether we start from the idea of covering over or from
that of wiping out: in either case, the idea which the metaphor is intended to
convey is that of rendering null and inoperative.
122
Although the etymology of oa is less than certain and the verb expresses
a conceptual range for which no single English word is entirely appropri-
ate,
123
it is enough for our purposes to understand that it signies the removal
of some impediment to the divine-human relationship, prerequisite to com-
pletion of reconciliation. This may be removal of debt or culpability by means
of compository payment or removal of ritual impurity through purication.
124
As Driver pointed out, make atonement (at-one-ment, reconciliation) may
express a consequence of kipper, but it is not what the word itself denotes.
125
This is supported by the fact that in a purication or reparation offering, oa
performed by a priest is followed by divine forgiveness, expressed by the nipal
of n"o (Lev 4:20, 26, 31, etc.; 5:16, 18, 26[6:7]; 19:22). How could forgiveness
follow reconciliation? Ritual oa must be something preceding completion of
reconciliation/atonement: removal of that which comes between the divine
and human parties and thereby stands in the way of reconciliation.
The idea that oa is prerequisite to reconciliation accords to some extent
with nonritual use of the verb exemplied in Gen 32:21[20], where Jacob
says to himself before meeting Esau: Let me oa his face with the present
that goes before me, and afterwards I shall see his face; perhaps he will lift up
my face. Here oa refers to that which Jacob can do to take away Esaus
ground for hatred against him. However, while this is assured because it is
under Jacobs control, reconciliation is not assured, because it depends on
Esaus reaction. Similarly, performance of cultic oa does not automatically
121. On oa, see, e.g., Levine, In the Presence, 5577; cf. 12327; Janowski, Shne,
esp. 95102; B. Lang, oa kipper, TDOT 7:288303; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1079
84; Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 87109. S. R. Driver concluded that oa is al-
ways used metaphorically (Propitiation, in A Dictionary of the Bible [ed. J. Hastings;
New York: Scribners, 1911] 4:12829).
122. Ibid., 128; cf. 131.
123. Cf. Hills, A Semantic and Conceptual Study, 28791. Wright summarizes:
The verb has a general meaning of appease; propitiate; expiate and when used with
the purgation offering has more the notion of purify though the other meanings can
be present (Day of Atonement, 7273).
124. See Gilderss broad rendering of oa as effect removal (Blood Ritual, 29,
13538, 17778).
125. Driver, Propitiation, 131.
result in reconciliation with God.
126
While it is performed with reference to
God at his altar, the actions through which it is accomplished are carried
out in the human arena: God is neither the subject nor the object of the
verb.
127
Reconciliation is possible only by direct involvement of Yhwhs
volition, as signied by the verb n"o, forgive. Purication offerings are not
a form of magic.
128
Since I interpret outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings as re-
moving evil from persons in order to restore their status with Yhwh following
what could be regarded as a liminal period of a disturbed divine-human re-
lationship,
129
I agree with A. Marx when he views the object (including indi-
rect object) of the verb oa as always indicating the beneciary of a given
ritual, whether that beneciary is the individual, the community, the altar, or
the sanctuary.
130
But Marx overemphasizes the idea of passage, which he
nds to be the common denominator of the various circumstances in which
purication offerings are performed. He regards this class of sacrices as com-
prising a system of rites of passage for the Israelite community, which covers
various kinds of transitions, including reintegration of sinners or impure per-
sons, transition from the secular state to the sacred state, the return of the
Nazirite from holiness to his normal state,
131
and regular alternations of time.
Furthermore, he interprets combinations of purication and burnt offerings
126. Notice that cultic use of oa differs from that of Gen 32 in that the former
does not have the aggrieved party (i.e., God) as the object of this verb.
127. P. Garnet, Atonement Constructions in the Old Testament and the Qumran
Scrolls, EvQ 46 (1974) 148.
128. Cf. A. R. S. Kennedy and J. Barr, Sacrice and Offering, in Dictionary of the
Bible (ed. J. Hastings; rev. ed. F. C. Grant and H. H. Rowley; New York: Scribners,
1963) 875.
129. While Wright follows Milgroms general nxon theory, he agrees with the rite
of passage idea in regard to tolerated impurities: acquiring one of these impurities
is not a punctual or static matter, but one involving a linear progression through time:
rst contracting impurity, then being impure for a period of time, then purifying. And
this process is one of movement into a threatening and restricted statea liminal
statewith consequent movement therefrom. . . . The experience of impurity is a
type of rite de passage with stages of separation, marginality (or liminality), and reinte-
gration (or reaggregation). The process of impurity, like other rites de passage, is status
determining (The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity, in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient
Israel [ed. G. A. Anderson and Saul M. Olyan; JSOTSup 125; Shefeld: JSOT Press,
1991] 173, incl. n. 3; cf. 174). However, the rules regarding more serious prohibited
intentional impurities generally seem to leave one in perpetual liminality (p. 174).
130. A. Marx, Sacrice pour les pchs ou rite de passage? Quelques rexions
sur la fonction du aat, RB 96 (1989) 45.
131. Cf. Jenson, Graded Holiness, 51.
Chapter 8 196
as working together to provide dynamics of passage. Purication offerings
effect separation from the previous state, and burnt offerings accomplish ag-
gregation to a new or renewed state. Consequently, Marx suggests that the
purication offering should be termed sacrice of separation.
132
Some problems with the system of Marx are as follows:
133
1. Purication offerings can be involved in rites of passage, such as conse-
cration ceremonies (e.g., Lev 8:1417), and within the conceptual system of
Israselite ritual they do change states of persons or things. However, passage
is not a dening functional trait of this category of sacrices because it is not
unique to them. Burnt offerings can also be involved with purication offer-
ings in transitions of state (see below), and a burnt offering is included in the
consecration ceremonies (e.g., vv. 1821) along with the special ordination
(cx"o) sacrice (vv. 2228), which is primarily if not exclusively a rite of
passage. Like purication offerings, a reparation offering accomplishes oa,
thereby removing an impediment to the divine-human relationship, prerequi-
site to reconciliation when forgiveness is granted directly by Yhwh (5:16, 18,
26[6:7]; 19:22). Even well-being offerings provide some kind of oa (17:1012).
2. In Lev 5:613 and Num 15:2428, lone purication offerings and com-
binations of purication offerings with burnt offerings are functionally equiv-
alent. Therefore, if it is true that purication offerings are rites of passage,
they must not be limited to separation. In the passages just mentioned,
whether or not a burnt offering accompanies a purication offering is due to
quantitative considerations. The burnt offering supplements the quantity of
offering material and thereby brings the expiatory power of the purication
offering up to its requisite level, either by enhancing the lesser offerings of
poor persons (Lev 5) or by expanding the scope of a purication offering to
embrace the entire community (Num 15).
134
3. While it is true that purication offerings are involved in consecration,
this is because they serve a purifying function that is prerequisite to transition
to a state of enhanced intimacy with Yhwh, whether a holy state (e.g., Lev
132. Marx, Sacrice pour les pchs, 3748. The classic work on rites of passage
is A. van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
Cf. E. Leachs attempt to apply similar concepts (including liminality, separation, and
aggregation) to sacrice in general (The Logic of Sacrice, in Anthropological Ap-
proaches to the Old Testament [ed. B. Lang; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985] 13650).
133. Cf. J. Milgroms penetrating critique of Marx: The aat: A Rite of Pas-
sage? RB 98 (1991) 12024; idem, Leviticus 116, 28992.
134. Cf. Milgrom, The aat: A Rite of Passage? 122.
page is a pica short
8:15)
135
or a status of authorization for levitical service (Num 8:522; see esp.
vv. 8, 12, 21). However, the consecration activity par excellence is not the pu-
rication offering, whether alone or in combination with the burnt offering
but, rather, the application of holy anointing oil (Exod 28:41; 29:7; 30:30;
40:13, 15; Lev 8:12, 30).
136
4. It is true that in the cultic calendars of Lev 23 and Num 2829, calen-
dric purication offerings are prescribed in connection with important times
of the year, and these performances are not mandated by specic needs for
purication. However, there is no warrant for disconnecting their function
from the basic idea of purication carried by their nxon label and the goal
verb oa (Num 28:22, 30; 29:5).
Conclusion
The fact that purication-offering blood contaminates (Lev 6:20[27]) be-
fore it is applied to the sanctuary and/or its sancta can be explained by its
function to remove sin or physical ritual impurity from the offerer. However,
three purication offerings are exceptional: initial decontamination of the al-
tar, inner-sanctum sacrices on the Day of Atonement, and the red cow ritual
performed outside the camp.
Milgrom has reconstructed a general paradigm of purication-offering dy-
namics on the basis of the exceptional initial purication of the altar and
inner-sanctum offerings, in which nxon blood purges the sacred objects and/
or areas to which it is physically applied. But we have found that this kind of
purgation does not apply in outer-altar and outer-sanctum sacrices. I agree
with Milgrom that individual expiable sins throughout the year have commu-
nal consequences in that they pollute the sanctuary.
137
However, whereas he
holds that outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings purge the sanc-
tuary from the sins that have already polluted the sanctuary, I contend that
these sacrices result in mitigated pollution of the sanctuary, which must
consequently be purged on the Day of Atonement.
135. For my suggestion about how the Nazirites nal purication offering serves
this function in relation to culmination of his/her holy status, see on Num 6:14 and 16
in my Leviticus, Numbers (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004) 535.
136. Milgrom, The Hattat: A Rite of Passage? 121.
137. Cf. K. C. Hanson, Sin, Purication, and Group Process, in Problems in Bib-
lical Theology: Essays in Honor of Rolf Knierim (ed. H. T. C. Sun et al.; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1997) 177.
198
Chapter 9
The Scope of Expiability
In this chapter we investigate the nature of evils that can be removed from
offerers through noncalendric outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication of-
ferings. We have already found that the outer-altar type deals with moral
faults and severe physical ritual impurities of individual Israelites, and outer-
sanctum sacrices remedy moral faults of the high priest or the community.
We have also found that, whereas nxon sacrices accomplish purication
(o) from bodily impurities, in a moral case, achieving the ritual goal only
serves as a prerequisite to divine forgiveness (n"o). So more is at stake when
moral faults are concerned.
Here we are concerned with two questions:
1. How do physical ritual impurities relate to moral faults?
2. What kinds of moral faults can or cannot be removed from offerers by
nxon sacrices? In other words, what are the limits of expiability for
moral faults?
Physical ritual impurities and moral faults
are related but distinct
A purication offering can remedy a state of severe physical ritual im-
purity (Lev 12:68; 14:19, 22, 31, 15, 30, etc.), contraction of which is permit-
ted
1
but purication from which is required before contact with sacred
objects or areas, in order to safeguard the boundaries of holiness connected
with the Presence of Yhwh at the sanctuary (e.g., 7:2021; cf. 15:31). Such
impurity is a category belonging to a conceptual system and should not be
confused with ordinary dirtiness
2
or literal pathological conditions encoun-
tered in the practice of medicine,
3
which are subject to mundane constraints
of cause and effect that operate in the material world.
1. D. Wright, Two Types of Impurity in the Priestly Writings of the Bible, Koroth
9 (1988) 18184.
3. L. Grabbe, Leviticus (OTG; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1993) 52.
The Scope of Expiability 199
A nxon sacrice providing oa for physical ritual impurity results in
physical ritual purity (o). Forgiveness (n"o) is not needed, because con-
tracting a bodily impurity does not, by itself, constitute a moral fault.
4
How-
ever, inexpiable wanton failure or expiable inadvertent failure to follow
Yhwhs commands regarding bodily impurities, whether by contracting an
impurity that he prohibits (Lev 18:19; 20:18; 21:14, 11; Num 6:67, 912),
contacting something holy while in a state of impurity (Lev 7:2021; 22:3
7), or failing to undergo timely ritual purication (5:23; Num 19:13, 20),
is moral fault.
5
Physical ritual impurities are not moral evils. In Lev 14 the non-moral
nature of leprosy is shown by the fact that it can affect fabrics and houses
as well as humans.
6
Since some impurities, such as scaly skin disease (so-
called leprosy; Lev 1314) and genital uxes (Lev 15), are contracted in-
voluntarily and thus unavoidably, their bearers could not be held account-
able for moral violations. Childbirth, which generates severe impurity (Lev
12) and results from voluntary sexual intercourse that causes a light impu-
rity (Lev 15:18), is necessary for the divinely ordained existence of human
society (cf. Gen 1:28; 9:1).
7
D. P. Wright demonstrates that, although terms for moral faults are not
used with reference to bodily impurities, these categories appear to have
closer connections than we would expect. For example:
8
4. J. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship of the Old Testament (trans. J. Martin; Minneapolis:
Klock & Klock, 1980; repr. of 1863) 41617, 420; R. Rendtorff, Leviticus (BKAT 3;
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1985) 3:176, 21617.
5. J. Milgrom, The Graduated aat of Leviticus 5:113, JAOS 103 (1983) 251
52; idem, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 31013; D. Wright, The
Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian
Literature (SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 19 n. 9. For a clear analysis of
distinctions between the various kinds of impurities, including between tolerated and
prohibited categories, see idem, Two Types, 18093; idem, The Spectrum of Priest-
ly Impurity, in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel (ed. G. A. Anderson and Saul M.
Olyan; JSOTSup 125; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1991) 15081.
6. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 121; cf. F. Gorman, Divine Presence and Commu-
nity: A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus (ITC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997)
88. It is true that outside the cultic legislation leprosy could be a divine punishment
for sin (Num 12:10; 2 Kgs 5:27; 15:5; 2 Chr 26:1921), but even in those cases the skin
disease itself is not sin but an impure condition that results from sin.
7. T. Frymer-Kensky, Pollution, Purication, and Purgation in Biblical Israel,
in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth (ed. C. L. Meyers and M. OConnor;
Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 4034; Wright, The Spectrum, 157,
171; Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, viiviii.
8. Wright, Two Types, 191; idem, The Spectrum, 152, 165; cf. J. R. Porter, Le-
viticus (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 37; H. Ringgren, xoo
Chapter 9 200
1. Inadvertent sins are similar to permitted impurities contracted
involuntarily in that they do not involve conscious commission.
2. The same kind of sacrice (outer-altar purication offering) is required
to purge (oa) both sins and some permitted impurities.
9
3. Moral faults generate a kind of ritual impurity.
10
In what appear to be diverse categories of evil, whether causing them is tol-
erated or prohibited, Wright nds a spectrum of impurity that comprehends
all adverse conditions or actions, unintended or intended, that are deleterious
to what is holy. . . . If all these conditions or actions are not sins, they all are
at least a threat to what is holy and hence must either be, when serious, avoided,
or when less grave, controlled. For the Priestly writer, all the delement-creating
conditions were of the same conceptual family.
11
Thus Wrights taxonomy of
evils sensitively recognizes commonality between categories while acknowl-
edging differences between them. N. Kiuchis approach is also well balanced:
while he nds a clear distinction between nxon, sin, and physical ritual im-
purity, he concludes that these categories are not incompatible with each other.
A nxon is a kind of uncleanness, produced on a dimension different from that
of natural uncleanness. Therefore, there is no essential distinction between
purication and expiation.
12
G. Andr is less successful when he blurs bound-
aries by saying: Instances of outward uncleanness require purication through
water, but sometimes a ceremony of expiation is also needed because the un-
cleanness can be understood as sin and guilt.
13
It appears that the relationship between moral faults and physical ritual
impurities can be further claried by considering their respective relation-
ships to death. Moral faults that are inexpiable, including wanton neglect of
required sacrices for expiable evils, lead to terminal/irrevocable destructive
9. Cf. S. R. Driver, Propitiation, in A Dictionary of the Bible (ed. J. Hastings;
New York: Scribners, 1911) 4:132.
10. Cf. Levine, Leviticus, 19. See esp. Lev 16:26, where the handler of Azazels
goat, which carries only moral faults (vv. 2122), must perform ablutions to purify
himself.
11. Wright, Two Types, 191; cf. idem, The Spectrum, 165; Porter, Leviticus, 37;
Cover, Sin, Sinners, 3435.
Function (JSOTSup 56; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1987) 65; cf. 64, 66.
13. G. Andr, xoo ame, TDOT 5:331.
ame, TDOT 5:332; B. Levine, Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary: Philadelphia:
Jewish Publication Society, 1989) 19; J. Milgrom, Rationale for Cultic Law: The
Case of Impurity, Semeia 45 (1989) 1067; R. C. Cover, Sin, Sinners: Old Testa-
ment, ABD 6:3435.
punishment: the death of the sinner and/or the divine penalty of na, cut-
ting off (that is, most likely, extirpation of his line of descendants; e.g., Lev
20:23; Num 15:3031; 19:13, 20).
14
Physical ritual impurities, on the other
hand, are generated by an existing human state of mortality that must be kept
separate from Yhwh.
A number of scholars have recognized that the concept of death appears
to be the common denominator between the various tolerated physical im-
purities that appear in pentateuchal ritual law.
15
But H. Maccoby percep-
tively qualies the role of death: because discharges from the reproductive
organs that are not physically dangerous cause impurity, but life-threatening
loss of blood from a wound is not impure, he concludes that ritual impurity
may be an expression of the birthdeath cycle that comprises mortality.
16
The human cycle of procreation and death must be excluded from the
realm of the eternal God, who creates life without suffering death.
17
So
whereas moral faults cause death (cf. Rom 6:23), physical ritual impurities
arise from an existing state of mortality, which, according to Gen 3, has bur-
dened the human race as a consequence of the moral fault of disobedience
committed by Adam and Eve (cf. Rom 5:12, 14).
14. Cf. D. Wold, The Meaning of the Biblical Penalty Kareth (Ph.D. diss., Uni-
versity of California at Berkeley, 1978) 25155; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 45760;
B. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature, in Pomegranates and
Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 13.
15. E.g., N. Fglister, Shne durch BlutZur Bedeutung von Leviticus 17,11,
in Studien zum Pentateuch (ed. G. Braulik; Vienna: Herder, 1977) 158; Kiuchi, The
Purication Offering, 63; Andr, xo o ame, 331; Wright, The Spectrum,
177; Milgrom, Rationale for Cultic Law, 1039; idem, Leviticus 116, 76768,
10023; idem, The Rationale for Biblical Impurity, JANES 22 (1993) 10711, esp.
10910; idem, Leviticus 1722 (AB 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000) 1371; idem, Le-
viticus 2327 (AB 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2001) 2457. Cf. F. Gormans interpreta-
tion of a ritual purication (from scaly skin disease) as effecting the individuals
passage from death to life (The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the
Priestly Theology [JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990] 15253, 16279).
16. Maccoby, Ritual and Morality, 49; cf. esp. 3132, 48, 50, 2078; Milgrom ac-
cepts Maccobys qualication: I now realize that I must amend my theory: not all
blood from living persons is an impurity source, only reproductive blood. Now my the-
ory of life/holiness versus death/impurity . . . is actually strengthened. The zab and
zab (blood) are functionally equal. Their issue produces life; their loss wastes life
(Milgrom, Leviticus 2327, 2463). Similarly, Gorman attributes the impurity of sexual
intercourse to an ambiguous situation in which life and death are brought together
(Divine Presence, 92). Cf. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 41720.
Chapter 9 202
We have found that the purication offering treats both moral and physi-
cal aspects of restoration,
18
which correspond to the two areas of benet pro-
vided by Yhwh according to Ps 103:3ax"nn"a" xo a:\v"a" n"o ,
who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases (nrsv). When
such a sacrice remedies a physical impurity that arises from a mortal state
through no unlawful intent, the ritual function is more compatible with a
medical perspective than with a legal one. The fact that the same kind of
sacrice provides oa for violation of a divine command that incurs legal
liability to Yhwh reecting damage to the relationship with him suggests that
the concern is with moral healing in the process of fullling the legal, that
is, relational, obligation.
19
Nondeant sinners can receive the benet of expiation
through sacrice, but deant sinners cannot
An outer-altar or outer-sanctum purication offering can remedy liability
to Yhwh (but not liability to human persons or society) incurred by an in-
advertent (roots O/O) violation
20
of an ethical or ritual commandment
(\xo) of Yhwh when the sin becomes known to the sinner (Lev 4:2, 1314,
2223, 2728; Num 15:2224, 27).
21
Leviticus 5:113 lacks terms for inad-
18. Milgrom, Rationale for Cultic Law, 106.
19. So pentateuchal ritual law is not legalistic! (cf. A. Bchler, Studies in Sin and
Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the First Century [New York: KTAV, 1967]
xxvxxx). S. Hills reminds us of the broader implications of moral healing. In the He-
brew Bible there is a strong connection between Gods personal attitudes of wrath
and mercy and mans concrete, bodily existence. To be under Gods wrath and curse
meant for one to feel it in his body, in weakness, disease, and failure. To enjoy Gods
favor, to possess his blessing, meant to be strong, full of health and success. Thus, if
KPR is the turning aside of divine anger, it must, at the same time, mean healing of
the body and restoration of fortune, it must mean health and strength and prosperity,
and such is the fact everywhere stressed (therefore the problem of Job and Ps. 73) (A
Semantic and Conceptual Study of the Root KPR in the Hebrew Old Testament with
Special Reference to the Accadian Kuppuru [Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University,
1954] 272). At the same time, operation of the medical model does not negate indi-
vidual legal responsibility (cf. G. Roy Sumpter, Crime, Individual Culpability and
Punishment, JETS 16 [1973] 22327).
20. Milgrom holds that O does not refer to unconsciousness but, rather, to ac-
cidental violation of the law or deliberate action without knowledge of its wrongful
nature (The Cultic O and Its Inuence in Psalms and Job, JQR 58 [1967] 115
25; esp. 118). Levine summarizes the two related aspects of inadvertence under-
stood by the rabbis: (1) inadvertence with respect to the facts of law; and (2) inadver-
tence with respect to the nature of the act (Leviticus, 19).
21. Milgrom maintains that the category of religious commandments (n\xo )
includes ethical as well as ritual laws enforceable only by God, but not civil laws
vertence but provides for a graduated nxon sacrice,
22
following confes-
sion (v. 5), to expiate for cases that could be classied as sins of omission/
neglect,
23
including failure to testify (v. 1) and forgetting (\:oo c"v:\, and it
escapes him) the need to perform a duty to Yhwh (vv. 24).
24
To sharpen our perspective, it is helpful to compare an Israelites legal lia-
bility to Yhwh with a modern Americans liability under United States law.
As in U.S. law, Israelite negligence was culpable when the offender had a le-
gal duty to act. However, unlike parties responsible for most U.S. crimes,
which require the defendants unlawful state of mind to accompany a volun-
tary unlawful act, Israelites were accountable to Yhwh for violations of which
they were unaware when they committed them. In a sense these inadvertent
22. On the graduated (rabbinic, lit., ascending and descending) nxon in Lev
5:113, see Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 30718; cf. Levine, Leviticus, 2829.
23. Levine distinguishes between sins of commission in Lev 4:135 and of omis-
sion in 5:113 (ibid., 1920, 2528); cf. Rendtorff, Leviticus, 18990.
24. On forgetting in vv. 24, see Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 30.
enforceable by man (Leviticus 116, 230). Cf. M. M. Kalisch, A Historical and Critical
Commentary on the Old Testament, with a New Translation: Leviticus (2 vols.; London:
Longman, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 186772) 1:170, 187; D. Hoffmann, Das Buch
Leviticus (Berlin: Poppelauer, 19056) 175; Levine, Leviticus, 18. However, N. Snaith
has asserted that no sin-offering had anything to do with deliberate sin or with sin in
the moral and ethical sense. The sin-offering had to do with accidental breaking or
omission of the ritual laws of uncleanness (The Sprinkling of Blood, ExpTim 82
[197071] 24). Similarly, in differentiating the thought of the Priestly Torah from
that of the Holiness School, I. Knohl contends that in the conception of the former,
the divine commandments are exclusively ritual in nature and have nothing to do
with the sphere of social ethics (The Priestly Torah versus the Holiness School: Ideo-
logical Aspects, in Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division
A: The Bible and Its World [Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1990] 52;
idem, The Sanctuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School [Minne-
apolis, Fortress, 1995] 175). Against Knohl, Milgrom effectively defends an ethical P
(Milgrom, Leviticus 2327, 244046): For example, would Ps theology allow a de-
frauder who voluntarily returned his stolen object without taking an imprecatory
oath (cf. 5:2026; Knohl 1995: 23940) to be exempt (after paying his civil ne) from
any responsibility to atone before God? (pp. 244041). Regarding Lev 5:2026, Mil-
grom remarks: P imposes a 20 percent ne for each case of fraud. Furthermore, the
defrauder must pay the ne to his victim before he makes restitution to God (the
asam) for the false oath (Milgrom 1976a 11011). Clearly, even if the cases were not
compounded by a false oath, P would have maintained the 20 percent ne for the sin
against man (jus)! Can there be any doubt that in Ps system, though not expressed
in Ps cultic legislation, is hidden an entire regimen of ethics? (p. 2442). Compare
D. Davies, who views Israels holiness in terms of an ordered network of social relation-
ships and nds that the holiness of God in Leviticus is a conception which is ex-
pressed in ethical terms as well as in terms of perfection and completeness (An
Interpretation of Sacrice in Leviticus, ZAW 89 [1977] 398; cf. 39697).
Chapter 9 204
violations could be compared to strict liability offenses in the modern legal
spheres of torts and criminal law, for which liability is imposed even when
there is no fault involving unlawful intent.
25
As mentioned above, moral faults include violations of Yhwhs regulations
with regard to physical impurity. If such a violation is unintentional, it may be
remedied by a purication offering (Lev 5:23, 6; Num 6:912), but other-
wise, the offender is subject to divine punishment (Lev 7:2021; 20:18; 22:3;
Num 19:13, 20).
26
In Num 15:3031 a person who sins high-handedly (o a ; i.e., de-
antly), is condemned to extirpation (na), by contrast with inadvertent sin-
ners, who can offer purication offerings and be forgiven (vv. 2229).
27
As
K. Koch recognizes, this contrast between expiation and extirpation indi-
cates that they are mutually exclusive: an extirpated sinner is barred from
the benet of sacricial oa, even though the death of such a person may
accomplish a kind of oa for the rest of his/her community by purging it of
the evildoer (Num 25:13).
28
In the contrast between treatment of the two kinds of sin in Num 15
inadvertent versus deant sinwe nd a basic principle of Israelite cultic
justice: Yhwh provides the opportunity for sacricial oa prerequisite to for-
giveness only for those whose sins are not committed in deance against
him. Sacricial oa is a privilege granted by Yhwh, not an inalienable right.
Inadvertent sin is by denition nondeant, because the sinner does not
know that he is violating a divine command (cf. Lev 4:1314, 2223, 2728).
In legal terminology, inadvertence automatically rules out the possibility of
mens rea, an unlawful state of mind on the part of the offender, that accom-
panies the actus reus, the unlawful act.
29
However, some moral offenses expi-
able by nxon sacrices are not inadvertent (5:14).
30
Nevertheless, each of
25. See Criminal Law and Procedure, 46, and Torts, 14, 3839, legal summa-
ries in WestWeek West Bar Review (Washington, D.C.: West Publishing, 1996), cour-
tesy of Rita D. Giebel, Attorney at Law.
26. Cf. Wright, Two Types, 18487.
27. Compare with the parallelism between Ps 19:13[12] and 14[13], where n\xO ,
errors/inadvertent sins, are grouped with n\no: , hidden things (v. 13), and cI ,
insolent/presumptuous ones, appear with vOo, transgression (v. 14; J. Calvin,
Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony
[Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996] 341).
28. K. Koch, Shne und Sndenvergebung um die Wende von der exilischen zur
nachexilischen Zeit, EvT 26 (1966) 33132.
29. Cf. Criminal Law and Procedure, 45.
30. Cf. A. Rodrguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus (AUSDS 3; Berrien
Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979) 148.
these expiable cases involves some kind of mitigating factor that establishes its
afnity with inadvertent sins rather than with deant violations.
31
As exegetes have recognized, if Num 15 means that inadvertent sins can be
expiated (vv. 2229) but intentional/advertent sins cannot (vv. 3031), this pas-
sage conicts with texts indicating that at least some deliberate sins are expi-
able, whether through a purication offering (Lev 5:1, 56) or a reparation
offering (Lev 5:2026[6:17]; Num 5:58).
32
Some scholars have attempted to
resolve this tension by interpreting the faults in Num 15:2229 as nondeant
31. Ibn Ezra mitigates the offense in Lev 5:1 by saying that the witness forgot to
testify but later remembered. However, the text does not indicate such a qualication.
A. Spiro suggests that in this verse an individual witnesses another person contacting
impurity or pronouncing an oath (cf. vv. 24) and fails to remind that person of his
condition or oath when he forgets. Although the sin of the witness is deliberate and
therefore requires confession and repentance, it is not serious because it has not yet
led to a violation by the second person, who may contact something sacred in a
state of impurity or break his oath (A. Spiro, A Law on the Sharing of Informa-
tion, PAAJR 28 [1959] 95101). But vv. 14 are formulated as discrete cases, there
is no indication in v. 1 that withholding testimony concerns an action of another
person that has not yet led to sin, and Spiro does not explain why such a witness
would be culpable when he hears an adjuration/imprecation (v. 1), apparently calling
for testimony. A. Schenker attempts to downgrade the seriousness of withholding testi-
mony by placing it in the category of intentional sins without malice, as opposed to
intentional sins with malice (cf. Lev 5:2124[6:25]; Once Again, the Expiatory
Sacrices, JBL 116 [1997] 69899). But the biblical text does not indicate malice or
its absence in these cases as it does in connection with distinctions between rst-
degree murder and manslaughter (Num 35:2023; Deut 4:42; 19:4, 6, 11).
32. Cf., e.g., J. Herrmann, Die Idee der Shne im Alten Testament: Eine Untersu-
chung ber Gebrauch und Bedeutung des Wortes kipper (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905) 96;
P. Saydon, Sin-Offering and Trespass-Offering, CBQ 8 (1946) 397; J. Milgrom, The
Priestly Doctrine of Repentance, RB 82 (1975) 186200; idem, Cult and Conscience:
The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance (SJLA 18; Leiden: Brill, 1976) 108
10; idem, Atonement in the OT, IDBSup 8081; idem, Leviticus 116, 301; idem,
Leviticus 1722, 1425; G. A. Anderson, review of Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 116: A
New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, CBQ 55 (1993) 763. N. Snaith
interprets the nxon sacrice as having to do with unwitting (Oz) offenses and
cases in which the offense is hidden (c"v:) from the sinner, and the cOx sacrice
(for which he suggests the label compensation-offering) as dealing with faults that
cause damage, whether deliberate or unwitting. So he has no difculty recognizing
that Lev 5:2026 deals with deliberate sin remedied by an cOx (The Sin-Offering and
the Guilt-Offering, VT 15 [1965] 7374, 7780). However, grasping the difculty that
in Lev 5:1 the offense for which a nxon sacrice is required (cf. v. 6) is neither un-
witting nor hidden from the sinner, Snaith nevertheless maintains that it falls within
the scope of the purication offering because it does not involve property damage and
the text does not say that the sinner deliberately refused to speak up (p. 80). Elsewhere
he categorically asserts that no sin-offering had anything to do with deliberate sin
(The Sprinkling of Blood, 24). But if the sin in 5:1 is neither unwitting nor hid-
den, what else could it be if it is not deliberate?
Chapter 9 206
sins of error/weakness (roots O/O), whether inadvertent or intentional, as
opposed to deant sins in vv. 3031.
33
However, P. Saydon points out that
such a broad interpretation of words from the roots O/O in Num 15 is in-
consistent with their usage in Lev 45, where inadvertence is in view.
34
Since Milgrom nds that in Priestly texts instances of required confession
by the sinner (including Lev 5:5; Num 5:7) coincide with cases of deliberate
sins expiable by sacrice, his solution is to regard confession as a legally
weighted expression of repentance that reduces deliberate sins to the category
of inadvertent sins in order to render them expiable (cf. b. Yoma 86b).
35
Thus,
following rabbinic interpretation (e.g., b. Sebu. 13a), Milgrom understands
Num 15:3031 as barring sacricial atonement to the unrepentant sinner,
but not to the deliberate sinner who has mitigated his offense by his repen-
tance.
36
All deliberate sins are regarded as presumptuous unless they are
tempered by subsequent acts of repentance, such as voluntary confession and
restitution specied by Lev 5:2026; Num 5:58.
37
33. See, e.g., C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testa-
ment (trans. J. Martin; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952 [orig. 1874]) 2:303; A. B.
Davidson, The Theology of the Old Testament (8th ed.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1952
[1st publ. 1907]) 315; A. Clamer, Lvitique, Nombres, Deutronome (La Sainte Bible
2; Paris: Letouzey et An, 1946) 46; R. H. Elliott, Atonement in the Old Testament,
RevExp 59 (1962) 24. For A. Mdebielle the antithesis in Num 15:2231 between
O and o sins is a simple contrast between expiable and inexpiable offenses,
respectively. He describes the former as error that comprises the vast range of faults,
more or less serious, more or less voluntary, which have their source in human frailty.
These include all the kinds of moral evil that appear in Lev 16: vOo, nxon, and \v.
But he regards o , high-handed, sin as another category, the only class of sins
that cannot be expiated through sacrice, because of their exceptional gravity as auda-
cious and scandalous sins that openly attack the authority of the king of Israel, com-
mitted with an unpardonable malice (LExpiation dans LAncien et le Nouveau
Testament [SPIB; Rome: Pontical Biblical Institute, 1923] 85).
34. Saydon, Sin-Offering, 395.
35. Milgrom, The Priestly Doctrine, 195205; idem, Cult and Conscience, 119
27; idem, Leviticus 116, 3012, 37378. While Lev 5:2026 deals with deliberate sins
without calling for confession, Milgrom regards this case as paralleled and supple-
mented by Num 5:68, where the requirement of confession is added (The Priestly
Doctrine, 19293). Although Milgrom includes Lev 16:21 as an instance of confes-
sion for deliberate sin that is expiable by sacrice (ibid., 200; idem, Leviticus 116,
301), this case does not really belong here because the ritual of Azazels goat is non-
sacricial in nature, as Milgrom recognizes: It is not an offering to God but an elimi-
nation of sin (The Priestly Doctrine, 195 n. 32). As G. A. Anderson has shown, the
rabbis and the Qumran community developed different answers to the question of de-
liberate sins (The Interpretation of the Purication Offering [nxon] in the Temple
Scroll [11QTemple] and Rabbinic Literature, JBL 111 [1992] 1735).
36. Milgrom, The Priestly Doctrine, 196; idem, Cult and Conscience, 10910.
Cf. Rashi and Ramban on Num 15:31.
But how is it possible to understand Num 15:3031 as referring to a sinner
who lacks post hoc repentance? These verses only describe the nature of the
sin when it is committed: high-handed, that is, deant, as in Exod 14:8,
38
and as Milgrom recognized when he interpreted o a in Num 15:30:
in open deance.
39
As Milgrom has also acknowledged, vv. 3031 do not
mandate confession for high-handed sins against God, which would be
expected if a remedy through repentance were possible in such cases.
Furthermore, F. Crsemann contends that because the cases of intentional
sin in Lev 5:2026 and Num 5:68 are presented in such detail, we should
not generalize them as models for other cases that are also expiable, even by
the rituals of the Day of Atonement:
We nd no example by which serious infractions of the fundamental cultic
orderespecially for cases for which cutting off is prescribedcan by
confession and repentance be included among the offenses covered by the
comprehensive forgiveness of the Day of Atonement.
40
Like Milgrom, A. Rodrguez and M. F. Rooker attempt to introduce a lack
of post hoc repentance into Num 15:3031, but they do this by assuming that
the concept is included in the denition of high-handed sin. This assump-
tion is based on their misunderstanding of Lev 16:16 and 21, where nxon
rituals accomplish oa for all the iniquities (pl. of \v), transgressions (pl. of
vOo), and sins (pl. of nxon) of the Israelites. Not perceiving that the cvOo
can be removed from the sanctuary and camp without providing oa that
benets those who commit them (cf. v. 30moral cleansing only for nxon
sins), they conclude that the Day of Atonement rituals provide sinners with
expiation even for these most serious sins.
41
Since this interpretation leaves
no room for sin that is irrevocably inexpiable by cultic means at the time
38. A. Schenker, Recht und Kult im Alten Testament (OBO 172; Freiburg: Uni-
versittsverlag / Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000) 12021 n. 18.
39. J. Milgrom, Numbers (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publica-
tion Society, 1990) 125.
40. F. Crsemann, The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament Law
(trans. A. W. Mahnke; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 318; cf. Levine, Leviticus, 3. Mil-
grom has seen the possibility that expiability of intentional offenses may be limited to
the kinds of cases specied in Lev 5 and Num 5:68, apparently repented crimes
against man (letter to Wright, 1989, cited in Wright, The Spectrum, 160 n. 3).
Wright adds: One can further note that stories such as those in Lev. 10.13; 24.1023
and Num. 15.3236 read as if repentance for deliberate affronts against God was not
possible in the priestly conception (ibid.).
41. Rodrguez, Substitution, 148; M. F. Rooker, Leviticus (NAC 3A; Nashville:
Broadman & Holman, 2000) 5355, 219; cf. A. Dillmann, Die Bcher Exodus und
Leviticus (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897) 460.
Chapter 9 208
when it is committed, Rodrguez and Rooker must explain high-handed sin
in terms of what happens later: lack of repentance.
42
Understanding that Milgrom introduces the notion of deliberate unrepen-
tance into Num 15:3031, A. Phillips responds:
Though the sinner who acted with a high hand may have behaved bra-
zenly, there is nothing in the text to indicate that he necessarily remains
unrepentant: in contrast to Lev. v. 206, he is simply not given the chance
to repent. Num. xv. 27ff. merely contrasts those who act unwittingly with
those who act deliberately.
43
Phillipss solution to the conict between Num 15 and Lev 5 is to regard the
problematic cases in the latter as exceptions motivated by a practical concern:
because the deliberate offenses in Lev 5:1 and 5:2026, involving neglect to
testify and fraudulently possessing property by swearing falsely, are (presum-
ably) undetectable by the community, the Priestly legislators sought to en-
courage their perpetrators to confess by ensuring that they would be rewarded
by extreme leniency: they could receive expiation and remain within the
community.
44
Phillips renes the discussion by showing that, because confession is re-
quired in Lev 5, the offenses are likely undetectable, and he recognizes that
the high-handed category of Num 15 would not include all deliberate sins.
However, he has not succeeded in getting the undetected deliberate sinner
off the Num 15:3031 hook. Just as Milgrom imports unrepentance into this
passage, Phillips reads detectability into it. There is nothing in these verses to
prove that a high-handed sin is necessarily detectable by unaided human
agency. Indeed, it is God himself who sees to it that the sinner is brought to
terms sooner or later, as indicated here by the punishment of na (cf. Lev
20:3).
45
The secret deant sinner (e.g., Achan in Josh 7) can run, but he can-
42. Thus Rooker harmonizes Leviticus and Numbers with the New Testament
concept of unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit (citing Heb 10:2631; Leviticus,
5455).
43. A. Phillips, The Undetectable Offender and the Priestly Legislators, JTS 36
(1985) 149.
44. Ibid., 150; cf. 148. Although confession is not specied in Lev 5:2026, it does
appear in the parallel law of Num 5:68 (see above), and in any case, some kind of
acknowledgment of the sinner as such would be necessary before performance of rep-
aration. B. Levine adds that incentive for disclosure would benet the wronged party,
who would otherwise have no way to recover lost property if the defendant lied under
oath (Numbers 120 [AB 4; New York: Doubleday, 1993] 187).
45. Cf. D. Wold, The Meaning of the Biblical Penalty Kareth (Ph.D. diss.,
University of California at Berkeley, 1978) 25155; Levine, Leviticus, 241; Milgrom,
not hide! It could be argued that human detectability could play a role in
whether or not a sinner manages to engage the cooperation of a priest to of-
ciate an expiatory sacrice on his behalf. But even if an overtly or covertly de-
ant sinner succeeds in going through the proper expiatory motions, Num
15:3031 serves notice that such ritual activity is null and void as far as Yhwh
is concerned.
A. Schenker is close to Phillips in that he sees sacricial expiation as avail-
able for inadvertent sins and secret intentional faults for which confession is
needed but not for wrongs committed openly and shamelessly. Unlike Phil-
lips, he distinguishes between expiable and inexpiable deliberate sins accord-
ing to the way in which their commission reects the attitude of the offender,
rather than whether they are detectable or not.
46
Schenker emphasizes a dis-
tinction between high-handed and simple intentional sin:
47
the idea of
simple deliberateness would lack sufcient force in the passages where o
a, high-handedly, describes the manner in which the Israelites departed
from Egypt (Exod 14:8 and Num 33:3). The same adverbial sense that suits
this context also ts in Num 15:30: openly, boldly, shamelessly.
48
In support of Schenkers view of high-handed sin, we could add that
committing an intentional offense could be expressed simply by a notice that
the offender knows (v) that he is committing a sin. But the language of
these verses (high-handedly . . . for he has despised the word of Yhwh) ap-
pears to describe an in your face kind of offense that goes signicantly be-
yond a simple deliberate moral lapse. Such deance is a personal affront to
Yhwh (v. 30o x \nx , he reviles Yhwh); it is rebellion against
him, his authority, and his covenant.
49
While even nondeant sin brings the
46. A. Schenker, Das Zeichen des Blutes und die Gewissheit der Vergebung im
Alten Testament, MTZ 34 (1983) 205.
47. Idem, Interprtations rcentes et dimensions spciques du sacrice aat,
Bib 75 (1994) 65, 69.
48. Idem, Recht und Kult im Alten Testament (OBO 172; Freiburg: Universitts-
verlag / Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000) 121.
49. From passages in which is combined with the verb c\ (1 Kgs 11:2627;
Mic 5:8[9]; Deut 32:27; Exod 17:11), C. J. Labuschagne nds that o a, high-
handedly, is associated with human strife, rebellion and ghting. . . . The origin of
the expression is without any doubt the physical gesture of the raised hand, with or
without a weapon in it, which indicates that one is triumphantly determined to
ght and to win (The Meaning of b
e
yad rama in the Old Testament, Von Ka-
naan bis Kerala [Fs. J. P. M. van der Ploeg; AOAT 211; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker /
Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982] 146; cf. 145). Labuschagne goes on
Leviticus 116, 45760; cf. B. Schwartz, \nzO n:\a ;\nz c:\v :O\; n\n
(Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999) 5257.
Chapter 9 210
sinners loyalty to Yhwh into question, disrupts the divine-human relation-
ship, and thereby damages the perpetrator and the community,
50
such moral
evil is not rebellious in the same sense.
B. H. McLean refers to the most serious sins as premeditated with dispas-
sionate forethought.
51
B. Levine similarly explains: In a legal context, beyad
ramah connotes premeditation and contrasts with bisegagah inadvertently,
in other words, without prior intent.
52
However, while premeditation un-
doubtedly impacts the gravity of a wrong (cf. Num 35:2023; Deut. 4:42; 19:4,
6, 11), this factor does not appear to be an essential component of a sin that
is disqualied from sacricial expiation. Although the blasphemer commit-
ted a direct affront to Yhwh on the level of a high-handed sin and was
stoned to death with no opportunity for pardon (Lev 24:1116, 23),
53
the fact
that he did this during the heat of a brawl (v. 10) would make it difcult to
sustain the notion that premeditation, let alone dispassionate forethought,
led to his blasphemous utterance.
The fact that sacricial expiation is available for some intentional/deliber-
ate sins (Lev 5:1, 56, 2026) but not for intentional faults that are deant/pre-
sumptuous (Num 15:3031) indicates that the category of intentional sins
contains two subcategories, one expiable and the other inexpiable. Acts of gen-
50. Cf. K. Kinghorn, Biblical Concepts of Sin, Wesleyan Theological Journal 1
(1966) 22, 2526; E. Gerstenberger, Leviticus: A Commentary (trans. D. Stott; OTL;
Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 57.
51. B. H. McLean, The Interpretation of the Levitical Sin Offering and the
Scapegoat, SR 20 (1991) 348.
52. B. Levine, Numbers 120 (AB 4; New York: Doubleday, 1993) 398; cf. Rashi on
Num 15:30.
53. The blasphemer was executed by human agency even though his sin was
against God, not because it was less grave than deant sin punishable by na, but
because its effect on the community, like that of Molek worship (cf. Lev 20:23),
demanded immediate redress (Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 460; idem, Leviticus 17
22, 1420, 1422).
to conclude: In Num. 15:30 the expression has a weakened meaning: deliberately,
but it is not impossible that here also it still retains something of its original force and
connotes the idea ready to commit rebellion, deantly (p. 148). On the serious na-
ture of high-handed sin as provocation, rebellion, and cause of damage to the cove-
nant, see A. Bchler, Studies in Sin and Atonement in the Rabbinic Literature of the
First Century (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1967) 3078, 456; R. de Vaux, Les Sacrices
de lAncien Testament (CahRB 1; Paris: Gabalda, 1964) 85 n. 2; Porter, Leviticus, 37;
R. Harrison, Leviticus: An Introduction and Commentary (TOTC; Leicester: Inter-
Varsity, 1980) 31; cf. 172; Crsemann, The Torah, 319. The negative connotation of
raising the hand is clear in the Akkadian letter YOS 3.25: Why in the world did you
lift your hand against the king . . . ? (A. L. Oppenheim, Letters from Mesopotamia
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967] 190).
uine repentance, that is, voluntary confession and restitution, are crucial com-
ponents of the remedy for expiable intentional sins. But whether or not an
intentional offense is expiable or inexpiable in the rst place is determined by
the nature of the sin, before any remedial steps can acceptably take place.
I would take issue with an aspect of Schenkers interpretation. It is true that
when the Israelites deed Pharaoh by high-handedly leaving Egypt, they did
so openly rather than secretly (Exod 14:8; Num 33:3). However, when an Is-
raelite dees Yhwh high-handedly (Num 15:3031), what is open to Yhwhs
view is not necessarily open to other members of the Israelite community.
This is exemplied by the intentional sin of Achan, which he hid from his fel-
low Israelites but which was revealed by Yhwh and treated as if it were high-
handed (Josh 7). Since some intentional sins kept secret from other human
beings are expiable but others are not, such secrecy by itself is not a determin-
ing factor for expiability.
54
Rather than attempting to have the two categories of sin in Num 15:2231
(expiable inadvertent and inexpiable deantly deliberate) cover all cases, I ac-
cept a gap between them in the area of nondeant deliberate sins, which are
dealt with in Lev 5. The latter category is expiable through sacrice, on con-
dition that repentance is demonstrated through voluntary confession
55
if a
purication offering is required (Lev 5:5) or voluntary confession and restitu-
tion if a reparation offering is required (5:2324[6:45]; Num 5:7).
56
If the
factors of secrecy and undetectability show up in connection with expiable
intentional sins, their main signicance is to show that confession is volun-
tary, arising from accountability to God even when accountability to man
cannot be enforced.
57
With regard to Lev 5:1, because this case of undetectable deliberate ne-
glect is graciously associated with cases of forgetfulness (vv. 24), implying
that it is nondeant, it is brought under the scope of the nxon sacrice.
58
54. Also contra Milgrom, Numbers, 125.
55. Unlike Achans forced acknowledgment (Josh 7:1921).
56. On the powerful interpersonal dynamics involved in confession between hu-
man beings, analogous to confession to God, see M. Greenberg, Biblical Prose Prayer
(Taubman Lectures in Jewish Studies: Sixth Series; Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1983) 2430.
57. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 18486, 201; Levine, Leviticus, 28.
58. According to A. Marx, the scope of the nxon sacrice is restricted to cases in
which one or the other of two conditions apply: (1) The sin is committed Oa,
which he interprets as accidentally, without premeditation (Lev 4:2, 22, 27; Num
15:2429). (2) The sin is committed unconsciously, being hidden (c"v: ) from the sin-
ner (Lev 4:13; 5:24; Sacrice pour les pchs ou rite de passage? Quelques rex-
ions sur la fonction du aat, RB 96 [1989] 2930). The outline of Marx is neat and
Chapter 9 212
Perhaps this amnesty recognizes the potential risks and/or conicting inter-
ests involved in testifying and encourages witnesses with misgivings to aid the
legal process, even after a delay.
59
It appears that the factor of delay is a common denominator between all
moral faults expiable by noncalendric outer-altar or outer-sanctum nxon sac-
rices. Whether a person commits an inadvertent offense that he/she fails to
recognize until later (Lev 4), delays giving required testimony (5:1), or forgets
a duty to Yhwh (5:24), there is delay between the violation and its ritual
remedy.
60
Lest a gap theory of Num 15:2231 appear too strange, we can point
out that the unique pronouncement regarding deant sins (vv. 3031) ap-
pears to be the main thrust of this legislation, which is placed between nar-
ratives of communal rebellion recorded in chs. 14 and 16 and immediately
preceding a narrative concerning an inexpiable offense committed by an in-
dividual (15:3236).
61
In this context it makes sense that the inadvertent-
deant opposition in vv. 2231 would be contrastive (rather than necessarily
comprehensive) in order to emphasize the gravity of the covenant-defying,
high-handed category.
62
Placement of purication-offering legislation in
Num 15:2229, immediately preceding the warning against high-handed
sin in vv. 3031, supports B. Levines observation: The covenant, and the
only-to-be-expected violations of it represent the larger framework within
which the aat sacrice functioned.
63
I have found no real contradiction between Lev 5 and Num 15. The dif-
ference between the two passages is in terms of their legal scope. Whereas the
59. On leniency to encourage confession, see Phillips, The Undetectable Of-
fender, 150.
60. On the graduated nxon (Lev 5:113) as the remedy for the wrong of prolonging
impurity (vv. 23), see Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 31013.
61. Cf. G. Wenham, Numbers: An Introduction and Commentary (TOTC; Leice-
ster: Inter-Varsity, 1981) 13031; P. J. Budd, Numbers (WBC 5; Waco, Texas: Word,
1984) 17374.
62. See Wrights observation that suffering lesser impurities would remind the
Israelites of the threat of serious impurities (Two Types, 192).
63. B. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms
in Ancient Israel (SJLA 5; Leiden: Brill, 1974) 103. Levine compares the Hebrew verb
xon, sin, with its Akkadian cognate ha, to err, be at fault, betray, which can refer
to treaty violations (Levine, Leviticus, 19; cf. In the Presence, 1023).
logical, but it is somewhat more neat than the biblical data. For example, he does not
adequately take Lev 5:1 into account. Here failure to testify is included in the scope of
the purication offering (cf. vv. 56) even though its commission is neither Oa nor
c"v: .
former has to do with the intermediate category of nondeant deliberate sins,
the latter deals with the outer inadvertent and deant categories. So I nd un-
necessary the various attempts to harmonize these passages by adjusting the
semantic parameters of terms for sin or introducing factors such as post hoc
repentance.
64
Conclusion
While moral faults and physical ritual impurities are related, they remain
distinct categories. The former are violations of Yhwhs commandments, but
the latter arise from a human state of mortality.
Numbers 15:2231 asserts that, although Yhwh will extend mercy to the
inadvertent sinner through sacrice, no such remedy is possible for the de-
ant sinner, who is irrevocably and irredeemably condemned to the terminal
punishment of extirpation (na). The point of this passage is not to divide the
entire range of possible offenses down the middle into inadvertent and advert-
ent categories but to highlight the severity due to rebels by contrasting it with
the leniency available to sinners at the other end of the spectrum.
It is true that in biblical narratives Yhwh can directly extend mercy to pre-
sumptuous sinners who repent (e.g., Manasseh; 2 Chr 33:1213), and in Ezek
18:21 Yhwh promises amnesty to the wicked who repent.
65
However, there is
no indication that the mediation of the cult is envisioned as reversing terminal
condemnation of deant sinners. In subsequent chapters we will nd, in agree-
ment with Crsemann (see above), that this observation holds true even for
the awesome services of the Day of Atonement, including the high priests
comprehensive confession over Azazels goat and subsequent banishment of
the animal in order to purify the Israelite camp collectively of all moral faults
(Lev 16:2122).
64. Cf. my Numbers 15:2231 and the Spectrum of Moral Faults, in Inicios, para-
digmas y fundamentos: Estudios teolgicos y exegticos en el Pentateuco (ed. G. Kling-
beil; River Plate Adventist University Monograph Series in Biblical and Theological
Studies 1; Libertador San Martn, Entre Ros, Argentina: Editorial Universidad Adven-
tista del Plata, 2004) 14956.
65. Compare the fact that in some texts (Exod 32:30; Ps 65:4[3]; 78:38; 79:9; Dan
9:24) oa is only a divine act rather than the result of human cultic performance
(F. Maass, oa kpr pi. To Atone, TLOT 2:631).
Part 3
Phases of rpk
217
Chapter 10
Inner-Sanctum Purication Offerings
Observing that the prescriptions for the Day of Atonement in Lev 16 are
strategically placed at the heart of the central book of the Pentateuch, S. A.
Geller suggests that the chapter is the gateway to the hidden sanctum of Ps
theology.
1
While the Day of Atonement was not the greatest of Israelite cer-
emonial days in terms of the quantity of sacrices specied for it (cf. Num 28
29), its unique character sets it at the pinnacle of Israelite cultic observance.
2
On the Day of Atonement, ve main rituals are structurally
bound together as a unied system
Verses 12 of Lev 16 introduce the ceremonies that are unique to the Day
of Atonement
3
within a narrative framework as originating from Yhwh after
the death of the two sons of Aaron, at the time when the sanctuary was inau-
gurated (cf. Lev 10:12). Geller suggests that this introduction is a literary
clue to focus on the blood manipulations in the Holy of Holies rather than on
the bloodless ritual with the so-called scapegoat.
4
1. S. A. Geller, Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of
the Pentateuch, Prooftexts 12 (1992) 97124. On the centrality of ch. 16 in the ar-
rangement of material in Leviticus, see W. Shea, Literary Form and Theological
Function in Leviticus, in The Seventy Weeks, Leviticus, and the Nature of Prophecy
(ed. F. Holbrook; DARCOM 3; Washington, D.C.: Biblical Research Institute, 1986)
138, 14651; J. Hartley, Leviticus (WBC 4; Dallas: Word, 1992) xxxivxxxv, 217, 224;
W. Warning, Literary Artistry in Leviticus (BIS 35; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 8687. Of
course, literary structure can be viewed on more than one level. See the ring struc-
ture of Leviticus proposed by M. Douglas (Poetic Structure in Leviticus, Pomegran-
ates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and
Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom [ed. D. Wright, D. N. Freedman, and A. Hur-
vitz; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995] 24755, esp. 253) and endorsed by
J. Milgrom (Leviticus 1722 [AB 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000] 136465), in which
ch. 19 is the central turning point.
2. Cf. G. B. Gray, Sacrice in the Old Testament: Its Theory and Practice (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1925) 3067.
3. Excluding the regular daily (Exod 27:2021; 29:3842; 30:78; Num 28:18)
and weekly (Lev 24:19) rituals and additional sacrices performed similarly on other
festivals (Num 29:711).
4. Geller, Blood Cult, 1056.
Chapter 10 218
Verses 310 outline preparations for the rituals of the day, including assem-
bling certain animals at the sanctuary (cf. 9:15), the personal ritual purica-
tion of the high priest by washing his whole body, and designation of the
respective ritual roles of two goats through the use of lots. Leviticus 16:1128
prescribes the main ritual procedures, including core activities (vv. 1125)
and tasks that are postrequisite to Azazels goat and purication-offering ritu-
als (vv. 2628). The chapter concludes in vv. 2934 with commands for all
Israelites to practice self-denial and abstain from work on this tenth day of the
seventh month because of the special oa that is performed for them, both
priests and laity, and for all parts of Yhwhs sanctuary.
In vv. 1125, the high priest ofciates over ve main Day of Atonement
rituals:
5
1. Two elaborate purication offerings, using a bull on behalf of the high
priest and his household and a goat on behalf of the lay community, are in-
terwoven with each other. That is to say, the second ritual begins before the
rst is completed, and similar activities belonging to the two rituals alternate.
When the mixed bloods of both animals are applied together to the outer altar
(vv. 1819), the rituals are merged. The blended purication offerings func-
tion together as a higher-level activity system called c oa nxon, the puri-
cation offering of purgation (Exod 30:10; Num 29:11; see further below).
6
Only during this exceedingly solemn ritual complex on the tenth day of the
seventh month is the high priest, and no other, permitted to enter the awe-
some inner sanctum of the sanctuary, which in this chapter is called simply
O;, the holy (place) (Lev 16:2, 1216a). Because these nxon sacrices
uniquely involve blood applications in the inner sanctum, I have referred to
them as inner-sanctum purication offerings.
2. The high priest makes a verbal confession over a goat designated for
Azazel (so-called scapegoat) while leaning both his hands on its head,
and then the goat is led away into the wilderness by an assistant (vv. 2022;
cf. v. 10). The live goat is provided by the lay community (v. 5) but functions
for all Israelites (v. 21), including the priests.
3. Following the ritual with Azazels goat, the high priest offers two
burnt offerings of rams, one on behalf of the priests and the other on behalf
5. Not counting the lot ritual (vv. 810) or any ablutions of the high priest, such
as his second full bath in v. 24.
6. W. C. Kaiser (The Book of Leviticus, NIB 1:1112) and P. Jenson (The Leviti-
cal Sacricial System, in Sacrice in the Bible [ed. R. Beckwith and M. Selman;
Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995] 36) mistakenly identify c oa nxon in Num 29:11 with
the scapegoat ritual.
Inner-Sanctum Purication Offerings 219
of the laity (v. 24; cf. vv. 3, 5). Not stated in Lev 16, but required by Num
15:116, are a grain and drink offering to accompany each burnt offering
(cf. Num 29:811).
In the Israelite system of rituals, only the special Day of Atonement cere-
monies involve what P. Jenson has termed two extreme poles of the spatial
dimension of the Holiness Spectrum: the Holy of Holies (purication offer-
ings) and the wilderness (Azazels goat).
7
The ritual of Azazels goat (Lev 16:2022) and the burnt offerings (v. 24)
interrupt the inner-sanctum purication offerings after their blood manipula-
tions (vv. 1419) and before the burning of their suet/fat (v. 25), which is fol-
lowed by disposal of their carcasses by incineration outside the camp (v. 27).
8
So the purication offerings provide a framework within which the Azazels
goat ritual and the two burnt offerings are embedded. Thus all ve rituals are
structurally bound together as a unied system. This system is embedded
within the larger system comprising all rituals performed on the tenth day of
the seventh month, including regular rituals (Exod 30:7, 8; Num 28:18) and
additional festival offerings (Num 29:711).
Of the ve rituals unique to the Day of Atonement, the basic carriers of
qualitative meaning are the two purication offerings and Azazels goat.
9
The
meaning of the burnt offerings on behalf of the priests and laity is subsumed
under that of the purication offerings on behalf of these offerers, respectively.
As elsewhere when these two kinds of sacrices are coupled on behalf of the
same offerer, the burnt-offering token gift enhances the efcacy of the puri-
cation-offering token debt payment in a quantitative sense, making what
amounts to a greater purication offering (cf. Lev 5:67; Num 15:2428).
10
8. While m. Yoma 6 (see esp. 6:67) retains the biblical order, the Temple Scroll
avoids interruption of the nxon sacrices by placing the burning of their suet and dis-
posal of their carcasses before the high priest commences the ritual of Azazels live
goat (26:711).
9. Compare Geller, who supports the conclusion that the entrance into the inner
sanctum to manipulate blood and the scapegoat ritual must bear the special meaning
of the Day of Atonement on the basis that these are the only rites unique to the day
(Blood Cult, 1045).
10. Cf. S. R. Driver, Propitiation, in A Dictionary of the Bible (ed. J. Hastings;
New York: Scribners, 1911) 4:131. So it is unnecessary to seek a separate signicance
for such a burnt offering, as some scholars do. For example, A. F. Rainey interprets
combinations of purication and burnt offerings as representing expiation followed by
consecration (The Order of Sacrices in Old Testament Ritual Texts, Bib 51 [1970]
498, esp. n. 5). In his analysis of Lev 8, F. Gorman explains such a pair as purging the
Chapter 10 220
Thus the burnt offerings are an integral, although fuctionally secondary, part
of the system of rituals involved in the purgation of the sanctuary on the Day
of Atonement.
11
Although Lev 16 provides considerable detail, it economizes in several
ways:
1. Leviticus 16 does not mention some activities that must logically be
included for practical physical reasons. For example, blood must be col-
lected at the time of slaughter (cf. 2 Chr 29:22; m. Yoma 4:3) so that it can
be manipulated.
2. Leviticus 16 assumes a fully operational cultic system and knowledge of
rules that operate throughout it. For example, the high priest would purify
himself by washing his hands and feet with water drawn from the sacred laver
before each period of ofciation at the altar or entrance into the Sacred Tent
(cf. Exod 30:1721).
12
3. Leviticus 16 abbreviates by referring to patterns of activity previously set
up in the same ritual complex. In v. 16b the text prescribes blood manipula-
tions to be performed in the outer sanctum, called here the Tent of Meet-
ing (i.e., the rest of the Tent),
13
by saying simply that he shall do likewise for
the Tent of Meeting. Here likewise (a) refers back to the pattern of activi-
ties specied for the inner sanctum (vv. 1415).
11. The Temple Scroll (25:1516) recognizes that the burnt offerings accompany
the special nxon complex. Contra B. Levine, who explains the reference to oa in
connection with the burnt offerings in Lev 16:24: The olah, burnt offering, was not
directly involved in the rites of expiation. This is a general statement referring to all
that the High Priest had done by way of expiation, rather than to the olah specically
(Leviticus [JPS Torah Commentary: Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989]
108). Also contra Geller, who interprets the high priests performance of burnt offer-
ings in his usual vestments (v. 24) as immediate resumption of the regular cult (Blood
Cult, 107). In the very next verse the high priest burns the suet of the inner-sanctum
purication offerings on the altar (v. 25), showing that he has not yet resumed his regu-
lar cultic activity.
12. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 1017.
13. R. Pter-Contesse and J. Ellington, A Handbook on Leviticus (UBSHS; New
York: United Bible Societies, 1990) 250; compare Lev 4:7, where o c"a, all
the blood of the bull, refers to the remainder of the blood that had not already
been used (cf. v. 18), and v. 12, where o"a refers to all the rest of the bull.
sanctuary (purication offering) and then providing a gift to Yhwh to secure right re-
lations with him, averting divine wrath caused by the offense of sin (burnt offering;
The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the Priestly Theology [JSOTSup 91;
Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990] 12627). Such approaches fail to account for the fact that
an unaccompanied nxon sacrice can be functionally equivalent to a purication
burnt offering pair (Lev 5:56; Num 15:24, 27).
4. Leviticus 16 assumes knowledge of a ritual paradigm presented earlier
in Leviticus: v. 24 calls for two burnt offerings but provides no instructions for
their performance. These instructions appear in Lev 1.
14
Now we turn to more-specic analysis of the inner-sanctum purication
offerings. In the following chapter we will examine the ritual of Azazels goat.
Two inner-sanctum purication offerings form a unit
As mentioned above, the two special purication offerings performed on
the Day of Atonement, one on behalf of the priests and the other on behalf of
the lay community, are designated as coa nxon, the purication offering
of purgation (Exod 30:10; Num 29:11). Several factors support the idea that
this construct expression, which refers to a single nxon sacrice, must cover
both rituals:
1. In Exod 30:10 the high priest purges the incense altar once a year by
performing purgation on its horns with blood of the purication offering
(nxon, sing.) of purgation. In Lev 16:1416 and 1819, bloods of both
inner-sanctum purication offerings are used once a year to purge the sanc-
tuary and its sancta, including the outer sanctum where the incense altar is
located (v. 16b).
2. In Lev 16:25 the high priest burns the suet of nxon, the purication
offering (sing.), clearly referring to both purication offerings collectively.
15
3. The offerings stipulated in the cultic calendar of Num 2829 are per-
formed on behalf of all Israelites, including the priests. In this context, it can
be assumed that the purication offering (nxon, sing.) of purgation in v. 11
should also be on behalf of all Israel. In Lev 16 this coverage is accomplished
by means of the two inner-sanctum rituals, one on behalf of the priests and
the other on behalf of the rest of the people.
The collective singular purication offering of purgation refers to the rit-
ual complex that contains both nxon rituals. Compare use of the singular
"v, burnt offering, in Num 2829 for two or more regular or additional
burnt offerings that form a burnt-offering complex and are performed on
behalf of the same offerer, all Israel (28:3, 6, 10, 11, 19, 27, etc.).
14. The lack of details in Lev 16 regarding the burnt offerings disturbed A. A. Bonar,
who concluded that on the Day of Atonement the Lord wished to x the attention of
all upon the sin-offerings (A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus, Expository and
Practical [5th ed.; London: Nisbet, 1875] 301).
15. Compare Targum Onqeloss plural xn\on here. K. Elliger unnecessarily specu-
lates that the singular in the MT could indicate that originally only one nxon was of-
fered (Leviticus [HAT 4; Tbingen: Mohr, 1966] 216).
Chapter 10 222
There is a special reason for referring to the purication offering of pur-
gation complex as a unit: although the two nxon rituals are performed on
behalf of different offerers, they are structurally bound together by interweav-
ing and merging. By contrast, the two burnt offerings in Lev 16:24, one on be-
half of the priests and the other on behalf of the community, are mentioned
separately because they are simply juxtaposed.
Some have interpreted the plural form coa (see also Exod 29:36; 30:16;
Num 5:8) as an abstract of oa.
16
Alternatively it could be understood as an
intensication of oa.
17
In any case, in the context of coa nxon on the
Day of Atonement, there is also an element of real plurality. Multiple purga-
tions (more than one oa) remove evil from the inner sanctum, the outer
sanctum, and the outer altar (Lev 16:16, 18; cf. vv. 20, 30, 33, 34).
18
The offering of coa nxon , performed only on the tenth day of the sev-
enth month, may well have given coa to the biblical name of the day:
coa c\, the Day of Purgation(s) (23:2728; 25:9).
19
Perhaps coa c\
is an abbreviation for coa nxon c\, day of the purication-offering of
purgation.
The purication-offering procedure includes some activities
that are mentioned in the text and others that are not
Apart from some abbreviation (see above), Lev 16 outlines both inner-
sanctum purication offerings in detail to indicate unique aspects of these rit-
uals and to show relationships between their alternating activities. Following
the use of lots to designate which goat belongs to Yhwh and which is for Aza-
zel (vv. 810), the high priest turns his attention to his bull and slaughters it
16. E.g., BDB 498; W. Gilders translates removal (Blood Ritual in the Hebrew
Bible: Meaning and Power [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004] 29), but
HALOT 1:495 renders act of atonement.
17. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 2327 (AB 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2001) 2022. Re-
garding the plural of intensication, see GKC 124e.
18. J. Milgrom, Advanced Biblical Hebrew Texts seminar, University of California
at Berkeley, 1982; cf. I. Schur, Vershnungstag und Sndenbock (CHL 6/3; Helsinki:
Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1933) 13, 31.
19. Cf. J. Milgrom, Atonement, Day of, IDBSup, 82. K. Aartun interprets coa
in this context as plural: den Tag der Shnungen, the Day of Atonements (Studien
zum Gesetz ber den grossen Vershnungstag Lv 16 mit Varianten: Ein ritualge-
schichtlicher Beitrag, ST 34 [1980] 89). Milgrom renders the Day of Purgation (e.g.,
Leviticus 116, 1009, 1059). The term \oa c\ (Yom Kippur), the modern name of the
day, is a relatively late development. In early rabbinic literature the plural form (c\
c\oa) still predominated (cf. M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud
Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature [New York: Judaica, 1975] 657).
(v. 11) to begin the purication offering on behalf of himself and his house-
hold.
20
Activities explicitly included in this nxon paradigm are listed below.
In Lev 16 there are two interwoven performances of the same paradigm, rst
with the bull for the priests and second with a goat on behalf of the lay com-
munity (vv. 1119, 25, 2728).
In terms of activities, the two performances are identical, except that the
high priest burns incense in connection with the rst nxon (vv. 1213) but
not the second (v. 15). Without offering incense, the high priest cannot en-
ter the inner sanctum to manipulate blood there without being struck dead
(v. 13). It appears that when he enters, he places the censer in the inner
sanctum (cf. m. Yoma 5:12) and leaves it there until he completes the
inner-sanctum blood manipulations belonging to the second ritual.
21
Thus
the results of the incense activities performed during the rst ritual remain
for the second.
In the outline of paradigm activities below, the incense activities that
belong only to the rst performance are indicated in italics. Note that all ac-
tivities up to and including the burning of the suet are performed by the
high priest. Concluding tasks having to do with disposal of the carcasses are
performed by (apparently lay) assistants.
22
slay animal
take censer of burning coals from outer altar, and incense
bring censer and incense into inner sanctum
set (i.e., burn) the incense on the re
take blood
bring blood into inner sanctum
23

20. Since the high priest has already brought (z; ) his bull before the lot ritual
(v. 6), he does not need to move it again before the main ritual phase begins with its
slaughter. The word z; , lit., bring near, at the beginning of v. 11 is simply re-
sumptive repetition in the text (cf. R. Rendtorff, Leviticus [BKAT 3; Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1985] 219), transferring the focus of ritual attention
from the goats to the bull. On the hipil of z; for preliminary conveyance to a ritual
locus, as in v. 6, see R. Gane and J. Milgrom, z; qarab, TDOT 13:14243.
21. Leviticus 16 does not say when the high priest removes the censer. If he does
not do this as soon as he completes the blood applications in the inner sanctum and
moves to the outer sanctum, he must enter the inner sanctum later to retrieve the cen-
ser (so m. Yoma 7:4).
22. For ritual participation by assistants not specied as priests, see vv. 21, 26; Num
19:89.
23. With regard to the communitys goat, the text species that the high priest
must bring the blood into the inner sanctum (Lev 16:15). Practical necessity dictates
that such conveyance must also be part of the bull sacrice for the priests. The high
Chapter 10 224
sprinkle blood eastward on ark cover
sprinkle blood in front of ark cover 7 times
perform blood manipulations likewise in outer sanctum
exit with blood to outer altar
24
take blood
put blood on four horns of outer altar
sprinkle blood on outer altar with nger 7 times
place suet on outer altar
take remainder of carcass (hide, esh, dung) outside camp
incinerate remainder of carcass
launder clothes
bathe in water
25
Notice that no hand-leaning is included (see vv. 11, 15). If it were part of
these rituals, the inner-sanctum nxon for the community would have the ges-
ture performed by the elders (cf. 4:15), and such participation would surely
be worthy of notice. Lack of hand-leaning here can be explained by the fact
that the Day of Atonement rituals are calendric (16:29; cf. 23:27, 32) and thus
require no identication of the respective offerers.
26
The following additional activities, not mentioned in Lev 16, would
belong to the inner-sanctum purication-offering paradigm:
24. Because exiting to the outer altar brings the blood to it, no separate activity of
presenting/conveying the blood to the altar (cf. Lev 1:5) is necessary. On identication
of the altar in 16:18 as the outer one, see pp. 7677 above.
25. Laundering and bathing here refer to a variable number of personal purica-
tions, depending upon how many assistants participate.
26. See pp. 5455 above. My interpretation differs from that of G. F. Hasel, who
says that this absence of hand-leaning shows that these sacrices purge that to which
their blood is applied rather than cleansing the offerer (Studies in Biblical Atone-
ment II: The Day of Atonement, in The Sanctuary and the Atonement: Biblical, His-
torical, and Theological Studies [ed. A. Wallenkampf; Washington, D.C.: Review and
Herald, 1981] 128 n. 33). According to m. Yoma 3:8 and 4:2, on the Day of Atonement
the high priest leans two hands on his bull and confesses before and after the lot ritual
by which the roles of the two goats are determined. However, he does not perform
these activities on the communitys goat (5:4). While double hand-leaning and con-
fession are attested in Lev 16:21 in connection with Azazels goat, there is no biblical
warrant for their performance with the high priests bull. This tradition appears to be
based at least partly on the assumption that the high priests bull is a private rather
than community offering (m. Tem. 2:1), and therefore hand-leaning is required.
Again, as noted above, pp. 5455 n. 34, the public/private distinction does not work.
priest would probably do this separately from carrying coals and incense into the in-
nersanctum (so m. Yoma 4:3; 5:3) because it would be awkward for him to manage all
of these items at once.
1. Collect blood must be done at the time of slaughter (cf. 2 Chr 29:22;
m. Yoma 4:3).
2. Exit from inner sanctum to court would presumably follow
placement of the censer in the inner sanctum, so that the high priest
could get the bulls blood from the court and take it into the inner
sanctum (Lev 16:1314; cf. v. 15).
27
3. Exit with blood from inner sanctum to outer sanctum comes between
the blood manipulations in the two rooms.
4. Mix bloods of the two animals is necessary before the high priest can
put some of the blood of the bull and of the goat on the altar (v. 18;
cf. m. Yoma 5:4).
28
5. Pour remaining blood at base of outer altar would dispose of the
remainder after the blood applications are completed (cf. 4:7, 18, 25,
30, 34).
29
6. Remove suet must be done before the suet can be burned on the altar
(cf. 4:89, 19, 31, 35).
7. Present suet to outer altar transfers it to the place where it is burned
(cf. 1:13).
8. As we mentioned earlier, the prescription for blood manipulations in
the outer sanctum is abbreviated: and he shall do likewise (a\) for the
Tent of Meeting (16:16b). N. Kiuchi recognizes that likewise refers
to the precedent set in the inner sanctum:
30
14
He shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his n-
ger on the kapporet on its east side; and in front of the kapporet he shall
sprinkle some of the blood with his nger seven times . . .
15b
and manipu-
late its blood as he did with the blood of the bull; he shall sprinkle it upon
the kapporet and before the kapporet.
31
There is a 1 + 7 pattern here: one sprinkling on the noa, which is the slab
of gold on top of the ark of the covenant (cf. Exod 25:17, 21) and seven
27. It seems out of the question to imagine that the priest could manage to carry a
container of blood into the inner sanctum along with the censer full of coals and
incense to put on it. The incense activities would occupy both hands.
29. I assume that some blood would remain after the various applications to the
sanctuary and its sancta (so m. Yoma 5:6) even though there are many more blood
applications in the inner-sanctum nxon sacrices than in other purication offerings.
Chapter 10 226
sprinklings in front of this object. By following this once on object and
seven times in front of that object precedent, we can reconstruct the blood
applications to be performed in the outer sanctum.
While there is no noa in the outer sanctum, there is another object there
that is also located along the central westeast axis of the santuary: the incense
altar. So the abbreviation in v. 16b, requiring performance of blood manipu-
lations in the outer sanctum in the same way as they are carried out in the in-
ner sanctum implies the existence of the incense altar.
32
Exodus 30:10
explicitly identies this as the object that receives the blood of the purica-
tion offering of purgation once a year by a single application to its horns.
33
The 1 + 7 precedent indicates that the high priest should follow the single
blood application with a sevenfold sprinkling in front of the same object, in
this case in front of the incense altar. My reasoning from likewise in Lev
16:16b was anticipated by J. Kurtz, who concluded: a sprinkling was to take
place once upon the altar of incense, and seven times in front of it.
34
As mentioned in ch. 2 above, I. Knohl follows Wellhausen and others in
regarding Lev 16 as earlier than Exod 30:10 because the former does not
mention the incense altar. With regard to Lev 16 he notes:
Verses 17 and 20 state that the Priest atones for the tent of meeting, but
there is no explanation of how he conducts the atonement. In any event,
it is incorrect to claim that the text is hinting at atonement for the incense
altar as in Exod. 30.10. If this were so why wasnt this altar mentioned ex-
plicitly? Furthermore, the verse in Exod. 30.10 is a kind of supplement to
the annual Day of Atonement ceremony described in Lev. 16.
35
32. Cf. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 183 n. 75.
33. The blood is put on its horns because it is an altar, unlike the ark cover, which
receives blood by sprinkling (Lev 16:1415), an action that avoids physical contact
between the high priest and this holiest of all the sancta. As part of J. Wellhausens
argument that the incense altar, construction of which is rst prescribed in Exod 30:1
10, was not known by the original P source, he pointed out that in Lev 16 incense is
burned in a censer and there is no mention of the incense altar (Die Composition des
Hexateuchs und der historischen Bcher des Alten Testaments [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963;
orig. 1885] 138); cf. A. B. Ehrlich, Randglossen zur Hebrischen Bibel: Textkritisches,
Sprachliches und Sachliches, vol. 2Leviticus, Numeri, Deuteronomium [Hildesheim:
Olms, 1968] 56). However, even if an incense altar were present in the outer sanctum,
a censer would be needed to produce a cloud of incense in the inner sanctum (cf.
B. D. Eerdmans, Das Buch Leviticus [Alttestamentliche Studien 4; Giessen: Alfred
Tpelmann, 1912] 7677). Furthermore, perhaps it would not be appropriate to use
the incense altar for burning incense during this complex of ceremonies when the al-
tar itself is an object of purgation.
34. J. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship of the Old Testament (trans. J. Martin; Minneapo-
lis: Klock & Klock, 1980; repr. of 1863) 392; cf. 393.
35. I. Knohl, The Sin Offering Law in the Holiness School [Numbers 15.22
31], in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient Israel (ed. G. A. Anderson and Saul M. Olyan;
Even if we were to accept that Exod 30:10 is a supplement and even if we do
not know why the altar is not mentioned explicitly, it is not true that there is
no explanation of how he conducts the atonement. The explanation is an
abbreviated one, apparently simply for the sake of economy, but it is an expla-
nation: a, likewise (Lev 16:16b). The meaning of the abbreviation is quite
clear, except for scholars who have already decided that there was no incense
altar when the prescription was given. Knohls argument (and Wellhausens)
is based upon what the abbreviation does not explicitly state. This is a kind of
argument from silence.
In the present form of the text there is a close relationship between Exod
30:910 and Lev 16 with regard to incense and blood. Exodus 30:9 prohibits
use of unauthorized incense (I no;) on the incense altar. Then v. 10 pre-
scribes the yearly purgation of this altar with the blood of coa nxon , the
purication offering of purgation, applied to its horns. These two ele-
mentsproper use of incense and application of nxon blood, in the same
orderare the essential elements of the procedure for purging the sanctuary
in Lev 16:1219. Moreover, there is a connection between Exod 30:9 and
Lev 16:1, the narrative introduction to the Day of Atonement prescriptions,
via Lev 10:1.
36
In Lev 10:1, Aarons sons took censers and laid incense
(no;) on unauthorized re (I Ox) that was in the censers. Whatever the
precise nature of the offense here, it is related to the prohibition in Exod 30:9
against use of I no;. At the beginning of the instructions for the Day of
Atonement, Lev 16:1 mentions the death of Aarons sons, which could be
taken as an implicit warning for Aaron to avoid death when he approaches
Yhwh, who appears in a cloud (:v; v. 2).
37
To enter the inner sanctum,
Aaron must properly generate a cloud of incense (no; :v) from a censer
to prevent his death (vv. 1213).
We have found that likewise in Lev 16:16b calls for a single application
of nxon blood to the horns of the incense altar, followed by a sevenfold sprin-
kling in front of it. If my interpretation of nao :o nx , before the veil, in
36. See Schur, who connects the Lev 10 tragedy with the requirement for self-
denial on the Day of Atonement (Vershnungstag, 38).
37. Jenson notes that there may be a contrast between his censing and the illegit-
imate incense offered by Nadab and Abihu (Graded Holiness, 200 n. 4).
JSOTSup 125; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1991) 196 n. 3. For the idea that Exod 30:10 is
a supplement, see A. Dillmann, Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus (Leipzig: Hirzel,
1897) 571. Knohl tentatively attributes this verse to H on the basis of the phrase once
a year, common to our verse and the HS editorial addition in Lev 16:34 (The Sanc-
tuary of Silence: The Priestly Torah and the Holiness School [Minneapolis: Fortress,
1995] 29; cf. 105).
Chapter 10 228
4:6 and 17 is correct, sevenfold sprinklings of blood in the outer sanctum
are also performed in front of the incense altar within the context of outer-
sanctum purication offerings (see ch. 4). This correlates with the fact that
other blood applications required by Lev 4 and 16 are performed in the same
locations on the Day of Atonement as they are during the rest of the year: on
the incense altar (Lev 4:7, 18; 16:16b; cf. Exod 30:10) and on the outer altar
(Lev 4:25, 30, 34; 16:1819).
Below is the full list of activities included in the inner-sanctum purica-
tion-offering paradigm, including the reconstructions discussed above. Again,
italics indicate activities included only in the rst performance.
slay animal
collect blood
exit from inner sanctum to court
take (basin of ) blood
exit with blood from inner sanctum to outer sanctum
put blood on four horns of incense altar
sprinkle blood before veil (in front of incense altar) 7 times
mix bloods of the two animals
sprinkle blood on outer altar 7 times
remove suet
present suet to outer altar
launder clothes
bathe in water
Two performances of the inner-sanctum purication-offering
paradigm are interwoven and then merged
In table 13, activities belonging to the ritual with the high priests bull are
placed on the left and alternating activities belonging to the ritual of the
communitys goat are on the right. Activities belonging to both rituals, in-
cluding concluding merged tasks that do not differentiate between the two
Table 13. The Two Inner-Sanctum Purication Offerings
High Priests Bull Both Communitys Goat
slay animal
collect blood
take censer of coals, and incense
bring them into inner sanctum
set incense on re
exit to court
sprinkle blood on ark cover
sprinkle in front of ark cover 7x
exit to court
slay animal
collect blood
sprinkle blood on ark cover
sprinkle in front of ark cover 7x
exit with blood to outer sanctum
put blood on incense altar
sprinkle blood before veil 7x
put blood on incense altar
sprinkle blood before veil 7x
put blood on horns of outer altar
sprinkle blood on outer altar 7x
pour remaining blood at altar
base
remove suet
take carcasses outside camp
burn remainder of carcasses
launder clothes
bathe in water
Chapter 10 230
animals by stipulating that the suet and carcass of the bull should be treated
before those of the goat, are placed in the middle.
38
Note that we have added
exit to court in the both column as the transition from initial application
of the bulls blood in the inner sanctum (Lev 16:14) to the slaughter of the
communitys goat (v. 15). As before, italics indicate activities only belonging
to the bull ritual.
The inner-sanctum purication offerings purge ritual impurities
and moral faults from the three parts of the sanctuary on behalf
of the priests and laity, and reconsecrate the outer altar
A. Chapman and A. Streane found that the Day of Atonement service is
complicated, and its rituals seem designed to illustrate more than one idea
in connexion with atonement and purication.
39
Their observation is con-
rmed by vv. 6, 11a, 16, 17b, 18a, 19b, 20a, 30, 3234 of Lev 16, which indi-
cate that the goal of the inner-sanctum purication offerings is to purge (piel
of oa with "v or direct object; compare piel of o in v. 19) the three parts
of the sanctuaryinner sanctum, outer sanctum, and outer altarfrom (o)
the impurities and moral faults of the Israelites on behalf of (vz/"v) the
priests and laity,
40
who are thereby puried (o, v. 30),
41
and to (re)conse-
crate (piel of O;) the outer altar (v. 19).
38. Postrequisite activities are lumped together after core portions of all rituals are
completed. Although disposal of the carcasses (v. 27) must occur after the suet is re-
moved from the animals so that it can be burned on the altar (v. 25) and before those
who incinerate the carcasses purify themselves (v. 28), this disposal could take place
before the handler of Azazels goat puries himself (v. 26). The latter activity would be
performed sometime after he releases the goat in the wilderness (v. 22; J. Milgrom,
personal communication). Among postrequisite activities, those pertaining to the rit-
ual of Azazels goat may be mentioned rst (v. 26) because the core of this ritual is
completed (v. 22) before that of the inner-sanctum nxon complex (v. 25).
39. A. Chapman and A. Streane, The Book of Leviticus (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1914) 166.
40. Compare Ezek 45:1820, where there is a threefold purication of the temple
on the rst and seventh days of the rst month, but in this passage the three places of
blood application are the doorpost of the temple, the four corners of the altars ledge,
and the post of the gate of the inner court.
41. Milgrom comments: as the sanctuary is polluted by the peoples impurities,
their elimination, in effect, also puries the people (Leviticus 116, 1056). Kiuchi
objects to Milgroms clear-cut distinction between purication of sancta and of per-
sons in Lev 16 on the basis of v. 33, where the sancta kipper is somehow equivalent
to, or parallel to, the kipper on behalf of the priests and the people (The Purica-
tion Offering, 93). However, in this verse nx oa takes the three parts of the sanctuary
as direct objects because the blood is physically applied to them, but purication of
the people is expressed with "v oa. Although these sacrices benet the people, the
preposition "v acknowledges that this benet is not direct in the same way. B. Levine
Purging the sanctuary puries the Israelites because its condition and
fate is theirs. If their sins accumulate too much in Yhwhs sanctuary, his
resident Presence (cf. Exod 25:8) will abandon them (cf. Ezek 9:3; 10:4,
1819; 11:2223).
42
There are two crucial differences between the inner-sanctum purica-
tion offerings and the nxon sacrices belonging to the outer-altar and outer-
sanctum types, which are performed on other days.
1. In our study of oa goal formulas (ch. 6), we found that throughout the
year outer-altar or outer-sanctum purication offerings remove evil from (oa
with "v, optionally followed by privative o) their offerer(s), but on the Day of
Atonement the inner-sanctum sacrices remove evil from (oa with "v or
direct object, optionally followed by privative o) sacred areas or objects
belonging to the sanctuary.
2. Throughout the year, oa for physical ritual impurity results in the pu-
rity (o) of the offerer (e.g., Lev 12:78; Num 8:21), and oa for sins is pre-
requisite to forgiveness (n"o; e.g., Lev 4:20, 26, 31, 35). But on the Day of
Atonement, purgation (oa) of the sanctuary from ritual impurities and
moral faults results in purity (o) for the people from their sins (16:30). As
A. Bchler pointed out, only the Day of Atonement purication offerings
effect purity from sin.
43
The Israelites do not receive purity from their physical ritual impurities on
the Day of Atonement, presumably because they have already received it di-
rectly through rituals earlier in the year. But remedying sin is another matter.
First it requires sacricial oa, then divinely granted forgiveness (n"o), and -
nally communal purication (o) on the Day of Atonement. Therefore, on
the Day of Atonement the people reach the o stage of oa with regard to
their sins that is equivalent to the o stage reached earlier in the year with
42. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 25861; cf. idem, Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly
Picture of Dorian Gray, RB 83 (1976) 39699; cf. Hasel, Studies in Biblical Atone-
ment II, 119; B. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature, in Pome-
granates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law,
and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (ed. D. Wright, D. N. Freedman, and
A. Hurvitz; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 21.
Century (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1967) 263.
explains that, by practicing self-denial and abstaining from work, the Israelites identify
with the purication of the sanctuary, and thus a purication of them is effected
(Leviticus, Book of, ABD 4:315). This seems to complement Milgroms view: the
people are puried as they identify with the cleansing of the sanctuary that is accom-
plished for their benet.
Chapter 10 232
regard to their ritual impurities.
44
This is evident in the striking parallel be-
tween Num 8:21, expressing the o goal of an outer-altar purication offer-
ing that removes physical ritual impurity from the Levites, and Lev 16:30,
stating the o benet of the communal Day of Atonement rituals with re-
gard to sins of the entire community:
Num 8:21: co" x c"v oa\ , and Aaron effected purgation on their
behalf to purify them.
Lev 16:30: canx o" ca"v oa , . . . shall purgation be effected on your
behalf to purify you.
45
In each of these verses, oa for the collective offerer (Levites or whole com-
munity) cleanses (piel of o) them.
Milgrom agrees with Knohl in regarding Lev 16:30 as part of an H interpo-
lation (vv. 2934a)
46
and notes that in this verse H uses o in the sense of
moral purication, as opposed to P, which only speaks of forgiveness (n"o).
47
Elsewhere Milgrom explains:
Hs metaphoric use of Ps cultic terms is highlighted by ame. In P, it is rit-
ual impurity; in H, moral impurity. Ritual impurity (P) is remediable by rit-
ual purication, but moral impurity is irremediable. It is a capital crime,
punishable for the individual by karet and for the community by exile.
48
Since the xooo opposition earlier in Leviticus has to do with physical rit-
ual impurity rather than with moral faults, the use of o in 16:30 does ap-
pear at rst glance to accord with Milgroms characterization of H. But here
there is a major difference from irremediable moral impurity in Milgroms H:
o expresses the remedy of purication from moral impurity. So whatever
the redactional status of this verse may be, its terminology simultaneously
expresses an exceptional ritual efcacy and serves as a bridge to the concep-
tual world of the following chapters.
The contrast between expiable sins puried from the people in 16:30
versus inexpiable faults dealt with later in Leviticus is due to the respective
44. Rendtorff misses this nal outcome, stating rather that in Lev 16 oa itself is the
goal for which Aaron offers his nxon (Leviticus, 218).
46. Ibid., 6263, 106465; idem, Leviticus 1722, 1343; cf. Knohl, The Sanctuary of
Silence, 2728, 105; idem, The Priestly Torah versus the Holiness School: Sabbath
and the Festivals, HUCA 58 (1987) 8692. Knohl also regards Num 8:21 as belonging
to an H passage (The Sanctuary of Silence, 7173, 85, 93 n. 115, 105), but Milgrom
thinks there is inadequate evidence for this (Leviticus 1722, 134041, 134344).
48. Idem, Leviticus 1722, 1326. On the difference between these kinds of impu-
rity, see also J. Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2000) 2231.
natures of these moral evils. In 16:30 they are nxon sins, which up to this
point in Leviticus are inadvertent or otherwise nondeant sins (e.g., Lev 45),
but the irremediable offenses to which Milgrom refers are more serious (e.g.,
Lev 18:20, 2325, 2728, 30; 19:31; 20:3; etc.).
49
The inner-sanctum purication offerings accomplishrpk that
is beyond forgiveness
As early as the Second Temple period, it has been thought that the opu-
lent rites of the Day of Atonement, combined with the peoples repentance
expressed through self-denial, provide forgiveness on a grand scale from vari-
ous kinds of moral faults.
50
Importing terminology from Lev 4:2021 regard-
ing the outer-sanctum purication offering for the community to express the
goal of the inner-sanctum sacrice of the peoples goat on the Day of Atone-
ment, Temple Scroll 26:910 reads:
o" n"o:\ "; cv "\a "v \z oa\ x\ "; nxon, (for it is) the sin offer-
ing for the assembly; and he shall atone with it for all the people of the as-
sembly, and they shall be forgiven.
51
Surprisingly, the verb n"o, forgive, does not appear even once in any of the
biblical Day of Atonement prescriptions (Lev 16; 23:2632; Num 29:711).
52
This fact alone constitutes a major difference between the purication
49. Ibid., 1422: Thus the alleged difference between H and P regarding the nature
of expiation has to be sharply modied. H, after all, speaks of advertent, unrepentant
sins (18:2430; 26:1439). P, however, deals with inadvertent violations, which are ex-
piable by sacrice. But P also positsas can be derived from its lawsthat advertent
sins committed by the community result in Israels exile (vol. 1.25864).
50. Cf. m. Yoma 8:89; b. Yoma 86a; J. Herrmann, Die Idee der Shne im Alten Tes-
tament: Eine Untersuchung ber Gebrauch und Bedeutung des Wortes kipper (Leipzig:
Hinrichs, 1905) 93; A. Mdebielle, Le symbolism du sacrice expiatoire en Isral,
Bib 2 (1921) 281; idem, LExpiation dans LAncien et le Nouveau Testament (SPIB;
Rome: Pontical Biblical Institute, 1923) 85; S. Neches, As at This Day (New York:
Bloch, 1930) 10; S. Y. Agnon, Days of Awe (New York: Schocken, 1948) 21114; C. D.
Ginsburg, Leviticus (ed. C. J. Ellicott; LHC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1961) 150;
A. Schenker, Vershnung und Shne (BibB 15; Freiburg: Katholisches Bibelwerk,
1981) 112, 11415; Levine, Leviticus, 100; Kaiser, The Book of Leviticus, 999, 1113
14; F. Crsemann, The Torah: Theology and Social History of Old Testament Law
(trans. A. W. Mahnke; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996) 318; M. Rooker, Leviticus (NAC
3A; Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2000) 212, 219.
51. Translation by Y. Yadin, The Temple Scroll (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Soci-
ety, 1983) 2:117.
52. Cf. L. Morris, The Day of Atonement and the Work of Christ, Reformed
Theological Review 14 (1955) 12; Rendtorff, Leviticus, 180; cf. 212, 21718, 221;
Shea, Literary Form, 166; G. Olaffson, The Use of n in the Pentateuch and Its
Contribution to the Concept of Forgiveness (Ph.D. diss., Andrews University, 1992)
201; Geller, Blood Cult, 107.
Chapter 10 234
offerings of the Day of Atonement and those that remedy sins throughout the
rest of the year. The purity accomplished for the people on this day is oa be-
yond forgiveness.
53
It seems that the idea of forgiveness on the Day of Atonement has come
from a combination of powerful sources. First, it is (incorrectly) assumed that
oa through a nxon sacrice always results in forgiveness. Second, it is (in-
correctly) assumed that, when Azazels goat bears the iniquity/culpability of
the people (Lev 16:2122), this implies that they receive forgiveness. Third, it
is (incorrectly) assumed that in v. 30, which links cleansing from sins with
oa, the moral purication (o) of the people through observance of the
Day of Atonement involves or at least implies the granting of forgiveness at
that time.
54
This idea is reinforced by the close association between unclean-
ness and sin in v. 16
55
and between oa and o in goal formulas of purica-
tion offerings that remedy physical ritual impurity (12:78, etc.), combined
with the fact that Ps 51 (vv. 4[2], 9[7], 12[10]) and the prophets use o for
moral purity/purication (e.g., Jer 33:8; Ezek 36:33).
56
M. Weinfeld informs us of another source for the idea of forgiveness on
the Day of Atonement. The jubilee announced on the Day of Atonement
(Lev 25:910) underwent a process of spiritual metamorphosis during the
Second Temple period, so that the proclamation of freedom brought about
not only the physical liberation of slaves and of land, but also the liberation
of the soul and its restoration to its pure source.
57
Since the terminology of 16:16 and 21 indicates that the Day of Atone-
ment rituals deal both with rebellious (vOo) and nondeant (nxon) sins,
53. Shea, Literary Form, 166.
54. So H. Ringgren, o ahar, TDOT 5:295. Notice the prominence of Lev
16:30 in traditional confessions for the high priest (m. Yoma 3:8) and over Azazels goat
on behalf of the entire community (m. Yoma 6:2).
55. Idem, o ahar, 293.
56. Cf. ibid., 29495; F. Maass, o hr To Be Pure, TLOT 2:48485. Jeremiah
33:8 is particularly potent because it has the verbs o and n"o in parallel to express
Yhwhs remedy for moral faults, using all three roots for sin(ning) that appear in Lev
16:16, 21: vOo (transgress[ion]), xon (sin), and \v (culpability). Interestingly,
arrangement of these roots in Jer 33:8 reects the pattern of their occurrence in Lev
16:16, 21 (repetition of two roots followed by addition of the third) but with a different
order (including reversal of vOo and xon), aside from the fact that Jeremiah places
xon and vOo in relative clauses that dene the \v. (Read from right to left.)
xonvOo\v (\n, confess; v. 21) xonvOo (oa, purge; v. 16) Lev 16
vOoxon\v (n"o, forgive) xon\v (o, purify) Jer 33:8
57. M. Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East
(Jerusalem: Magnes / Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 208; cf. 20912.
postbiblical prayers and confessions assume that God forgives these categories
on Yom Kippur.
58
But this understanding of the Day of Atonement has re-
sulted from interpretive development beyond the plain sense of Leviticus.
Interestingly, Milgroms general theory of nxon sacrices also has oa after
forgiveness for an act of sin. However, in this case initial forgiveness results
from repentance and is granted before the offerer brings his outer-altar or
outer-sanctum purication offering, which is needed to purge (oa) the sanc-
tuary, prerequisite to additional forgiveness for the negative effect of the sin
on the sanctuary.
59
Organizing the inner-sanctum purication offering paradigm hierarchi-
cally into subsystems of activity dealing with incense, blood applied to the
three parts of the sanctuary, suet, carcass, and purication of assistant(s), we
can outline the ritual procedure as shown on p. 236. The function of the
inner-sanctum purication offerings is reected by the structure of their ac-
tivities. Interweaving and merging indicate a close relationship between the
two rituals (see table 13),
60
which operate together on behalf of the entire
community of Israel, including both priests and laity. The order of blood ma-
nipulations shows that primary signicance is accorded to treatment of each
of the three sacred areas in descending order of sanctity.
61
It is more important
to complete the blood manipulations in each area before moving to the next
area than it is to maintain the continuity of each individual ritual. Thus the
bloods of both animals are applied to the inner sanctum, then to the outer
sanctum, and nally to the outer altar. The principle of descending sanctity
also requires that the priests sacrice be performed before that of the people.
After the blood applications to the inner sanctum, outer sanctum, and
outer altar, the suet is burned on the outer altar, and then the carcasses are in-
cinerated outside the camp. So the entire inner-sanctum purication-offering
complex progresses outward through four areas:
inner sanctum outer sanctum outer altar outside the camp
58. Ibid., 2089.
60. M. Noth obscures this relationship with his contention that Lev 16:15, prescrib-
ing manipulations of the blood of Yhwhs goat in the inner sanctum that exactly cor-
respond to the procedure with the blood of the high priests bull, is secondary material
because it specically refers to v. 14 (Leviticus [trans. J. E. Anderson; OTL; London:
SCM, 1965] 12324).
Chapter 10 236
Inner-Sanctum Purication Offering
slay animal
apply blood
collect blood
burn incense
exit from inner sanctum to court
apply blood, cont.
62
apply blood in inner sanctum
apply blood in outer sanctum
exit with blood from inner sanctum to outer sanctum
put blood on four horns of incense altar
sprinkle blood before veil (in front of incense altar) 7 times
apply blood to outer altar
sprinkle blood on outer altar with nger 7 times
burn suet on outer altar
remove suet
dispose of remainder of carcass
purify assistant(s)
launder clothes
bathe in water
62. Why is the slaughter and collection of blood not performed after the return
of the high priest from burning the incense in the inner sanctum, thereby avoiding
the interruption of activities involving the blood? Treatment of the bull at the begin-
ning shows that the ritual is primarily concerned with that object rather than with
the incense.
This macrostructural movement correlates with the overall function of the
complex: to purge evils out of the sanctuary, that is, from the inside out, as a
housecleaning job.
63
If the two rituals were perfomed separately rather than
interwoven, the progression from the inner sanctum outward would be re-
peated, thereby weakening the nality of its completion.
In the process of purging the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement, the
blood manipulations inside the Tent differentiate between the offerersthat
is, priests and laity. But outside the Tent, application of mixed bloods to the
outer altar (Lev 16:1819), burning of suet (v. 25), disposal of carcasses (v. 27),
and purication of assistants (v. 28) do not make such a distinction (see
above). Similarly, the ritual of Azazels goat outside the Tent banishes the
moral faults of all Israelites (v. 21), including those of the priests.
Burning Incense
By enabling the high priest to enter the inner sanctum so that he can per-
form blood manipulations there, the activities connected with burning in-
cense (Lev 16:1213) contribute to the goal of the inner-sanctum purication-
offering complex. The incense is apotropaic,
64
providing a cloud of smoke
that shields the priest from Yhwhs lethal glory (cf. Exod 33:20) to achieve the
explicit goal that he may not die (Lev 16:13).
65
Numbers 17:11[16:46] indicates that cultic incense can have an expiatory
function: Aaron used incense to effect oa for the Israelites in order to save
them from an outbreak of Yhwhs wrath as manifested in a plague (cf. vv. 12
13).
66
This suggests that, when incense is burned regularly in the sanctu-
ary throughout the year to sweeten the atmosphere of Yhwhs residence, it
63. Cf. Shea, Literary Form, 155.
64. Cf. P. Heinisch, Das Buch Leviticus (HSAT 1; Bonn: Hanstein, 1935) 74; Le-
vine, Leviticus, 104; idem, c\oa, ErIsr 9 (Albright Volume; 1969) 93; Noth, Leviti-
cus, 123. Levine also views the applications of sacricial blood to objects and spaces
inside the sanctuary as apotropaic: perhaps in order to seal up his route of egress and
thus protect the shrine from delement (Leviticus, Book of, 315). However, the text
provides no evidence that these blood manipulations had such a function.
65. Since incense by itself would be inadequate for providing such a smoke screen,
we can assume that on this occasion it is mixed with a special smoke-producing sub-
stance (Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 103031).
66. On pentateuchal narratives in which oa serves as protection against divine
plagues, see M. Barker, Atonement: The Rite of Healing, SJT 49 (1996) 5. J. Mil-
grom has pointed out to me that there is also a propitiatory aspect to purication
offerings, as shown by the fact that within a ritual complex such a sacrice is per-
formed before a burnt offering: propitiation is prerequisite to acceptance of a gift by
the deity (cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 488; A. F. Rainey, The Order of Sacrices in
Old Testament Ritual Texts, Bib 51 [1970] 49498).
Chapter 10 238
mitigates the offensiveness of Israels imperfection to Yhwh, who dwells with
the people in the midst of their pollution (cf. Lev 15:31; 16:16).
67
Similarly,
it appears that, when the high priest burns incense as he enters especially in-
timate proximity to Yhwh on the Day of Atonement, he mitigates the offen-
siveness of himself and also that of the people whom he represents before
Yhwh (cf. Zech 3:15).
Applying Blood
Earlier we found that, in the outer-altar purication offering, blood is ap-
plied only to the outer altar. In the outer-sanctum offering, blood manipula-
tion is expanded and extended into the outer sanctum. In the yearly inner-
sanctum purication offerings, the blood-application portion of the ritual is
greatly augmented, and horizontal movement toward the deity extends as far
as possible: the high priest takes blood into the inner sanctum, where he
sprinkles it on the ark cover and seven times in front of the ark cover (vv. 14
15). He performs similar purgative applications in the outer sanctum (v. 16b;
Exod 30:10) and then puts blood on the horns of the outer altar and sprinkles
on the altar seven times (Lev 16:1819).
By sprinkling seven times on the outer altar rather than in front of it, the
high priest breaks the pattern set in the inner sanctum and followed in the
outer sanctum. The courtyard in front of the outer altar needs no purgation
because it has not been consecrated with anointing oil as the altar and the
tabernacle with its contents have been (Lev 8:1011; cf. Exod 30:2629; 40:9
11).
68
Following purgation (oa/o) of the altar by application of blood to
its horns, the second application by sevenfold sprinkling restores its sanctity
(O;) (v. 19b; cf. Exod 29:3637).
69
The outer altar is the only one of the sancta that is reconsecrated on the
Day of Atonement. Milgrom explains its unique need for this: Manifestly,
the altar, the most vulnerable target of the unending impurities generated by
Israel . . . would become so polluted that its very holiness was endangered.
Hence, a periodic rite of consecration was prescribed.
70
Of course he is
thinking of automatic delement, but in my view it would be true that the
outer altar had the closest connection with faulty Israelites as the place where
67. Compare the noncultic use of incense (K. Nielsen, Incense in Ancient Israel
[VTSup 38; Leiden: Brill, 1986] 90).
69. Ibid., 1037.
70. Ibid., 1040.
the overwhelming majority of purication offerings would be performed in
order to remove evil from individuals throughout the year.
71
Burning Suet
Leviticus 16 does not directly indicate the goal/function of burning the
suet of the inner-sanctum purication offerings (v. 25). In the context of the
outer-altar and outer-sanctum rituals, we found that offering suet constitutes
a kind of mandatory payment to Yhwh resulting from debt incurred by evil
originating with the offerers (chs. 3 and 4 above). The same meaning makes
sense in the Day of Atonement context, except that here the evil has been
located in the sanctuary rather than in/on the offerers.
Disposing of Carcasses
As in the outer-sanctum nxon sacrice, the remainder of the inner-
sanctum purication offerings must be disposed of rather than eaten (Lev
16:27). One basic reason appears to be the same: the high priest is not permit-
ted to gain benet from a sacrice that involves him as offerer. But the appli-
cation of this principle in Lev 16 is different. In Lev 4 the high priest is
presumably included in the sinful community that offers an outer-sanctum
offering (vv. 1314), but in ch. 16 he is not included in the lay community
that offers a goat for an inner-sanctum purication offering (vv. 5, 15). How-
ever, the sacrice of this goat is interwoven and then merged with that of his
bull. From the time when the bloods of the two animals are mixed and ap-
plied together to the outer altar (vv. 1819), the two rituals are fused as one,
called nxon, the purication offering (v. 25), that is, coa nxon, the
purication offering of purgation (Exod 30:10; Num 29:11). This is a ritual
complex consisting of two sacrices (see above), but in Israelite cult it is
unique in that the rituals become inextricably intertwined as conjoined
twins. From the point of merging at the outer altar, the high priest cannot of-
ciate for the community without simultaneously ofciating for himself, so
treatment of the two carcasses must be the same: disposal by incineration. He
cannot benet from the communitys goat because its ritual belongs to the
special complex that also includes the sacrice of his bull.
71. Cf. Bonar, A Commentary on the Book of Leviticus, 310. It is tempting to sug-
gest that the altar needs double treatment because it is used for burnt and reparation
offerings in addition to purication offerings. It is true that these sacrices fulll expi-
atory functions, but there is no evidence that their blood carries pollution as does the
blood of purication offerings (Lev 6:2021[2728]; D. Wright, The Disposal of Im-
purity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature
[SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987] 13031; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 4036).
Chapter 10 240
There is an additional reason to incinerate both the high priests bull and
the communitys goat: unlike nxon sacrices performed at other times, these
function as ritual sponges to purge evils from the sanctuary. So incinerating
them not only rules out benet to the high priest; it eliminates the evils, ex-
cept that in some sense the moral faults survive to be further eliminated to
the wilderness by means of Azazels goat.
Purifying Assistant(s)
Any assistant who participates in disposing of the inner-sanctum nxon car-
casses must purify himself by laundering his clothes and bathing (Lev 16:28).
This is understandable if these animals, presumably with the exception of
the suet burned for Yhwh on his altar (v. 25), function as ritual sponges to
absorb the ritual impurities and moral faults purged out of the sanctuary (cf.
v. 16). While the carcasses themselves never directly contact the polluted
sancta, the animals are regarded as units: purgative application of their blood
to the sanctuary contaminates their carcasses pars pro toto. So a person sub-
sequently contacting such a carcass contracts impurity.
72
While the inner-sanctum purication offerings purge the sanctuary of the
ritual impurities and moral faults of the Israelites (v. 16), Azazels goat carries
away only moral faults (v. 21). So apparently the ritual impurities are de-
stroyed when the carcasses laden with them are incinerated.
73
The moral
faults are tougher to eradicate. They remain to be driven away on the live
goat, polluting its handler in the process (v. 26).
74
Conclusion
On the Day of Atonement, a tightly woven ritual complex consisting of
two elaborate purication offerings on behalf of the priestly and lay commu-
72. Denying contamination by contact of such an assistant or the assistant who
leads Azazels goat into the wilderness (v. 26), Kurtz attempted to explain the require-
ments for purication of these individuals on the basis of the fact that they went out-
side the camp, the place of purity, where they could have become deled without
knowing it (Sacricial Worship, 415). But there is no evidence that simply going a dis-
tance from the camp could cause a person to be contaminated or that purication in
these cases was for delement that was only potential.
73. Cf. B. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic
Terms in Ancient Israel (SJLA 5; Leiden: Brill, 1974) 103; Schwartz, The Bearing of
Sin, 17 n. 55.
74. Cf. ibid., 1718. P. Bovati observes: When a crime has been committed, it be-
comes part of history; inscribed forever on reality (Re-Establishing Justice: Legal
Terms, Concepts and Procedures in the Hebrew Bible [JSOTSup 105; Shefeld: JSOT
Press, 1994] 159).
nities, respectively, purges the ritual impurities and moral faults of the Israel-
ites from the three parts of Yhwhs sanctuary: inner sanctum, outer sanctum,
and outer altar. While purifying (o) a person from severe physical ritual
impurity is accomplished in one major stage of ritual oa by a noncalendric
outer-altar purication offering, cleansing a person/party from nxon, sin,
requires two major phases of oa: First, a noncalendric outer-altar or outer-
sanctum purication offering purges (oa) the moral evil from the offerer,
prerequisite to Yhwhs forgiveness (n"o). Second, the corporate purgation
(oa) of the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement results in the moral cleansing
(o) of the people.
75
75. Cf. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 157; Shea, Literary Form, 16566.
242
Chapter 11
The Purication Ritual of Azazels Goat
When the high priest nishes purging the three components of the sanc-
tuaryinner sanctum, outer sanctum, and outer altarthrough the blood-
manipulation phase of the inner-sanctum purication offerings, he turns his
attention to the live goat that has been standing in the courtyard following its
designation by lot for Azazel (Lev 16:20; cf. v. 10). While the activities in-
volved in the ritual of Azazels goat are relatively simple, their goal/meaning
is rich and in some ways elusive. Our aim here is to penetrate the signicance
of this ritual enough to assess its basic purpose and its relationship to the inner-
sanctum sacrices.
The live goat is banished from the sanctuary court
to the wilderness
Leviticus 16:2022 prescribes the system of activities belonging to the rit-
ual of Azazels goat. First the high priest confesses the moral faults of all Is-
rael over the goat while leaning both his hands on its head. Then an assistant
leads the goat from the court of the sanctuary into the wilderness, where he
releases/abandons it, after which he must purify himself. We can list these
activities as follows:
lean both hands on head of goat
speak while keeping hands on head of goat
banish goat into wilderness
launder clothes
bathe in water
Note the following clarications:
1. Bringing forward (z;) the goat (v. 20b) is simply a transition to the
beginning of the individual ritual (cf. v. 11). It is not presentation to the
altar.
2. Uniquely in the Israelite ritual system, the high priest (here Aaron)
leans both hands, not just one hand, on the head of the goat. He
confesses while remaining in this posture.
The Purication Ritual of Azazels Goat 243
3. Putting the sins on the head of the goat (v. 21) is the interpreted
function of confessing while leaning both hands. It is not a separate
physical activity. Likewise, the goat shall carry upon it all their
iniquities (v. 22) explains the purpose of it shall be sent off (v. 21).
4. Because the impurity necessitating personal purication of the assistant
is contracted from his participation in the ritual, this purication can
be regarded as a postrequisite part of the ritual.
The overall goal of the ritual with Azazels goat is to banish
moral faults from the Israelite camp
The basic function of the procedure with Azazels goat is to transport all
of the culpabilities, transgressions, and sins of the Israelites away from
their camp to the wilderness, where they are obviously supposed to remain
(Lev 16:2122). Thus nonmaterial evils are treated as if they can be loaded
onto an animal and toted away on this tote-goat as if it were material
baggage.
Verses 5, 8, 10, and 26 provide additional data. Like the goat slain on behalf
of the lay community, the tote-goat serves as a nxon, that is, some kind of pu-
rication ritual (v. 5). But whereas the goat to be slain is designated for
Yhwh, the live goat is for Azazel (v. 8) and is stationed alive before Yhwh
to perform expiation upon it by sending it off into the wilderness to Azazel
(v. 10).
1
So the goal is to free the Israelites camp of their moral faults by trans-
ferring them to Azazel, who/which is in the wilderness. By contacting Azazels
goat, which functions as a contaminated vehicle for transporting moral evils,
the man who leads it into the wilderness becomes ritually impure and must
undergo purication before reentering the camp (Lev 16:26). As pointed out
by D. Wright, the close relationship between sin and ritual impurity is espe-
cially clear in this instance, where sin causes impurity.
2
The core dynamics of the ritual, not including postrequisite purication of
the assistant, involve two phases of transfer:
1. Confess: transfer moral faults to the goat.
2. Banish: transfer moral faults, which are on the goat, to the
wilderness.
2. D. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite
and Mesopotamian Literature (SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 19; cf. 18,
79; idem, Day of Atonement, ABD 2:73.
Chapter 11 244
We can outline the ritual hierarchically as follows:
Confession and leaning two hands serve to gather the moral
faults and transfer them to Azazels goat
While the text says only that the high priest confesses over the goat (Lev
16:21), we can assume that this speech is addressed to the injured party,
namely Yhwh, against whose commandments the Israelites sinned.
3
Elsewhere in the Israelite ritual system, confession is required in some pre-
scriptions for purication and reparation offerings (Lev 5:5; Num 5:7). But
confession simultaneous with leaning two hands on the victim appears only
in the corporate ritual of Azazels goat.
Some scholars, such as R. Pter, B. Janowski, D. Wright, and J. Milgrom,
have made a qualitative distinction between transfer with two hands on Aza-
zels goat versus identication of the offerer with one hand.
4
Keil and De-
litzsch, on the other hand, did not regard the difference as essential, but the
laying on of both hands rendered the act more solemn and expressive.
5
A. B.
3. So m. Yoma 6:2; cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 303 on Lev 5:5.
4. See, e.g., R. Pter, Limposition des mains dans lAncien Testament, VT 27
(1977) 4855; B. Janowski, Shne als Heilsgeschehen: Studien zur Shnetheologie der
Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament (WMANT
55; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982) 20910, 21521; D. Wright, The
Gesture of Hand Placement in the Hebrew Bible and in Hittite Literature, JAOS 106
(1986) 43346; J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 15152.
5. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (trans.
J. Martin; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952 [orig. 1874]) 2:404 n. 1; cf. N. Kiuchi, The
Purication Offering in the Priestly Literature: Its Meaning and Function (JSOTSup
56; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1987) 113; K. Mattingly, The Laying on of Hands on
Joshua: An Exegetical Study of Numbers 27:1223 and Deuteronomy 34:9 (Ph.D.
diss., Andrews University, 1997) 13943. A. Rodrguez tentatively argues for two
hands in the sacricial ritual, thereby leveling the distinction between one and two
hands, on the basis of Num 27:18 and 23, where God commands Moses to lay his
hand (sing.) on Joshua (v. 18), but then Moses laid his hands (pl.) upon him (v. 23):
In the light of Num 27:18, 23, it may be suggested that, while descriptive cultic texts
employ the singular, the actual performance of the ritual involves both hands, as in
The Purication Ritual of Azazels Goat
confess while leaning both hands on head of goat
lean both hands on head of goat
speak while keeping hands on head of goat
banish goat into wilderness
purify handler of the goat
launder clothes
bathe in water
Ehrlich views the distinction as quantitative, with two hands used on Azazels
goat because it is to bear numerous sins of the entire community.
6
Similarly,
C. D. Ginsburg has linked the use of both hands with the fact that the animal
functioned for both the priests and the lay community.
7
While I agree with those who hold that leaning one hand signies identi-
cation of the offerer as owner of the victim, I would suggest that the two
kinds of hand-leaning have a common denominator: each signies a (differ-
ent) kind of identication that is involved in transfer. Both require additional
actions for transfer to take place. But the respective identications and trans-
fers differ qualitatively. When one hand is used, the following activities trans-
fer the victim from the offerer to Yhwh for his utilization. When the high
priest places two hands on Azazels goat, this act combined with simultaneous
confession transfers moral faults to the goat. The role of double hand-leaning
is not to identify ownership, which has already been established by the lot rit-
ual, but to identify the route of transfer as it takes place. So whereas the iden-
tication gesture with one hand precedes transfer, the gesture with two hands
is an integral part of the transfer process.
The respective functions of the two kinds of hand-leaning are shaped by
the ritual contexts in which they appear. So perhaps two hands indicate quan-
titative heightening (cf. above) while the context establishes a qualitative dif-
ference in function.
Confession plus double hand-leaning appears to be the means by which
the sins of the entire nation are transformed from abstraction, as if out of the
air, into a concentrated, quasi-spatially containable form, gathered to the high
priest, and channeled through his hands to the goat.
8
Although he is immune
6. A. B. Ehrlich, Randglossen zur Hebrischen Bibel: Textkritisches, Sprachliches
und Sachliches (Hildesheim: Olms, 1968) 2:56; cf. N. Zohar, who works back from
the idea that two hands signify transfer in Lev 16:21 to the conclusion that leaning
one hand indicates transfer of less evil (Repentance and Purication: The Signi-
cance and Semantics of nxon in the Pentateuch, JBL 107 [1988] 61213, 615 n. 31).
7. C. D. Ginsburg, Leviticus (ed. C. J. Ellicott; LHC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1961) 155.
8. Cf. K. Koch, Shne und Sndenvergebung um die Wende von der exilischen
zur nachexilischen Zeit, EvT 26 (1966) 229; F. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual:
Space, Time and Status in the Priestly Theology (JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press,
1990) 94. Wright avoids the idea that the sins are transferred through the high priest:
Lev 16:21 (Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus [AUSDS 3; Berrien Springs, Michigan:
Andrews University Press, 1979] 197). However, neither Num 27:18, 23 nor Lev 16:21
is a sacricial ritual. If Lev 16:21 is taken to exemplify sacricial practice, it violates
Rodrguezs distinction because it is prescriptive (= Rodrguezs descriptive) rather
than an actual performance.
Chapter 11 246
to this evil, no wonder he leans his hands before commencing the confession,
so that the toxic ow will immediately pass from him!
The requirement of confession, which makes the transfer depend on more
than simple physical contact, is symptomatic of the fact that moral faults are
less directly treatable than physical ritual impurities. Compare outer-altar
purication offerings, which can remove physical ritual impurities from per-
sons (e.g., Lev 12:68; Num 8:12, 21) but can only serve as prerequisites to
divine forgiveness for moral faults (Lev 4:26, 31, 35; Num 15:26, 28).
Moral faults are dangerous, as shown by the bipartite structure of the com-
plex of rituals unique to the Day of Atonement. The transition between the
two parts of this complex occurs just after the release of Azazels goat and is
signaled by the high priests change of garments from the plain linen garb re-
quired for entering the inner sanctum to his usual ornate vestments (vv. 23
24a).
9
The fact that he does not change from his special linen clothes until
he has ofciated the ritual with Azazels goat, which involves neither the Tent
nor even the outer altar, implies that the process of removing moral faults
from the sanctuary and then to the wilderness is an urgent one that must not
be interrupted. With the release of Azazels goat in the wilderness (Lev
16:22b), the period of greatest danger is over.
The tafj of Azazels goat is a unique, nonsacricial
purication ritual
Expulsion of moral evils by means of a goat, serving as a ritual vehicle,
involves its conveyance to the wilderness and disposal by abandonment
9. Ibid., 1048. The high priests humble linen garments are appropriate within the
context of the rite of passage that he enacts (idem, The Priestly Consecration [Leviti-
cus 8]: A Rite of Passage, in Bits of Honey: Essays for Samson H. Levey [ed. S. F. Chyet
and D. H. Ellenson; SFSHJ 74; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993] 60). For association of
the linen garments with humility or penitence, among other concepts, see S. H.
Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus (EB; New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900) 262; W. Korn-
feld, Levitikus (NEchtB 6; Wrzburg: Echter, 1983) 63; M. F. Rooker, Leviticus (NAC
3A; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000) 215. For the idea that the high priest un-
dergoes a rite of passage, see B. Jrgens, Heiligkeit und Vershnung: Levitikus 16 in
seinem literarischen Kontext (Herders Biblische Studien 28; Freiburg: Herder, 2001)
6772.
Aaron never carries or embodies these evils. Consequently, one cannot say that sins
are transferred. Rather, the placement of the sins is effected by both the hand place-
ment gesture which designates where the sins are to rest and the spoken confession
which concretizes the sins which then fall on the head of the goat (Wright, The
Gesture of Hand Placement, 436; cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1043).
there.
10
Because no part of the goat is offered to Yhwh for his use, this is not
a sacrice; it is simply an elimination ritual.
11
The biblical prescription does
not call for the death of the goat.
12
It must simply be sent away as a ritual gar-
bage truck carrying controlled toxic waste to Azazel.
Azazels precise nature is elusive, and the uncertain etymology of this
designation does not help.
13
The common understanding of Azazel as
10. For Hittite and Mesopotamian parallels, see Wright, The Disposal of Impurity,
4572, esp. 5760 on the Hittite Ambazzi and Huwarlu rituals, which most closely
parallel the Israelite ritual in that they use live animals as bearers of the evil and lack
the motif of substitution (idem, Day of Atonement, 74); cf. M. Weinfeld, Social
and Cultic Institutions in the Priestly Source against Their Ancient Near Eastern
Background, in Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Panel Ses-
sions: Bible Studies and Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies
/ Perry Foundation for Biblical Research, 1983) 11214; A. Treiyer, The Day of Atone-
ment and the Heavenly Judgment from the Pentateuch to Revelation (Siloam Springs,
Arkansas: Creation Enterprises, 1992) 25865. On Hittite parallels, see O. R. Gurney,
Some Aspects of Hittite Religion (The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy,
1976; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977) 4752; J. C. Moyer, Hittite and Israelite
Cultic Practices: A Selected Comparison, in Scripture in Context II: More Essays on
the Comparative Method (ed. W. W. Hallo, J. C. Moyer, and L. G. Perdue; Winona
Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 3335. For an apparent Ugaritic parallel, in which
an elimination ritual involves driving a goat to a distant place, see K. Aartun, Eine
weitere Parallele aus Ugarit zur kultischen Praxis in Israels Religion, BO 33 (1976)
288; cf. O. Loretz, Leberschau, Sndenbock, Asasel in Ugarit und Israel (UBL 3; Alten-
berge: CIS-Verlag, 1985) 3549.
11. Y. Kaufmann states: It is not conceived, then, as an offering but as a vehicle
for carrying off sin. What the community sends to Azazel is not so much the goat as
the sin it bears (The Religion of Israel [trans. and abridg. M. Greenberg; Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1960] 114); cf. Janowski, Shne, 210. While Azazels goat
represented a demon in early Jewish interpretation (Enoch literature, Apocalypse of
Abraham, rabbinic literature), with which Rev 20 has important connections, in early
Christian tradition (Barnabas, Tertullian), the goat was a symbol of Christ (L. Grabbe,
The Scapegoat Tradition: A Study in Early Jewish Interpretation, JSJ 18 [1987] 152
67). John Calvin regarded the live goat as a bloodless sacrice paired with the slain
goat to typify another means of making atonement to God when Christ, being made
a curse for us, transferred to Himself the sins which alienated men from God (Com-
mentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1996] 1:320; cf. 31617, 319).
12. Perhaps so that it would not be regarded as a sacrice. However, according to
m. Yoma 6:6, in Second Temple times the unfortunate goat was killed by pushing it
over a cliff, undoubtedly to prevent it from returning to areas of human habitation.
13. On possible interpretations of the name Azazel (Lev 16:8, 10, 26), including ref-
erence to a place, a personal being such as a demon or deity, or an abstraction signifying
removal or one who removes, see C. L. Feinberg, The Scapegoat of Leviticus Six-
teen, BSac 115 (1958) 32433; B. Levine, c\oa, ErIsr 9 (Albright Volume; 1969)
94 n. 42; idem, Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary: Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1989) 25053; H. Tawil, Azazel The Prince of the Steppe: A Comparative
Chapter 11 248
(e)scapegoat, referring to the goat itself, is ruled out by the fact that the ani-
mal is sent to Azazel (Lev 16:10, 26). Obviously the goat would not be sent
Study, ZAW 92 (1980) 4359; Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 2122; Milgrom, Le-
viticus 116, 102021; Treiyer, The Day of Atonement, 23158; Jrgens, Heiligkeit, 81
91. In agreement with the tradition that in the Second Temple period Azazels goat
was driven to a place of jagged rocks, over which it was driven to its death (m. Yoma
6:6), and following clues from Saadyah and Ab Sad, G. R. Driver understands Aza-
zel as jagged rocks/precipice, an intensive form derived from the Semitic root zz,
which has also yielded Arabic azzu(n), rough ground. The choice of the lots then,
is between that cast for the Lord and that cast for (the) rugged rocks, (the) precipice
(taken as a proper name): the rst goat was slaughtered on the spot as a sacrice to the
Lord, the second was taken into the wilderness to the precipice called Azazel or
jagged rocks and driven over them to its death, carrying the sins of the people with
it (Three Technical Terms in the Pentateuch, JSS 1 [1956) 98). While Drivers ex-
planation is attractive linguistically, it appears excessively inuenced by postbiblical
tradition and does not adequately take into account the indication in Lev 16 that Aza-
zel is a personal being, as shown by the parallel between belonging to Yhwh and
belonging to Azazel (v. 8). However, this does not rule out the possibility that the
word Azazel originated from the root zz as Driver argues, but that in Lev 16 it is used
as a (possibly pejorative) representation of what is at least in some sense regarded as a
personal being. In any case, there is no indication in Lev 16 that the goat is led to a
precipice called Azazel and driven over it to its death. Rather, the goat belonging to
Mr. Azazel (i.e., possibly Mr. Very Rough Ground) is simply led into the wilderness
and released there to fend for itself in an inhospitable, rough place that is cut off (Lev
16:22) from the ordering of human civilization and agriculture. Since the wilderness
is a place of disorderliness, which in the moral realm manifests itself in the moral
faults that are laid on the goat, we could say that responsibility for actions of chaos were
sent to Mr. Chaos in the realm of chaos (cf. D. Davies, An Interpretation of Sacrice
in Leviticus, ZAW 89 [1977] 39495). O. Loretz suggests a linguistic relation to the
Ugaritic divine name zbl, which is listed in KTU 1.102, line 27 (Leberschau, Sn-
denbock, Asasel in Ugarit und Israel [UBL 3; Altenberge: CIS-Verlag, 1985] 5657).
M. Grg connects Azazel with the Egyptian god Seth and suggests that Azazel is de-
rived from Egyptian d + dr/l, a noun + passive participle for which he provides the
approximate rendering: der beseitigte/ferngehaltene Schuldige (the culprit removed/
kept away) (Beobachtungen zum sogenannten Azazel-Ritus, BN 33 [1986] 14).
However, B. Janowski argues that Grgs theory does not t the context of Lev 16,
where Israel rather than Azazel is guilty (Azazelbiblisches Gegenstck zum gyp-
tischen Seth?: Zur Religionsgeschichte von Lev 16,10.21f., in Die Hebrische Bibel
und ihre zweifache Nachgeschichte: Festschrift fr Rolf Rendtorff zum 65. Geburtstag
[ed. E. Blum, C. Macholz, and E. Stegemann; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Ver-
lag, 1990] 1028. As an alternative, B. Janowski and G. Wilhelm interpret the Hurrian
term aza/ushi in light of the Akkadian sense of the root zz as referring to divine anger
and thus explain the original Azazel ritual as expelling a goat in order to overcome
divine anger (Der Bock, der die Snden hinaustrgt: Zur Religionsgeschichte des
Azazel-Ritus Lev 16,10.21f, in Religionsgeschichtliche Beziehungen zwischen Klein-
asien, Nordsyrien und dem Alten Testament [ed. B. Janowski, K. Koch, and G. Wilhelm;
OBO 129; Freiburg: Universittsverlag / Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993]
13462; cf. Janowski, Azazel: Biblisches Gegenstck, 10810). W. W. Hallo points out
that nakkussis, a Hittite technical term for an animal that was loaded with impurities
to the scapegoat.
14
However, partial illumination comes from the lot cere-
mony that determines the respective roles of the two goats provided by the
community (vv. 710).
Use of lots to determine the respective ritual roles of animals is unique
here in Israelite ritual.
15
The purpose of this preliminary procedure cannot
be explained by the need to differentiate between two creatures of the same
kind, even when they are provided by the same party and one is slain while
the other is released alive. Compare the bird ritual for purication of a scale-
diseased person, in which one bird is slain and the other is set free (14:47),
but no lots are needed.
16
The reason for the lot ritual before Yhwh (16:7)
on the Day of Atonement is that he must decide the roles of the goats through
what appears to be chance.
17
Through the lot ceremony, one goat is designated \", for Yhwh (i.e.,
belonging to Yhwh) and the other is "IxIv", for Azazel (i.e., belonging
to Azazel, v. 8).
18
So Yhwh and Azazel are legal parties capable of ownership.
14. C. D. Ginsburg, Leviticus, 151. S. A. Geller tries to make sense of sending the
goat to the Goat as a possible product of polemical intent on the part of P against the
realm of magic (Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the
Pentateuch, Prooftexts 12 [1992] 106). Long ago S. R. Driver and H. A. White pointed
out that the rendering scape-goat, derived through St. Jerome from Symmachus, is
certainly incorrect: it does not suit v. 26, and implies a derivation opposed to the
genius of the Hebrew language, as though Azazel were a compound word (the going
goat = Heb. ez ozel). Moreover, the marked antithesis between for Azazel and for
Jhvh does not leave it open to doubt that the former is conceived as a personal being
(The Book of Leviticus [SBONT 3; New York: Dodd, Mead, 1898] 81).
15. Roles of other animals are decided by offerers before they bring them to the
sanctuary.
16. Compare Lev 5:710 and 14:22, 3031, where a single offerer brings two birds
of the same kind, but no lots are cast to determine which is to function as a purica-
tion offering and which is to be a burnt offering.
17. Cf. E. Leach, The Logic of Sacrice, in Anthropological Approaches to the
Old Testament (ed. B. Lang; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) 148; H. Maccoby, Ritual
and Morality: The Ritual Purity System and Its Place in Judaism (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1999) 86. For divine selection/identication through lots in
the Bible, see, for example, Josh 7:1418; 1 Sam 10:2021.
18. For the " of possession, see Isa 38:9; Hab 3:1; Ps 3:1; BDB 513; HALOT 1:509.
Archaeologists have found many objects, especially seals, with the inscribed names of
their owners immediately preceded by the " of ownership (Levine, Leviticus, 102). The
lots placed on the two goats apparently indicate their new owners, which have just
been determined through the casting of lots, so that the animals will not subsequently
of a penitent and sent on its way, etymologically appears to be composed of to let
go (nakk-) and the abstract sufx (-si), providing a parallel to one of the proposed ety-
mologies for azazel, the goat that departs (Leviticus and Ancient Near Eastern
Literature, in B. J. Bamberger, Leviticus [New York: Union of American Hebrew
Congregations, 1981] 744); cf. M. Weinfeld, Social and Cultic Institutions, 114.
Chapter 11 250
The fact that Yhwh is supernatural could be taken to imply that Azazel is also
some kind of supernatural being.
19
Yhwhs goat is sacriced as a nxon, purication offering (v. 9) on behalf
of the community, but the other goat remains alive, to be sent to Azazel into
the wilderness (v. 10; cf. vv. 2122). Whatever the precise nature of Azazel
may be, v. 10 identies him as the party who receives the live goat. Now it
makes sense that only Yhwh can designate the respective roles of the two
goats: otherwise, if the high priest chose the animals, it would appear that he
and the people he represented were offering an animal to Azazel.
20
While the lot ceremony transfers ownership of the goat from the commu-
nity to the mysterious Azazel, the animal is not an offering to him.
21
Rather,
the live goat transports Israelite moral faults to Azazel, who ends up with this
noxious load.
22
The ritual is a singularly unfriendly gesture toward Azazel.
It would be like sending someone a load of chemical or nuclear waste. Be-
cause Yhwh is the authority who commands the Israelites to perform the
ritual (vv. 12), it appears that Azazel is his enemy. Therefore, it is likely that
Azazel is some kind of demon
23
and that his presence in an uninhabited re-
21. Cf. P. Heinisch, Das Buch Leviticus (HSAT 1; Bonn: Hanstein, 1935) 75; Korn-
feld, Levitikus, 6465. M. Noth viewed the ritual of Azazels goat as ambiguous: the
gift to Azazel should then have had the apotropaic purpose of warding off this redoubt-
able desert demon and the dangers that he threatened; whilst the burdening of the
he-goat with Israels trespasses meant the cleansing and atoning removal of these tres-
passes. Thus it might be asked whether the whole rite had not already had a history be-
fore it came into the cleansing ritual of Lev. 16 (Leviticus [trans. J. E. Anderson;
OTL; London: SCM, 1965] 125). However, there is no evidence that Azazel presented
such danger to the Israelites.
22. Cf. Zech 5:511.
23. See 1 En. 10:45. On the Azazel episode in 1 En. 10, including its background,
see P. D. Hanson, Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel, and Euhemeristic Heroes in 1 Enoch
611, JBL 96 (1977) 22027. For interpretation of Azazel as an evil being or demon,
see G. Bush, Notes, Critical and Practical, on the Book of Leviticus (New York: Ivison
& Phinney, 1857) 149; J. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship of the Old Testament (trans. J. Mar-
tin; Minneapolis: Klock & Klock, 1980; repr. of 1863) 399401; H. L. Strack, Die
Bcher Exodus, Leviticus, Numeri (Munich: Beck, 1894) 334; A. Dillmann, Die Bcher
Exodus und Leviticus (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897) 57778; Heinisch, Das Buch Leviticus, 74;
be confused (Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 101920). The biblical text does not indicate
the manner in which the lots are to be cast. For the traditional rabbinic description,
see m. Yoma 3:9; 4:1. In noncalendric rituals, the giving party indicates his departing
ownership by leaning one hand on the head of his animal. Placing lots on the heads
of the two goats indicates ownership of the recipientsYhwh and Azazelbut there
is no need to indicate departing ownership in this case because the ritual is a calendric
ritual.
gion (cf. Lev 17:7; Isa 13:21; 34:14; Luke 11:24; Rev 18:2) represents the ex-
treme opposite of Gods holy presence in the Holy of Holies.
24
However, the
nature of Azazels personality is not revealed in Leviticus, perhaps to avoid
the danger that some would be tempted to worship him.
25
Notice that unlike
non-Israelite exorcisms involving demons, the ritual expels evil to Azazel
rather than expelling Azazel himself.
26
The goat for Azazel is not a sacrice. It is not the lack of slaughter that
excludes it from the category of sacrices/offerings.
27
A sacrice of grain
(JSOTSup 106; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1992) 203. E. Leach notes that the movement
of the scapegoat reverses the movement by which Aaron was consecrated as high
priest (The Logic of Sacrice, in Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament
[ed. B. Lang; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985] 149).
25. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 2225; idem, Azazel, ABD 1:53637; Mil-
grom, Leviticus 116, 102021. G. A. Boyd says of demons in the Old Testament:
Their reality is afrmed, but their autonomy from the will of Yahweh is minimized.
Such an emphasis was perhaps necessary at this early stage of biblical revelation in or-
der to establish among Gods people the singularity and sovereignty of the Lord in the
face of a culture that absolutely denied it (God at War: The Bible and Spiritual Con-
ict [Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 1997] 83).
26. Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, 114.
27. Contra Ibn Ezra on Lev 16:9; H. Cazelles, Le Lvitique (La Sainte Bible; 2nd
ed.; Paris: Cerf, 1958) 79; Noordtzij, Leviticus, 16263; G. Hasel, Studies in Biblical
Atonement II: The Day of Atonement, in The Sanctuary and the Atonement: Bibli-
cal, Historical, and Theological Studies (ed. A. Wallenkampf; Washington, D.C.:
Review and Herald, 1981) 12021; A. Rodrguez, Sacricial Substitution and the Old
R. de Vaux, Les Sacrices de lAncien Testament (CahRB 1; Paris: Gabalda, 1964)
87; Kornfeld, Levitikus, 64; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 102021. Keil and Delitzsch,
following Origen (Contra Celsum 6:43), thought Azazel must refer to the devil him-
self, the head of the fallen angels, who was afterwards called Satan; for no subordinate
evil spirit could have been placed in antithesis to Jehovah as Azazel is here, but only
the ruler or head of the kingdom of demons (Biblical Commentary, 398). Compare
Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus, 26970. While A. Noordtzij nds no evidence for
identifying Azazel with Satan, he regards him as a desert demon that was capable of
feeding on an animal laden with the sins of the entire nation of Israel and notes that
there is no mention at all of any worship or even fear of Azazel. The ceremony rather
forms a strong expression of contempt, for Moses contemporaries, who were accus-
tomed to presenting offerings to the desert demons (see discussion on 17:19), must
have been greatly struck by the fact that it was here Israels sins were fed to Azazel
(Leviticus [trans. R. Togtman; BSC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982] 16263). B. Le-
vine regards this rite of riddance to the domain of Azazel, the demonic ruler of the
wasteland (see Lev 17:7) to have heavily magical overtones and to represent a ves-
tige of pre-monotheistic religion, continued by the priests of Israel to dramatize expi-
ation (Leviticus, Book of, ABD 4:315). For the theory that the ritual of Azazels goat
was incorporated into Israelite religion from pagan practice, see Kaufmann, The Reli-
gion of Israel, 11415; J. L. Mays, The Book of Leviticus, The Book of Numbers (LBC
4; Atlanta: John Knox, 1963) 54.
Chapter 11 252
functioning as a nxon also lacks slaughter (5:1113). What makes the live-
goat ritual nonsacricial is the fact that the animal is not given over to
Yhwh as an irrevocable gift.
28
In the normative religious system of Israel,
it could not be an offering to anyone else, including Azazel (cf. 17:7).
29
Even if a gift to Azazel were permissible, the live goat is a vehicle of elimi-
nation, not a gift.
30
Although Azazels goat is not a sacrice, Lev 16:5 designates the two goats
provided by the community for the Day of Atonement ceremonies as nxon",
which would ordinarily be translated for a purication offering.
31
So both
Yhwhs goat and Azazels goat are nxon animals (cf. Num 7:87; Lev 9:3; 23:19).
28. R. de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (trans. J. McHugh; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans / Livonia, Michigan: Dove, 1961) 452. Elsewhere de Vaux attributes
the nonsacricial character of the live goat to the fact that it has become impure with
the sins of the people and thus is disqualied from serving as a holy sacricial victim
(Les Sacrices, 29, 87).
29. Cf. Blome, Die Opfermaterie in Babylonien und Israel (SSAOI 4; Rome: Pontif-
ical Biblical Institute, 1934) 105 n. 35.
30. Contra P. Rigby, who argues that, because Azazels goat was cut off from its
owner (the Israelites) and dedicated both to Yhwh and to Azazel, it was originally a
dualistic sacrice in which the desert serves as the functional equivalent of the altar
(A Structural Analysis of Israelite Sacrice and Its Other Institutions, EgT 11 [1980]
34647, esp. n. 82).
31. Cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1293; idem, Leviticus 116, 1009.
Testament Sacrices, in The Sanctuary and the Atonement: Biblical, Historical, and
Theological Studies (ed. A. Wallenkampf; Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald,
1981) 138. Like sacrices, elimination rituals may or may not involve killing. In Deut
21:19 a heifers neck is broken in a nonsacricial elimination ritual for a case of un-
solved murder. On the other hand, Azazels goat (Lev 16:2022) and a bird freed on
the rst day of the process by which a person or house healed from leprosy is puri-
ed (14:47, 4953) are not killed. H. Hubert and M. Mauss erroneously regarded
these rituals as sacrices (Sacrice: Its Nature and Function [trans. W. D. Halls; Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1964; French original, 1898] 39). In order to count
the live goat and bird as victims, they had to interpret sacricial destruction broadly
enough to include expulsion without death, and they explained the consecration in-
volved in these cases: In spite of ritual differences the same phenomenon takes place
here as on the altar of the olah at Jerusalem, when the victim disappears entirely in
smoke before the face of Yahweh. In both instances it is separated and entirely disap-
pears, although it is not towards the same regions of the religious world that it proceeds
in the two cases (p. 39). This reasoning stretches consecration beyond reasonable lim-
its. There is no indication in the biblical text that the live goat and bird are sent to sa-
cred or religious regions. To the contrary, they are sent away from the inhabited area
where Yhwhs sanctuary is located and where religious activities normally take place.
These animals are not transferred to the sacred domain but serve exclusively as ve-
hicles for eliminating evil (D. Wright, Deuteronomy 21:19 as a Rite of Elimination,
CBQ 49 [1987] 387403).
The idea that the nonsacricial live goat functions as some kind of nxon
in its own right is too astonishing for many interpreters to accept. Thus
P. Heinisch views nxon" here as imprecise because only one serves as an of-
fering,
32
E. Gerstenberger supposes that v. 5 is not yet referring to the scape-
goat rite at all,
33
and J. R. Porter states without giving support: this shows
the priestly tendency to give a single interpretation to what are actually
distinct rituals. In fact, only one of the he-goats was used as a sin-offering (cp.
verse 9).
34
A. Rodrguez, B. Levine, F. Gorman, and R. Pter-Contesse and
J. Ellington regard Azazels goat only as a potential nxon before the selec-
tion by lots is made.
35
J. H. Kurtz contended that both goats form one nxon, and the ritual with
the second (live) goat completes the expiatory process begun with the rst
(slain) goat.
36
Similarly, S. H. Kellogg explained that, because both goats are
designated nxon (v. 5) and the live goat is placed before Yhwh (v. 10), the two
animals constitute one nxon sacrice to Yhwh, the slain goat showing the
means of reconciliation with God and the live goat setting forth the effect of
that sacrice.
37
Following this idea, W. Kaiser states:
This one sin offering comes in two parts, since the rst goat that dies cannot
be brought back to life to transact the second part of the ritual. It clearly sets
forth the teaching that sins are forgiven on the basis of a substitute (the rst
goat), and sins are forgotten and removed from us, as the psalmist said, as
far as the east is from the west,/ so far has he removed our/ transgressions
from us (Ps 103:12 niv). The rst animal pictures the means used for
atonementi.e., the shedding of the blood of an innocent substituteand
the second animal pictures the effect, the removal of the guilt.
38
32. Heinisch, Das Buch Leviticus, 74.
33. E. Gerstenberger, Leviticus: A Commentary (trans. D. Stott; OTL; Louisville,
Kentucky: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 219.
34. J. R. Porter, Leviticus (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976)
127.
35. Rodrguez, Substitution, 113; Levine, Leviticus, 101; Gorman, The Ideology of
Ritual, 97; R. Pter-Contesse and J. Ellington, A Handbook on Leviticus (UBSHS;
New York: United Bible Societies, 1990) 244.
36. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 39596, 4047, 41013; cf. D. Hoffmann, Das Buch
Leviticus (Berlin: Poppelauer, 19056) 441; Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary,
405. Likewise, S. Landersdorfer argued that the two identical goats form an ideal unity
as a single Shnopfer, in which the goat for Azazel has no independent signicance
(Studien zum biblischen Vershnungstag [ATA 10; Mnster: Aschendorff, 1924] 14).
37. Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus, 26671; cf. Feinberg, The Scapegoat, 322,
324; Noordtzij, Leviticus, 161.
38. W. Kaiser, The Book of Leviticus, NIB 1:1112; cf. Rooker, Leviticus, 221.
Chapter 11 254
As Kaiser recognizes, if the live goat continues the sacricial process begun
with Yhwhs goat, it is difcult to maintain that Azazel is some kind of demon
because Lev 17:7 warns against giving sacrices to demons. Therefore Kaiser
prefers the unviable (see above) traditional approach that Azazel is a com-
pound word made up of Iv, goat, and "Ix, go away, yielding the meaning
escape-goat (= older English scapegoat).
39
N. Kiuchi accepts the concept that the two goats together form one nxon
and proposes that the Azazel-goat ritual is a special form of the burning of
the hattat.
40
He properly recognizes that disposal of the nxon esh by incin-
eration and the ritual of Azazels goat are both involved with elimination of
evil within the same overall complex of rituals prescribed in Lev 16.
41
How-
ever, Kiuchis approach is unsatisfactory. Aside from problematic implica-
tions with regard to the nature of Azazel that arise from regarding the ritual
of his goat as the continuation of a sacricial process (see above), the idea
that the two goats form one purication offering overlooks the closer rela-
tionship between Yhwhs goat and the bull for the priests, which are com-
bined at the next hierarchical level as a single nxon complex (Lev 16:25
singular nxon) called the purication offering of purgation (Exod 30:10;
Num 29:11). Because the live-goat ritual removes moral faults of all Israelites
(Lev 16:21), including priests and lay community together,
42
it stands out-
side the purication offering of purgation and has the same function with
respect to the priests bull as it does in relation to Yhwhs goat on behalf of
the laity.
43
39. Kaiser, The Book of Leviticus, 1112.
40. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 149; cf. 148, 159, 163.
41. Ibid., 13435.
42. See v. 19, where "xO :a must include both priests and laity because this
term refers to the offerers of the bull for the priests and Yhwhs goat for the lay com-
munity, the mixed bloods of which are applied to the outer altar (p. 153). Contra Le-
vine, who states that Azazels goat functioned only for the people, not for the priests
(Leviticus, 106).
43. Kiuchis hypothesis that, by purging impurity from the sancta, Aaron bears the
guilt of the people, which he then places upon the live goat when he lays his hands
on it and confesses (The Purication Offering, 148; cf. 156), is untenable. He assumes
that the dynamics of Lev 10:17, where a priest bears culpability (\v xO:) as a result of
performing oa by means of a purication offering (cf. pp. 4952, 9899, 109), operate
in connection with the inner-sanctum purication offerings on the Day of Atonement.
But 10:17 applies only to eaten nxon sacrices. There is no evidence that an ofci-
ating priest likewise bears culpability resulting from ofciation of a burnt purication
offering (contra Kiuchis assumption: p. 134), including the inner-sanctum sacrices
that are incinerated outside the camp on the Day of Atonement (16:27).
A second problem is that, unlike the bird rituals of Lev 14:47 and 4953,
in which blood from a slain bird is applied to a live bird that is released, there
is no contact/interaction between the slain bull or goat and the live goat to
show that the live animal simply continues the same process begun with
them.
44
Rather than forging a bond between the two goats, the high priests
confession on Azazels goat indicates that there is no simple transfer by physi-
cal contact via the high priest from the slain nxon animals that purge the
sanctuary to the live goat. This does not rule out some continuity between the
evils removed from the sanctuary and those that are expelled by the live goat,
but it shows that the evils removed by the latter and the relationship of the
animal to these evils need not be the same.
44. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 164; cf. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 79.
Inexact similarity between the bird rituals of Lev 14 and the goat rituals of ch. 16 is
well recognized. See, e.g., Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 43334; Landersdorfer, Studien
zum biblischen Vershnungstag, 24; Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 7879. In 14:49
53, as in ch. 16, delement is removed from a place of residence, this purgation is ex-
pressed with "v oa + dwelling (14:53; cf. 16:16, 18) and achieves purity (o 14:53;
cf. 16:19), slain and live creatures are used, a sevenfold sprinkling utilizes the blood of
the slain creature (14:51; cf. 16:1415, 19), and the live creature is sent away (piel of
n"O; 14:53; cf. 16:10, 21, 22) from the area of human habitation. There are also signif-
icant differences (cf. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 79). Whereas the sanctuarys
pollution includes moral faults (16:16) and the load of evil borne by Azazels goat is ex-
clusively moral in nature (v. 21), the house in Lev 14 is cleansed only from a kind of
physical ritual impurity. The live goat is sent to Azazel, but no such destination is in-
dicated for the live bird. Contact between the two birds, already mentioned above, in-
dicates that they are used interactively in the same individual ritual, but the inner-
sanctum purication offering of Yhwhs goat and the ritual of Azazels goat are discrete
rituals with distinct goals, even though they belong to the same overall ritual complex.
If Azazels goat were to complete the process of purging the sanctuary, as the live bird
completes the process of purging a house, we could expect a notice at the end of 16:22
analogous to that which we nd in 14:53 after the instruction for release of the live
bird: o\ na"v oa\ , Thus he shall perform purgation upon the house, and it
shall be pure (translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1290; idem, Leviticus 116,
829). A separate bird ritual, parallel to that which remedies the impurity of a house, is
prescribed for the ritual cleansing of a scaly-skin diseased person who has been healed
from this malady (14:47), but in ch. 16 the people are cleansed through purgation of
the sanctuary (v. 30). K. Aartun nds a functional parallel between the independent
rituals for purication of persons and houses, respectively, in Lev 14 and the combina-
tion of these kinds of purication in ch. 16. He uses this evidence to support the the-
ory that originally independent rituals were secondarily reworked into a single Day of
Atonement ceremony (Studien zum Gesetz ber den grossen Vershnungstag Lv 16
mit Varianten: Ein ritualgeschichtlicher Beitrag, ST 34 [1980] 8486). However, Aar-
tun does not adequately take into account the fact that in Lev 16 purgation of the sanc-
tuary and purication of the people are not simply juxtaposed within one ritual.
Rather, the latter is the secondary result of the former.
Chapter 11 256
A third problem reinforces the second. Whereas the slain purication of-
ferings remove impurities and moral faults (Lev 16:16, 19), Azazels goat re-
moves only moral faults (vv. 2122). If the latter simply completes the disposal
process for one or both of the inner-sanctum purication offerings, why does
it not remove exactly the same list of evils?
B. Schwartz agrees with Kiuchi that the live goat constitutes the second
part of a two-part nxon that carries away moral faults after they have been re-
moved from the sanctuary.
45
Thus the scapegoat procedure is an integral
part of the purication of the sanctuary, carrying off the sins that have col-
lected there.
46
However, unlike Kiuchi, he does not attempt to make the
live-goat ritual functionally equivalent to disposal of the slain goats carcass.
He suggests that impurities do not go on the live goat, because they, unlike
sins, are not only removed from the sancta but also eradicated by the slain
purication offering.
47
Schwartz explains the unique need for driving away sins on a live goat
only on the Day of Atonement as due to the unique purgation of the inner
sanctum on this day to remove deliberate (for him = wanton) offenses from
that area. Following Milgroms theory, according to which such offenses are
the only evils serious enough to penetrate into the inner sanctum,
48
Schwartz
explains that, while slain purication offerings alone sufce to eradicate inad-
vertent faults and severe ritual impurities, deliberate faults cannot be de-
stroyed in this way. They must be extracted from the shrine, loaded onto the
head of the goat, and driven off into the wilderness.
49
Schwartz avoids some, but not all, of Kiuchis weaknesses. As pointed out
above, because the ritual of Azazels goat relates to both purication offerings,
it cannot simply complete one or the other. Also, there is not a direct ritual
transfer from either of the slain nxon sacrices to Azazels goat.
Schwartz introduces an additional problem when he maintains that only
deliberate/wanton offenses are purged from the inner sanctum and loaded
onto the live goat. In Lev 16:16 and 21 he interprets cnxo n"a" cvOo as
deliberate offenses among all their sins and equates them with the n:\v in
45. B. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature, in Pomegranates
and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near Eastern Ritual, Law, and Lit-
erature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (ed. D. Wright, D. N. Freedman, and A. Hurvitz;
Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 1718.
46. Ibid., 20.
47. Ibid., 1718.
48. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 257; cf. idem, Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly Pic-
ture of Dorian Gray, RB 83 (1976) 393.
49. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin, 21; cf. 1720.
v. 21, which he understands to mean wanton sins.
50
Thus he attempts to rec-
oncile elements belonging to the theory of Kiuchi and that of Milgrom, who
holds that wanton sins penetrate into the inner sanctum, by taking these
verses to indicate only one category of moral evil, deliberate/wanton of-
fenses.
51
However, as we shall see in ch. 13, the vOo, nxon, and \v evils are
three discrete categories. Here it sufces to point out that Schwartzs valid
criticism of Levine, Milgrom, and Wright, who treat the waw before cvOo
in cvOoo "xO :a nxooo (from the impurities of the Israelites and from
their rebellious sins; v. 16) as if it were explicative,
52
also applies to his own
interpretation of cvOo"anx\ "xO :a n:\v (the culpabilities of the Is-
raelites and all their rebellious sins) in v. 21. Regarding v. 16 he says that
the waw must be a simple conjunction, and the text indicates clearly that
a double purgation is described: one that removes both impurities and
sins.
53
But regarding v. 21 he explains: only the deliberate offenses among
all their sins (cnxon "a" cvOo, 16:21), that is, the wanton sins (n\:\v,
vv. 2122), are loaded onto the scapegoat.
54
Here he interprets the waw in
cvOo"a nx\ as explicative when it must, as in the equivalent syntactic po-
sition in v. 16, be a simple conjunction, meaning that the live goat carries off
both n:\v and cvOo as two distinct categories. But if the n:\v are not the same
as the cvOo, how can the ritual of Azazels goat be the second phase of a
single nxon ritual that expels from the camp the same evils that were purged
from the sanctuary through Yhwhs slain goat? There must be a greater artic-
ulation between the two goat rituals than Schwartz acknowledges.
Now we are ready to prot from the following observation by Schwartz:
50. Ibid., 1819.
51. Wrights rendering of cnxo n"a" cvOo as their crimes including all of their
sins allows for two categories of evil. However, his suggestion that this phrase may
have been added (following M. Lhr, Das Ritual von Lev. 16 [Untersuchungen zum
Hexateuchproblem 3; SKGG 2/1; Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1925] 3) to ex-
plain the need for purication of the inner sanctum, namely, because the cvOo had
uniquely penetrated there (The Disposal of Impurity, 1820, following Milgroms sys-
tem, on which see ch. 7 above), does not account for why cnxo n should be includ-
ed here. So the net effect is essentially the same as for Schwartz.
52. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin, 7 n. 12, referring to B. Levine, In the Presence
of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms in Ancient Israel (SJLA 5; Leiden:
Brill, 1974) 7677; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1033; and Wright, The Disposal of Impu-
rity, 1821. As mentioned above, Wright tentatively regards cnxo n"a" cvOo in
vv. 16 and 21 as an addition to the text.
53. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin, 7.
54. Ibid., 19.
Chapter 11 258
Only after having purged the adytum, shrine, and altar of the impurities
and sins may the priest place the latter on the head of the scapegoat, a
transference accomplished by the verbal process of articulating them aloud
(v. 21). The inference is clear: the sins can be transferred to the scapegoat
at this point and not before, because only now has the priest acquired them
himself. They have been accumulating in the adytum and the shrine, and
he has just released them; now he transfers them to the head of the goat in
order to dispose of them for good.
55
This statement is true of the moral evils that are removed both from the sanc-
tuary through Yhwhs goat (Lev 16:16) and from the camp by Azazels goat
(v. 21): cnxo n"a" cvOo . This continuity
56
requires that the sanctuary be
purged by means of the slain purication offerings before the vOo and nxon
sins can be banished from the camp on Azazels goat. But the high priest
does not transfer to the live goat the nxoo, impurities, released from the
sanctuary.
57
Conversely, he does not remove from the sanctuary the n:\v that
he places on Azazels goat. So it is not at all certain that he has acquired the
n:\v only now through the process of purging the sanctuary.
In light of the above discussion, I conclude that there is both continuity
and discontinuity between the slain nxon rituals and the ritual of Azazels
goat, which is also called a nxon.
58
My position is an alternative both to the
view that the evils removed from the sanctuary are simply transferred to Aza-
zels goat
59
and to a hypothesis that originally the evils were directly trans-
ferred to Azazels goat, parallel to the bird rituals of Lev 14 and other ancient
Near Eastern comparative materials.
60
Returning to Lev 16:5, we must persist in maintaining that each of the two
goats, individually, is a nxon animal. As M. M. Kalisch pointed out long ago:
55. Ibid., 17.
56. Cf. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 14547.
57. Apparently missing this point, Rodrguez speaks of Azazels goat carrying away
impurity as well as sin (Substitution, 118).
58. Milgrom and Wright maintain a similar balance between continuity and artic-
ulation. They hold that the Day of Atonement purication offerings and the scapegoat
ritual belong together in the sense that the former transfer ritual impurities and moral
faults (i.e., impurity resulting from moral faults) out of the sanctuary, and the latter
transfers the moral faults themselves, the cause of the sanctuarys delement, from the
people to the wilderness. Thus, evils are not transferred directly from the sanctuary to
Azazels goat (Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 857, 103334, 104345; Wright, The Disposal
of Impurity, 18, 30).
59. For example, Rodrguez, Substitution, 11718, 215, 219; Kiuchi, The Purica-
tion Offering, 15054.
60. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 7980; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1044, 1082.
Both goats were indeed meant to effect complete obliteration of transgres-
sions, and both alike were subjected to the Divine decision of the lot; yet it
would be too much to consider both virtually as one sin-offering presented
to God; the two worked out the desired object in a very different manner;
one was a victim intended to atone for sins, the other carried away sins
already atoned for . . . they implied the acknowledgment of two opposite
and opposing forces in the moral world.
61
In spite of the facts that Azazels goat is placed before Yhwh, showing that
its function is under Yhwhs control,
62
and that it accomplishes a kind of
oa (v. 10; see below), it is a unique nxon that is not offered to Yhwh.
63
Thus the designation nxon in v. 5 should be understood broadly to mean
purication ritual, an expression that covers both the purication offering
of Yhwhs goat and the nonsacricial ritual with Azazels goat.
64
Since the
Dyer, 186772) 2:209.
62. See G. B. Gray, Sacrice in the Old Testament: Its Theory and Practice (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1925) 317.
63. Contra Feinberg, The Scapegoat, 33031. By including Azazels goat under
the term nxon in v. 5, but by distinguishing it from performance of Yhwhs goat as a
nxon (vv. 910), the writer of Lev 16 sets up tension that invites comparison and con-
trast between the respective roles of the two goats. Geller nds the pair to represent a
ritual merism: one goat penetrates, as blood, into the extreme sanctity of the Holi-
est Place; the other is expelled to the outermost extreme of the cultic realm (Blood
Cult, 105).
64. Milgrom explains Lev 16:5: The he-goat for Azazel was not a sacrice. Here,
then, the term aat may have been chosen for its philological sense that which re-
moves sin, which precisely denes the function of the scapegoat (Leviticus 116,
1018). A. Dillmann came close when he suggested that nxon" in this verse means:
for the removal of the sin (Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus, 576). Grays description
of the red cow (Num 19), which he did not regard as a sacrice, would properly apply
to the goat for Azazel: it is not therefore a sin-offering, but it is a means for the re-
moval of sin; it is not an expiatory offering, but it is an expiatory object (Sacrice in
the Old Testament, 60). To maintain a consistent meaning for the term nxon, K. Koch
regards all nxon rituals as nonsacricial, but to sustain this notion he must assert that
in 4:31 the notice that nxon fat is a nn: n , pleasing aroma, to Yhwh is the result
of textual corruption (xon chaa, TDOT 4:316). Kaufmann struggled with the na-
ture of nxon rituals, stating, At bottom the aath is no offering at all, but then going
on to say: While the aath has two facesone turned toward the holy, the other, to-
ward the obscure realm outside the campwhatever inuence it calls down comes
from the holy alone. That is why the biblical aath does have something of the na-
ture of a sacrice to Yhwh (The Religion of Israel, 11314). The idea that a nxon
ritually offered to Yhwh for his utilization (excluding Azazels goat) is an offering/sac-
rice is supported by J. van Baals analysis of the varied and complex roles of the gift
idea in sacrice generally (including in modern cultures), involving associations with
obligation, reciprocity, and punishment (Offering, Sacrice and Gift, Numen 23
[1976] 16178).
Chapter 11 260
latter is nonsacricial, there is no impediment to the conclusion that Aza-
zel is some kind of demon.
While the two nxon goats are identical to the point that before the lot rit-
ual they are interchangeable, their rituals move in opposite directions:
In terms of the dynamics of the ritual, it seems that in some way harmony
between God and Israel was restored by means of an extreme and comple-
mentary movement in the spatial dimension. During the year various faults
(sins and impurities) had compromised the ordered life of Israel. These
tensions were represented and eventually resolved in terms of the spatial
movement as well as the normal sacricial action. . . . In the double move-
ment of the ritual on the Day of Atonement, all the tensions were gathered
up and dealt with by a decisive purication and elimination.
65
Thus, rather than isolating the ritual of Azazels goat from the inner-sanctum
purication offerings that purge the sanctuary, as some scholars have done,
66
Jenson argues for the unity of the Day of Atonement complex as it is pre-
scribed in the nal form of Lev 16: The two parts complement one another,
and the unique aspects of the ritual can be understood as consequences of its
unusually comprehensive goals.
67
The nxon label applies to a wide variety of ritual paradigms: outer-altar
purication offerings, including grain functioning as a nxon (Lev 5:1113),
outer-sanctum and inner-sanctum purication offerings, the red cow ritual
performed outside the camp (Num 19:9, 17), and now the nonsacricial pu-
rication ritual of Azazels goat (Lev 16:5). So the nxon category can be
viewed as a super-paradigm comprising a cluster of individual ritual para-
digms. For purposes of analysis, we can suggest that rituals belong to the same
individual paradigm if they pursue the same goal in basically the same man-
ner, that is, their respective activity systems share the same core.
68
But not
one physical activity is common to all of the nxon rituals. Nevertheless, ex-
cept for Azazels goat, the victim/material is offered or dedicated in some way
66. For example, de Vaux, Ancient Israel, 5079; Aartun, Studien zum Gesetz
ber den grossen Vershnungstag, 85.
67. Jenson, Graded Holiness, 198 (cf. 197).
68. I would allow for minor/peripheral variables within the same ritual paradigm,
such as the presence or absence of hand-leaning according to whether a sacrice is
calendric or not and whether an outer-sanctum purication offering is eaten or incin-
erated (the latter if priests are offerers; Lev 9:11). However, differences between the
blood manipulations and respective goals of outer altar, outer-sanctum, and inner-
sanctum nxon sacrices are too central and signicant to allow for these rituals to be
regarded as variations of the same paradigm.
to Yhwh, at least by a sevenfold sprinkling of blood toward the sanctuary
(Num 19:4), and at least part of the victim/material is burned.
What unites the otherwise disparate nxon rituals is purication in the
broad sense of removing moral faults and/or physical ritual impurities.
69
Such rituals are sacricial, with one exception: the elimination rite of Aza-
zels goat.
Purgation (rpk) on the live goat returns the moral faults
of the Israelites to their source: Azazel
B. Baentsch viewed the ritual of Azazels goat as purifying the people from
all the sins that they had committed during the preceding year.
70
It is true
that in Lev 16:10 Azazels goat has a kind of oa function: \"v oa". But this
expression is unique in that the object of the preposition "v following oa re-
fers here to the animal rather than to the offerer(s) or to the sanctuary and/or
its sancta. So the goat is not an instrument to effect oa on behalf of the
Israelites themselves or to purge the sanctuary.
71
Neither can the goat itself be
the beneciary of oa. It is abandoned in the wilderness and may perish
there.
72
Rather, it is a vehicle of oa by elimination, as shown by the fact that
in Lev 16:10 \"v oa", to perform oa upon it, is paralleled by \nx n"O"
ao "IxIv" , to send it off to Azazel to the wilderness (cf. vv. 2122).
73
69. Rodrguez, Substitution, 123; Jenson, Graded Holiness, 159. Cf. Gray regard-
ing the basic meaning of the verb xon: to un-sin, to eliminate, whatever the pre-
cise means of achieving this in any particular case may be (Sacrice in the Old Tes-
tament, 63).
Ruprecht, 1903) 381, 38385.
71. See Ramban on Lev 16:21. Kiuchi argues that the antecedent of the third-
person masc. sing. pronominal sufx in \"v oa" , to make atonement on him, is
Aaron, so that the goat is the agent of oa for the high priest (The Purication Offering,
15051). But this is syntactically unnatural in this verse, where earlier and later 3rd-
person masc. sing. pronominal sufxes (in \"v "v , lit., went up upon it; and n"O"
\nx, to send it away) have the goat as their antecedents.
72. Likewise, there is no support for the guess of Driver and White that the goat
was consecrated to the solemn purpose for which it was employed, as the altar (Ex.
29:36; cf. Ez. 43:20) was prepared for use, by a rite of expiation (The Book of Leviticus,
81; cf. Ginsburg, Leviticus, 151). R. G. Crawford maintains that the scapegoat was led
into the wilderness not to be punished but to enjoy the freedom of his natural sphere
(Is the Penal Theory of the Atonement Scriptural? SJT 23 [1970] 259). Whether the
goats fate is viewed as punishment or not, I do not see how a domestic goat, adaptable
as its species may be, would fare better in the wilderness than with human care, in-
cluding provision of food, water, and protection.
73. Heinisch points out that \"v oa" is explained in vv. 2122 (Das Buch Leviti-
cus, 74).
Chapter 11 262
Thus \"v simply indicates the locus of oa: to perform oa upon itthat
is, upon the goat (cf. ch. 6 above).
74
As a corporate community the Israelites do receive a kind of benet from
the ritual of Azazels goat. While the ritual does not accomplish oa for them
in the sense that they need further removal of evils from themselves or from
the sanctuary following the inner-sanctum purication offerings, moral faults
from which they have already been separated are removed from their camp
that is, from their presence (cf. Ps 103:12) and from the presence of their
deity.
75
This is the nal stage in the process of oa, removal of evil that inter-
feres with the relationship between Yhwh and his people.
76
It is not that the
Priestly authors regarded the Scapegoat as a last resort, when all other meth-
ods of atonement had failed.
77
Rather, this animal functioned for a kind of
oa not enacted elsewhere in the nxon system of rituals.
Azazels goat bears (xO:) the culpability (\v) of the Israelites away from
their camp (Lev 16:22). In some other contexts \v xO: can express divine for-
74. See Rashi on Lev 16:10; Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri, 384; Hoffmann,
Das Buch Leviticus, 445; P. Garnet, Atonement Constructions in the Old Testament
and the Qumran Scrolls, EvQ 46 (1974) 146; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1023. As
Dillmann pointed out (Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus [Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897] 576),
in Exod 30:10 the object of the preposition "v following oa also designates a locus of
ritual action, in this case \n:;"v , upon its (the incense altars) horns. But whereas
this verse goes on to indicate that the oa application of blood upon the horns of the
inner altar purges it (\"v oa ), there is nothing in Lev 16 to suggest that the high
priest removes evil from Azazels goat by confessing over it. To the contrary, following
this activity the goat bears (xO:) the evil into the wilderness (v. 22). The meaning of
\"v is not the instrumental with (or by means of ) it, which would be expressed
through the preposition z (cf. Lev 5:16; 7:7; 19:22; Num 5:8; H. C. Brichto, On
Slaughter and Sacrice, Blood and Atonement, HUCA 47 [1976] 33). Nor does it re-
fer to the slain bull and goat being used to effect oa in proximity to it (so Levine, In
the Presence of the Lord, 80; cf. G. Hasel, Studies in Biblical Atonement II: The Day
of Atonement, in The Sanctuary and the Atonement: Biblical, Historical, and Theo-
logical Studies [ed. A. Wallenkampf; Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1981]
121). As Kiuchi points out, Lev 16:10 refers only to the ritual of Azazels goat (The Pu-
rication Offering, 149). There is no adequate textual warrant for dismissing \"v oa"
as a scribal or redactional mistake (contra K. Elliger, Leviticus [HAT 4; Tbingen:
Mohr, 1966] 201; Noth, Leviticus, 121; Aartun, Studien, 7778; Janowski, Shne,
185 n. 5) or emending it (so M. Lhr, who suggested that the original sense was some-
thing like cv"v oa" (Das Ritual von Lev. 16, 2). J. Porter muddies the water: This
not very clear expression is an attempt to assimilate an alien rite to the dominant
priestly sacricial practice and theology of expiation (Leviticus, 12728).
75. A. Mdebielle, Le symbolism du sacrice expiatoire en Isral, Bib 2 (1921)
290.
76. Cf. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 95, 9798. Schwartz, The Bearing of
Sin, 18.
giveness (Exod 34:7; Num 14:18; roughly equivalent to the indirect \v" n"o,
forgive with regard to culpability, in Exod 34:9; Num 14:19).
78
But in Lev
16 it is Azazels goat, not Yhwh or someone/something serving as his repre-
sentative, that bears the sins of Israel. So the ritual of Azazels goat does not
provide Yhwhs forgiveness to anyone in any sense.
Because Azazels goat plays no role in the moral purication of the people
themselves, whether by separating sins from them or providing them with di-
vine forgiveness, the unique moral purication (piel of o) of the people
from their sins (pl. of nxon) to which Lev 16:30 refers must result exclusively
from the purgation of the sanctuary by means of the inner-sanctum nxon sac-
rices, supplemented by the burnt offerings (Lev 16:24).
79
It is not the com-
bination of these sacrices with the unique ritual of Azazels goat that
generates this unique purication. Therefore, in agreement with evidence
presented in prior chapters of the present work, the goals of the inner-sanctum
purication offerings that purge the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement are
qualitatively unique. By comparison with other nxon sacrices, the inner-
sanctum offerings do not merely provide a quantitatively magnied/intensi-
ed version of the same kind of oa as Milgroms gradation of purication
offerings indicates.
80
Why would Yhwh command that the moral faults of his people be ban-
ished to Azazel in the wilderness? Leviticus does not say. But the theory that
Azazel is a source of evil or chaos, to which Yhwh has the Israelites return
their moral faults,
81
agrees with biblical evidence for a tempter (Gen 3),
with the idea that wilderness areas can be inhabited by cvO , apparently
goat-demons (cf. Lev 17:7; Isa 13:21),
82
and with the proverbial principle:
78. Cf. G. Olaffson, The Use of n in the Pentateuch and Its Contribution to the
Concept of Forgiveness (Ph.D. diss., Andrews University, 1992) 26469.
79. Thus I eliminate a possibility, entertained by Milgrom, that the reference to pu-
rication in Lev 16:30 could also be to the scapegoat (Leviticus 116, 1056).
80. Ibid., 257; cf. Israels Sanctuary, 393.
81. See, e.g., 1 En. 9:6; 10:8; Kalisch, A Historical and Critical Commentary, 208;
Rodrguez, Substitution, 118; Levine, Leviticus, 252; Gorman, The Ideology of Rit-
ual, 99. Kurtz adopted an idea that he regarded as an alternative but that may in fact
be complementary: the sins of Israel are sent to Azazel so that they will no longer
provide him with grounds for accusing Israel (Sacricial Worship, 41213; cf. Zech
3:13). Kaufmann downplayed the potential of Azazel as a source of danger to the
Israelites: He is merely a passive symbol of impuritysin returns to its like (The
Religion of Israel, 114). It is true that Azazels personality is not revealed in Leviticus,
but as a personal being antagonistic to Yhwh, he is clearly more than a passive sym-
bol of impurity.
82. B. Levine, Ren Girard on Job: The Question of the Scapegoat, Semeia 33
(1985) 12728.
Chapter 11 264
Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on the one
who starts it rolling (Prov 26:27; nrsv).
83
Today we would say: What goes
around comes around, or chickens come home to roost.
In the Bible the stone-will-come-back dynamic of cause and effect can be
expressed with active involvement on the part of Yhwh, who puts (n:) evil
deeds on the head(s) of perpetrator(s) (e.g., Ezek 9:10; 11:21; 16:43; 22:31).
Compare Yhwhs directions regarding the blasphemer, on whose head the
witnesses to his sin were to lean (oo) their hands before he was punished (Lev
24:14), thereby identifying him as the one who bore his own culpability (xO:\
\xon; v. 15). The parallel with Azazels goat is striking: the high priest leans
(oo) both his hands on the head of the live goat and confesses the faults of
Israel, thereby putting (n:) them on the head of the goat, and then he sends
the goat away bearing the culpabilities (\v xO:) of the people (vv. 2122).
84
Now we are prepared to see the high priests confession at a higher degree
of resolution. Although his confession is undoubtedly addressed to Yhwh,
whose commandments the people he represents have violated, his goal is not
to obtain forgiveness (as in Lev 5:5), which has already been granted at an
earlier stage of oa (Lev 4:20, 26, 31, 35, etc.). Rather, his goal is to transfer
moral evils back to where they ultimately came from in the rst place. So
the high priests verbal acknowledgment functions as an accusation against
Azazel! By way of analogy, confession of a crime by an accomplice implicitly
implicates the one who instigated it.
When the Israelites sinned against Yhwh, they were unwitting accom-
plices of Azazel, Yhwhs enemy. As such, they are now witnesses against Aza-
zel. Thus the high priest leans his hands on the head of the goat for Azazel,
just as the witnesses against the blasphemer laid their hands on his head. Of
course, there are some differences between these cases. The witnesses against
the blasphemer had no part in his crime and performed the hand-leaning
themselves on the head of the perpetrator himself (Lev 24:14), but on the
Day of Atonement the high priest represents his people as a group of forgiven
sinners by leaning his hands, not on Azazel himself, but on a tote-goat sent
to him. Because the evils originating with Azazel and for which he is respon-
sible were committed by the people, they are identied as the culpabilities,
transgressions, and sins of the Israelites (16:21; cf. v. 22).
83. Cf. G. Robinson, A Terminological Study of the Idea of Sin in the Old Testa-
ment, IJT 18 (1969) 122.
84. I am grateful to Moise Isaac, my student, for bringing these terminological af-
nities to my attention.
By stoning the blasphemer outside their camp (Lev 24:14, 23), the Israel-
ites purged evil that offended Yhwh from their midst. Similarly, Phinehas
purged evil from the camp in order to stop a divine plague among the Israel-
ites, by spearing Zimri and Cozbi, an Israelite man and Midianite woman
(Num 25:68; cf. vv. 1415).
85
By zealously effecting purgation for ("v oa)
the Israelites in this way (v. 13), Phinehas turned back the wrath of Yhwh
from his people (v. 11). This purgation did not benet Zimri, even though he
was an Israelite. Rather, the purgation (oa) was done upon him, the of-
fender, and removed him from among the Israelites, just as purgation upon
("v oa) Azazels goat, the vehicle of the offender, gets rid of the goat (Lev
16:10) and Israels moral faults along with it.
Deuteronomy 21 is another passage in which oa refers to purging evil
from the midst of Israel, without benet to the offender. Here the elders of the
town nearest to the body of a person whose murderer is unknown perform an
elimination ritual with a heifer (vv. 36), declare their innocence (v. 7), and
pray that Yhwh will absolve them of bloodguilt: "xO qov" oa , purge with
regard to your people Israel (v. 8). Whereas the ritual and speech of Deut 21
is designed to purge a threat to innocence that is already a reality, it appears
that the ritual of Azazels goat somehow purges a threat to moral cleansing that
has already been received. Only by placing responsibility for the instigation of
evil squarely where it belongs can the high priest sever the peoples tie to Aza-
zel and by so doing provide the Israelites with denitive moral security.
86
The customary rendering of oa as atone, coupled with the powerful as-
sociation between atonement and substitution in Christian theology, has
obfuscated the meaning of the live-goat ritual for many Christians. But once
we realize that oa refers to removal of evil and does not specify substitution,
which is only one kind of atonement, the purication ritual of Azazels goat
makes good sense.
Conclusion
While there is some continuity between the inner-sanctum nxon sacrices
and the purication ritual of Azazels goat, there is also a distinct articulation
between these rituals. The inner-sanctum offerings purge the sanctuary and
its sancta of impurities, sins, and transgressions (Lev 16:16), resulting in
purication of sins from the people (v. 30). The impurities are destroyed
85. Compare Deut 13:6[5]; 17:7, 12, and others, where capital punishment purges
(va ) moral evil from the midst of the Israelites.
86. See Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary, 404.
Chapter 11 266
with the inner-sanctum nxon carcasses, but the sins and transgressions re-
appear along with a third moral fault: culpabilities, often rendered iniqui-
ties. These three require additional containment and banishment to their
source (i.e., Azazel) by means of a live goat. This unique, nonsacricial nxon
accomplishes oa in the sense that it purges from the Israelite camp any re-
maining threat to the restored moral state of the people in relation to Yhwh
by severing their unwitting connection to Azazel.
267
Chapter 12
Two Major Phases of Sacricial rpk
Leviticus 16 states that the special purication offerings performed only on
the Day of Atonement purge (oa) the sanctuary and its sancta (vv. 16, 18, 19,
33). In terms of activity, this purgation is achieved in basically the same man-
ner as oa for persons throughout the year, that is, through application of
blood to the sanctuary and its sancta.
1
Some scholars have argued for one phase of sacricial rpk
In 1859 J. von Hofmann proposed:
Now if the procedure with the blood was the most distinctive peculiarity of
the sin-offering, the essential purpose must have been, to bring to God what
had been the life of the sacricial animal, as a payment rendered by its be-
ing shed, and by means of that payment to deliver the abode and vicinity of
God from the delement which sin had brought upon it.
2
In support of the idea that nxon sacrices in general, both throughout the
year and on the Day of Atonement, remove delements from the sancta to
which their blood is applied, Hofmann cited Lev 8:15 and 16:16, where this
function is specied.
3
Similarly, D. Hoffmann argued that sins pollute the altar and the (rest of
the) sanctuary, thereby alienating them from God (16:16, 19; 20:3). The
function of each nxon sacrice involves purication of the altar (cf. 8:15) or
sanctuary through blood to regain communion with God. Inadvertent sins of
individuals necessitate only purication of the outer altar. Inadvertent sins of
the high priest or the entire community call for purication of the outer
1. Cf. K. Koch, Die Priesterschrift von Exodus 25 bis Leviticus 16: Eine berliefer-
ungsgeschichtliche und literarkritische Untersuchung (FRLANT 71 [new series 53];
Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959) 94.
2. J. von Hofmann, Der Schriftbeweis (2nd ed.; Nrdlingen, 1859) 2/1:25758;
trans. J. Martin in J. Kurtz, Sacricial Worship of the Old Testament (Minneapolis:
Klock & Klock, 1980; repr. of 1863) 142.
3. Cf. Kurtz, ibid., 14142, citing and commenting on the same view, expressed
differently, in Hofmanns rst edition.
Chapter 12 268
sanctum.
4
The Day of Atonement, which additionally deals with intentional
sins, has a greater requirement: purication of the holy of holies.
5
B. Levine added a dynamic cause of the sanctuarys pollution:
One becoming impure as the result of an offense against the deity intro-
duced a kind of demonic contagion into the community. The more hor-
rendous the offense, the greater the threat to the purity of the sanctuary and
the surrounding community by the presence of the offender, who was a
carrier of impurity. This person required purication if the community was
to be restored to its ritual state, which, in turn, was a precondition set down
by the resident deity for his continued presence among the people.
6
For Levine, the purpose of inner-sanctum and outer-sanctum nxon sacrices
is magical protection of the sanctuary and its priesthood from demonic incur-
sions of evil. The remainder of the victim must be incinerated, rather than
eaten, in order to rid the camp of impurity that has been actualized in the
animal. On the other hand, the originally distinct outer-altar nxon sacrices
that are eaten by the priests simply expiate some sins of the people.
7
Along the same lines as von Hofmann, Hoffmann, and Levine, but with-
out Levines demonic or magical elements, J. Milgrom has developed the rit-
ual goals expressed in Lev 16 into a general explanation of function applying
to all nxon sacrices.
8
In his nxon system, as in theirs, there is one phase of
sacricial oa for each moral fault or severe physical ritual impurity: purga-
tion of the sanctuary and/or its sancta.
Milgrom draws on several arguments to build his system, which is remark-
ably coherent:
4. D. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus (Berlin: Poppelauer, 19056) 21213.
5. Ibid., 436.
6. B. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord: A Study of Cult and Some Cultic Terms in
Ancient Israel (SJLA 5; Leiden: Brill, 1974) 75.
7. Ibid., 7477, 1038; cf. idem, c\oa, ErIsr 9 (Albright volume; 1969) 8895;
idem, Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,
1989) 1819, 21. But the difference between eaten and incinerated purication offer-
ings can be explained more simply by the rule that a priest is not permitted to benet
from a sacrice that functions on behalf of himself, whether as an individual or as part
of a group (see chs. 4, 5 above).
8. J. Milgrom, nxon z; ;on [The Function of the aat Sacrice], Tarbiz
40 (1970) 18; idem, Day of Atonement as Annual Day of Purgation in Temple
Times, EncJud 5:138486; idem, Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly Picture of Dorian
Gray, RB 83 (1976) 39099; idem, Atonement in the OT, IDBSup 7880; idem, Le-
viticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 25461. W. C. Kaiser is on the right
track but oversimplifying when he describes this approach as an extrapolation from
one piece of data in 16:16 retrojected over the whole range of sin offerings (The Book
of Leviticus, NIB 1:1033).
Two Major Phases of Sacricial rpk 269
1. Blood applications in outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offer-
ings have the same implicit goal that Lev 16 makes explicit for similar activities
in inner-sanctum sacrices on the Day of Atonement: to purge the sanctuary
and its sancta.
2. The blood of a purication offering purges only that to which it is physi-
cally applied, which can be referred to by a direct object in the text: part of
the sanctuary but never a person.
9
3. Milgrom contends that, in cases of physical impurity, such sacrices do
not need to purify their offerers because these persons have already been pu-
ried by ablutions. Accordingly, in cases of inadvertent sin, or deliberate sin
reduced to inadvertence by confession, offenders are puried, and their acts
are forgiven before they bring their purication offerings.
10
But this kind of
inner purication is through repentance rather than ritual procedures such as
ablutions.
11
So the common denominator between functions of sacrices for
physical impurities and moral faults is fulllment of the offerers consequen-
tial obligation to purge the sanctuary/sancta from pollution that has already
affected it.
12
9. Milgrom, va/"v oa , Les 35 (1971) 16. Cf. A. Schenker, Das Zeichen des
Blutes und die Gewissheit der Vergebung im Alten Testament, MTZ 34 (1983) 199
200; P. Garnet, Atonement Constructions in the Old Testament and the Qumran
Scrolls, EvQ 46 (1974) 139, 148.
10. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 254, 256; cf. idem, nxon z; ;on, 12.
11. Milgrom points out that in Lev 5:5 (cf. Num 5:7), confession precedes bringing
an expiatory sacrice to the sanctuary (The Priestly Doctrine of Repentance, RB 82
[1975] 194. H. Maccoby presents an alternative attempt to account for the relationship
between repentance and purication offerings. He argues that the function of the sac-
rice is not to wipe away sin, but to effect reconciliation between the unwitting sin-
ner and God. . . . A gap has opened up between the unwitting sinner and God, not
because he is guilty of actual sin, but because by some unfortunate accident or negli-
gence, he has broken a commandment. This gap is closed by the hattat, and the clos-
ing of the gap is called kippur (atonement). There is no such atonement for a
deliberate sin, which must be annulled by repentance and reparation, before it can be
atoned (Ritual and Morality: The Ritual Purity System and Its Place in Judaism
[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999] 132). Unfortunately for this theory, an
unwitting/inadvertent moral fault is still an actual sin (called nxon; Lev 4:3, 14, 23,
26, 28, 35) and a kind of purication offering atones for at least one sin that is deliber-
ate (Lev 5:1, 6). The fact that in Lev 5:5 the sinner must confess before bringing a
purication offering indicates that the need for repentance and the right to receive oa
through a noncalendric purication offering are complementary rather than mutually
exclusive.
12. Milgroms approach does not render sacricial expiation superuous for the
offerer. Indeed, Milgrom afrms that in priestly texts for the complete annulment
of the sin, for the assurance of divine forgiveness (sl), sacricial expiation (kpr) is
always required (The Priestly Doctrine of Repentance, 203). Thus oa through a
Chapter 12 270
4. The sanctuary, which reects the moral state of the people, is deled as
a dynamic consequence of human (not demonic) severe physical impurities
and sins when they occur (generalizing from Lev 20:3; Num 19:13, 20), which
explains why they must later be removed from the sanctuary by purication
offerings.
5. Milgrom nds that applications of nxon blood in the inner sanctum on
the Day of Atonement continue a pattern that is begun in outer-altar and
outer-sanctum purication offerings during the rest of the year. In Lev 4, sins
of the high priest or the community require application of blood in the outer
sanctum, while the sins of other individuals require blood only at the outer
altar. There is a well-dened gradation here, proportional to the severity of
sins that leave their marks on the sanctuary: the more serious the offense, the
more valuable the victim, the more elaborate the blood manipulation, and
the closer the blood must be brought to the deity who is enthroned at the in-
ner sanctum.
13
This gradation is completed on the Day of Atonement, when
blood must be manipulated in the inner sanctum
14
to deal with an even-
more-serious kind of fault: wanton sin, which could not be purged out ear-
lier because the wanton sinner is not permitted to bring a nxon sacrice
(Num 15:3031).
Whereas von Hofmann and Hoffmann maintained that the nxon sacrice
puries both the altar/sanctuary and the offerer,
15
an idea that J. Kurtz and
N. Kiuchi have accepted in qualied forms that deemphasize purgation of
13. Cf. J. Herrmann, Die Idee der Shne im Alten Testament: Eine Untersu-
chung ber Gebrauch und Bedeutung des Wortes kipper (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905)
76; A. Dillmann, Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1897) 462;
A. R. S. Kennedy and J. Barr came strikingly close to Milgroms theory: Holiness
requires obedience of heart and observation of the due limits which God has set
for men, and which must be observed throughout His sacral community. This
shows why there is a gradation in the rituals of the sin offering for different persons;
the closer the person to God as the centre of holiness, the more dangerous and
comprehensive the contagion of his offense, and the more deeply the inviolable
holiness of God is threatened (Sacrice and Offering, Dictionary of the Bible
[ed. J. Hastings; rev. ed. F. C. Grant and H. H. Rowley; New York: Scribners, 1963]
874). Note that there is also a more-minor differentiation in terms of cultic status
within the outer-altar type: while a commoner brings a female goat or sheep (Lev
4:2728, 32), a chieftain is required to offer a male goat (vv. 2223).
14. Cf. B. Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri (HKAT; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1903) 322.
15. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviticus, 213.
purication offering does have a kind of secondary effect on the offerer, but it is not to
remove sin from the offerer himself
the altar/sanctuary,
16
Milgrom denies that this class of sacrice puries the
offerer. Milgroms position results in a major shift of theological emphasis:
While Hoffmann speaks of sinners compromising their communion with the
presence of God and then having it restored through nxon sacrices, Mil-
grom focuses on the accumulating pollution of the sanctuary, which, if un-
checked, would result in disastrous abandonment of the community by
Yhwh.
Milgroms modus operandi of purication offerings has much to com-
mend it:
1. He makes sense of the special Day of Atonement purication offerings
as part of a larger, cohesive nxon system.
17
2. He recognizes that the vOo (wanton) sins appearing in Lev 16:16 (cf.
v. 21) are more serious than the nxon sins and that only inner-sanctum
purication offerings can remedy them.
16. Kurtz replied to von Hofmann: In Lev. xvii. 11 we do not read, I have given
you the blood upon the altar, to make atonement for the altar, but to make atone-
ment for your souls. But if the sin of the soul is expiated upon the altar, the sin is re-
garded as existing upon the altar and deling it. But the sprinkling of blood, i.e., the
expiation, had reference primarily to the sin; let this be conquered and exterminated,
and then eo ipso the altar is delivered from its delement. Keil and Delitzsch therefore
are wrong in condemning Hofmanns view without reserve, that is to say, in opposing
both what is false and what is true. That the blood of the sacrice, when brought to
the altar, puried the altar as well as the person sacricing, is distinctly stated in Lev.
viii. 15 (Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 144). In response to Milgroms hypothesis that the
purication offerings in Lev 4:15:13 address only the consequential contamination of
the sanctuary, N. Kiuchi has argued that these sacrices both remove guilt from their
offerers and purge uncleanness from the altar or outer sanctum (The Purication
Offering in the Priestly Literature: Its Meaning and Function [JSOTSup 56; Shefeld:
JSOT Press, 1987] 36, 54, 59, 66). Against Milgroms aerial-delement theory that sins
or physical ritual impurities dele the sanctuary and its sancta when they are commit-
ted/incurred, Kiuchi assumes that, aside from the exceptional cases of 15:31 and 16:16
and 19, uncleanness is envisaged in the sancta when an unclean person stands before
the Lord, i.e., at the entrance of the Tent, and that when the priest puries the sancta,
the unclean person becomes clean concurrently. Thus the hattat blood indeed puri-
es the sancta but not the sancta that have been deled for a lengthy period (p. 61;
cf. 62). However, there is simply no evidence that outer-altar or outer-sanctum puri-
cation offerings performed by Aaronic priests, following the initial decontamination of
the outer altar by Moses (8:15), purify the sanctuary or its sancta in any way. Since ter-
minology for purgation of the altar in 8:15"v oa + altaris clearly differentiated
from "v oa + offerer in goals of other outer-altar purication offerings (cf. ch. 6
above), we cannot accept Kiuchis inference by analogy with Lev 8.15, that when the
altar is puried, so is the offerer in Lev 12.6, 8; 14.19, 31; 15.15, 30 (p. 54).
17. D. Wright, Day of Atonement, ABD 2:72.
Chapter 12 272
3. He takes seriously the automatic dynamic of delement indicated by
Lev 20:3 and Num 19:13 and 20.
4. His gradation logically explains the need for cleansing the inner
sanctum. The most serious kind of moral fault pollutes the inner
sanctum, even though nobody enters this area earlier in the year.
18
5. Milgroms idea that the sanctuary reects the moral state of the
Israelites is profound and explains (1) why dynamics of delement and
cleansing cannot be bound by mundane physical rules of cause and
effect, (2) how cleansing the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement can
result in moral purication of the Israelite people (Lev 16:30, 33), and
(3) why an excessively deled sanctuary would be abandoned by Yhwh
(cf. Ezek 911).
Milgroms one-phase theory of sacricial oa is attractive and inuential,
19
and it carries high-stakes theological implications not only for Jewish religion
but also for Christianity. M. Anderson and P. Culbertson have shown that, if
Milgroms view of the kind of oa provided by the nxon sacrice is correct,
Christians should accept a fundamental paradigm shift: Contrary to the
commonly held assumption, kaparah is not intended to cleanse the individ-
ual from inadvertent sin or physical impurity but solely to cleanse the holy
place from the contamination generated by the individuals sin.
20
This leads
to the conclusion:
18. Cf. D. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in
Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 20.
Long ago A. F. Ballenger regarded the fact that the holy of holies needs cleansing on
the Day of Atonement as proof that the sanctuary is deled directly by sinning rather
than by sacricial blood (Cast Out for the Cross of Christ [Riverside, California: Bal-
lenger, 1911?] 62).
19. See, e.g., Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 20; idem, Day of Atonement, 72
73; idem, The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity, in Priesthood and Cult in Ancient
Israel (ed. G. A. Anderson and Saul M. Olyan; JSOTSup 125; Shefeld: JSOT Press,
1991) 15556; F. H. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the
Priestly Theology (JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990) 7677; B. H. McLean,
The Interpretation of the Levitical Sin Offering and the Scapegoat, SR 20 (1991)
34556; B. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature, in Pomegranates
Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 2021; K. C. Hanson, Sin, Purication,
and Group Process, in Problems in Biblical Theology: Essays in Honor of Rolf Knierim
(ed. H. T. C. Sun et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) 177; J. Burnside, The Signs
of Sin: Seriousness of Offence in Biblical Law (JSOTSup 364; London: Shefeld Aca-
demic Press, 2003) 16466.
20. M. Anderson and P. Culbertson, The Inadequacy of the Christian Doctrine of
Atonement in Light of Levitical Sin Offering, AThR 68 (1986) 310.
The material concerning atonement in Leviticus 4 and 16 raises serious
questions about the Christian doctrine of atonement. Atonement is to be
understood in its Levitical sense as the cleansing of holy space by the high
priest on behalf of a sinner, and not as obliterating the sins of the individ-
ual. . . . If atonement is indeed a technical term, we must conclude that Le-
vitical kaparah has been lost to Christian theology. What we have today is
something that would have been foreign to Jesus understanding of sin, of
sacrice, of blood, and of the entire process by which one remains faithful
to God.
21
The one-phase theory is not adequately supported
by the biblical data
Our study has found that some key aspects of Milgroms approach cannot
withstand close scrutiny:
1. Because ritual actions have no inherent meaning, applications of blood
in outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings can function differently
from similar blood manipulations in inner-sanctum offerings on the Day of
Atonement, which purge that to which the blood is physically appliedthat
is, the sanctuary and its sancta.
2. Our analysis of oa goals assigned to nxon sacrices has shown that,
apart from the altars initial decontamination and the inner-sanctum sacri-
ces, purication offerings purify their offerers rather than the sanctuary/
sancta.
22
So prior ablutions or repentance do not complete the process of pu-
rifying the offerer when a nxon sacrice is required. Rather, the sacrice ac-
complishes the nal stage of purication.
23
There is no evidence that a
21. Ibid., 315, 322.
22. Cf. G. B. Gray: they were victims by means of which the sins of the men who
offered them were removed (Sacrice in the Old Testament: Its Theory and Practice
[Oxford: Clarendon, 1925] 60).
23. That purication of a person can involve a multistage process is most dramati-
cally illustrated by Lev 14, where repeated pronouncements of purity (vv. 8, 9, 20) sig-
nify completion of successive stages in the purication of the scale-diseased person
(Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 6061). Leviticus 15:13 requires a man healed
(o) of a genital ux to launder his clothes and bathe, as a result of which he shall
be pure (o). But he clearly reaches a higher stage of purity on the eighth day by of-
fering a purication offering accompanied by a burnt offering. The goal of this ritual
complex is stated: thus the priest shall effect purgation on his behalf before Yhwh
from his discharge (Lev 15:15). Since we already know that this case is one of physi-
cal ritual impurity and since oa followed by privative o indicates purgation . . .
from (i.e., removal of evil; see ch. 6 above), the text does not need to repeat the state-
ment that he is pure (o) at this point. Whereas light ritual impurities require only
laundering clothes, bathing, and waiting until evening (e.g., vv. 58, 10), severe impu-
rities call for sacrices. So the sacrices are related to the ablutions in the quantitative
sense that they add puricatory power (cf. ibid., 63, 65).
Chapter 12 274
person who commits a sin for which he/she must bring a purication offering
can receive divine forgiveness (n"o) for the sin itself until the prerequisite
sacricial oa to purge that sin from the offerer is accomplished.
24
In pen-
tateuchal ritual law, sacrice is the only mechanism through which forgive-
ness can be obtained; there is no indication that repentance alone can result
in forgiveness.
25
3. Automatic delement of the sanctuary when sin is committed is attested
only in certain kinds of serious cultic sins for which no sacricial expiation is
available: Molech worship (Lev 20:3) and wanton neglect to be puried from
corpse impurity (Num 19:13, 20). Since automatic delement of the sanctu-
ary and sacricial oa to benet the sinner who has caused it are mutually ex-
clusive, outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings that provide oa
for the sinner, prerequisite to divine forgiveness, cannot remedy delement
that has already reached the sanctuary automatically. So we must discount
the rst two steps of Milgroms three-step gradation of purication offerings
that address automatic delement. Only the inner-sanctum sacrices on the
Day of Atonement could remedy automatic delement because they purge
vOo (wanton) sins from the sanctuary (Lev 16:16). Although these sacrices
indirectly provide for the people a kind of oa for nxon sins (v. 30), meaning
moral purication (o), they accomplish no oa that is prerequisite to for-
giveness for vOo sins.
26
The problems just cited by no means invalidate Milgroms profoundly sig-
nicant conclusion that the Day of Atonement rituals work with other nxon
sacrices as a dynamic, complementary system that reects the dynamic
moral state of the Israelites. Nor do these difculties neutralize the concepts
that purication offerings provide varying degrees of oa and that automatic
delement of the sanctuary is part of the system. These pieces of the puzzle
are clearly present. While some remaining pieces are open to question, our
understanding of the picture is heavily indebted to Milgroms monumental
achievement.
There are two phases of sacricial rpk for expiable sins
The next few paragraphs summarize my general theory of nxon rituals.
Whereas vOo (wanton) offenses may be remedied in one sacricial stage that
24. Cf. ibid., 3538.
25. R. E. Friedman, Commentary on the Torah (New York: HarperSanFrancisco,
2001) 322.
26. Cf. J. Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2000) 25, 2930.
purges these evils from the sanctuary on the Day of Atonement but does not
gain oa for those who commit them (see above), severe physical ritual impu-
rities and moral faults that can be removed from persons throughout the year
require two phases of sacricial purication:
Phase 1. An outer-altar purication offering for a person who is physically
impure (xoo) purges (oa) this ritual contamination from (privative o)
the offerer, with the result that he/she is pure (o).
27
An outer-altar or
outer-sanctum purication offering for sin purges (oa) this from (privative
o) the offerer, following which Yhwh forgives (n"o) the sinner.
Phase 2. The corporate inner-sanctum purication offerings on behalf of the
priestly and lay communities on the Day of Atonement purge (oa) the
sanctuary from (privative o) the physical ritual impurities (nxoo) and
nxon sins of the Israelites (Lev 16:16, 19), i.e., the same categories of evil
that have been removed from offerers of purication offerings at the sanc-
tuary throughout the year. This purgation of the sanctuary completes the
process of oa for nxon sins, as a result of which the corporate group of
nxon (but not vOo) sinners are (morally) pure (o; v. 30), provided that
they demonstrate submission to Yhwh by practicing self-denial and ab-
staining from work on this day (Lev 16:29, 31; Lev 23:2732; Num 29:7).
28
The people do not need to be puried (o) from physical ritual impuri-
ties on the Day of Atonement because they have already reached purication
from these in Phase 1, unless they have wantonly neglected their ritual reme-
dies, in which case they have become wanton sinners subject to inescapable
divine punishment (Num 19:13, 20).
On the Day of Atonement, blood of the inner-sanctum sacrices is applied
to parts of the sanctuary that have already received blood of outer-altar and
outer-sanctum offerings when they were needed earlier in the year: on the
horns of the incense altar, before the veil, and on the outer altar (Lev 16:14
19; cf. 4:67, 1718, 25, 30, 34). So in a sense we can say that applications of
nxon blood throughout the year constitute harbingers of the cleansing ac-
complished on the Day of Atonement.
29
But these harbingers do not simply
27. In the exceptional case of corpse contamination, this is accomplished by sprin-
kling the rehydrated ashes of the red cow nxon sacrice (Num 19).
28. Milgrom points out that the high priests ofciation is not inherently efca-
cious, but the people must match his confession with their remorse, as shown by their
self-denial (Day of Atonement as Annual Day of Purgation, 1386).
29. R. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure (Gorgias Dissertations 14, Religion 2; Piscat-
away, New Jersey: Gorgias, 2004) 149. My dissertation did not go beyond this concept.
Chapter 12 276
herald more of the same kind of oa. Blood of outer-altar and outer-sanctum
sacrices conveys to the sanctuary a kind of pollution that has been trans-
ferred to the animal from its offerer/owner (cf. Lev 6:20[27]). Blood of the
inner-sanctum sacrices reverses the direction of transfer by purging the im-
purities and sins out of the sanctuary. On this I nd myself to be in basic
agreement with A. Rodrguez, G. F. Hasel, and A. Treiyer.
30
Throughout the year, an Israelite is not responsible for bringing a puri-
cation offering until/unless he knows about his sin or severe impurity (e.g.,
4:28). We can assume that if he does not recognize such an evil before the
Day of Atonement, he simply brings an individual offering later when he un-
derstands the obligation that he has incurred. There is no evidence that the
Day of Atonement absolves Israelites from their responsibility to offer individ-
ual nxon sacrices for sins or severe impurities when they become aware of
them. This does not contradict the purity of the sanctuary at the end of the
Day of Atonement: The evil had not yet reached the sanctuary (see above).
The following table summarizes the phases of sacricial oa that remedy
wanton sins, physical impurities, and nxon sins:
Following completion of sacricial oa, the nonsacricial purication ritual
of Azazels goat accomplishes a third stage of oa for the moral faults (but not
Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979) 136; cf. 219, 3057; G. F. Hasel, Studies
in Biblical Atonement I: Continual Sacrice, Delement // Cleansing and Sanctu-
ary, in The Sanctuary and the Atonement: Biblical, Historical, and Theological
Studies (ed. A. Wallenkampf; Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1981) 93107;
idem, Studies in Biblical Atonement II: The Day of Atonement, in The Sanctuary
and the Atonement, 11525; Treiyer, The Day of Atonement and the Heavenly Judg-
ment, 147212.
Kind of evil Phase 1: Throughout Year Phase 2: Day of Atonement
physical ritual impurity o for offerer purged from sanctuary
nxon sin n"o for offerer purged from sanctuary
o for offerer
wanton (vOo) sin purged from sanctuary
Compare with Kiuchis similar idea that the hizzah gestures in Lev 4.6, 17 fore-
shadow the hizzah gesture in Lev 16.1415, expressing the need for the full rite there.
Therefore the apparent incompleteness of the rituals in Lev 4.67, 1718 should not
be taken as if nothing substantial was achieved; the rituals are incomplete in the sense
that they foreshadow fuller ones (The Purication Offering, 12930). Rather than say-
ing that nxon sacrices on days other than the Day of Atonement are incomplete or
faulty and insufcient (so Kurtz, Sacricial Worship, 386), I would say that they com-
plete the rst of two phases of oa.
physical ritual impurities) of the Israelites: expulsion of these evils from the
camp to Azazel (Lev 16:5, 10, 21, 22).
The two-phase theory accounts for data that would
otherwise be problematic
Purgation of the incense altar once a year in Exodus 30:10
Milgrom has difculty with Exod 30:10:
The incense altar was purged not just annually but every time the sanctu-
ary was seriously polluted by the inadvertent sins of the high priest or the
entire community (4:121). Why, then, does this text insist (twice) that the
incense altar was purged only once a year?
31
To answer this question, Milgrom suggests that the verse is an editorial
addition, probably from H because of its emphasis on annual observance
(cf. 16:2934a), which marks the transition of the Day of Purgation from
an emergency rite to an annual rite.
32
For me the problem simply does not exist. Exodus 30:10 says that the in-
cense altar was purged only once a year because it was purged only once a
year. Because I dont have the problem, I dont need the conjectural dia-
chronic solution.
The expression t:aF j" Alk: , all their sins (Leviticus 16:16)
In Lev 16:16 the inner-sanctum purication offerings purge the sanctuary
from all ("a) the nxon sins of the Israelites (cf. vv. 30, 34), that is, apparently
all of this category of moral faults insofar as they have affected the sanctuary
since the last Day of Atonement.
33
In Milgroms system, all here must be
limited to sins that have not already been removed from the sanctuary by
means of outer-altar and outer-sanctum purication offerings.
34
It is true that
in some contexts "a can mean all the rest of (e.g., 4:7, 12, 18).
35
However,
in Lev 16 there is no evidence for this limitation with regard to the nxon sins.
32. Ibid., 1063.
33. Cf. Herrmann, Die Idee der Shne, 91, 93; Hasel, Studies in Biblical Atone-
ment II, 119; A. Marx, Sacrice pour les Pchs ou Rite de Passage? Quelques R-
exions sur la Fonction du aat, RB 96 (1989) 36.
34. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 257; cf. Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri, 385;
Wright, Day of Atonement, 73.
35. See, for example, Lev 4:7, where o c"a, all the blood of the bull, refers to
the remainder of the blood that had not already been used (cf. v. 18), and v. 12, where
o"a means all the rest of the bull, which was to be incinerated.
Chapter 12 278
As N. Kiuchi has observed, the fact that the sanctuary must be cleansed
on the Day of Atonement from all sins of the Israelites (Lev 16:16) indicates
some form of redundancy, since expiation has been made for the same sins
on regular occasions (Lev 4.15.13),
36
that is, throughout the rest of the
year. This redundancy correlates with redundancy in the ritual activities
themselves. As mentioned above, on the Day of Atonement nxon blood is
again applied to sacred loci touched earlier by blood of outer-altar and outer-
sanctum offerings. Kiuchi points out that, because sinners receive forgive-
ness following purication offerings throughout the year, it is difcult to
solve the problem of the relationship between these rituals and the special
Day of Atonement ceremonies by assuming that the former are lacking in
validity. Rather, he suggests an analogy with the purication of the leper
(scale-diseased person), who is puried in stages and is clean enough at each
stage (Lev 14).
37
Redundancy suggesting more than one phase of oa for a given sin is rein-
forced by the ritual of Azazels goat, by which all of the iniquities and trans-
gressions of the Israelites, including all of their sins,
38
are eliminated from
the Israelite camp (16:21). Even if it could be said that the inner-sanctum
purication offerings only remedy evils not already purged by other nxon sac-
rices, such a statement could not be made regarding the ritual of Azazels
goat, for which there is no counterpart earlier in the year. The fact that vOo
and nxon sins must be released from the sanctuary (v. 16) before they can be
laid on Azazels goat through the high priests confession (v. 21) indicates
enough continuity between the slain and live nxon rituals that the former,
like the latter, must have to do with comprehensive accumulations of sin,
including sins for which forgiveness has already been granted through an ear-
lier stage of sacricial oa.
Another unique aspect of the Day of Atonement for which there is no
counterpart earlier in the year is self-denial, which is required precisely be-
cause purgation is effected for the people so that all of them become pure
from all their sins through the unique purication offerings that cleanse the
three areas of the sanctuary (16:2931, 33). Verse 34 summarizes: to effect
purgation on behalf of the Israelites for all their sins once a year.
39
Thus the
37. Ibid., 15657.
38. Translation by J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1722 (AB 3A; New York: Doubleday,
2000) 1294; idem, Leviticus 116, 1010.
39. Translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1294; idem, Leviticus 116, 1011.
text bends over backward to emphasize that the unique Day of Atonement rit-
uals uniquely deal with all sins of the Israelites.
40
Personal purication of an assistant who incinerates carcasses
On the Day of Atonement, incinerating the carcasses of the nxon bull and
goat (v. 27) requires any assistant who performs these tasks subsequently to
launder his clothes and bathe (v. 28). This is understandable because these
carcasses have absorbed evils removed from the sanctuary. In Lev 4, on the
other hand, one who disposes of an outer-sanctum purication-offering car-
cass needs no purication (vv. 1112, 21),
41
which indicates that the animal
is not impure. This is difcult to explain if the sacrice purges the outer sanc-
tum, but the problem vanishes if the ritual function is to purify the offerer(s)
instead.
Following rabbinic interpretation (m. Parah 8:3; t. Yoma 3.16), Milgrom
holds that in Lev 4 purication of the assistant is to be assumed on the basis
of ch. 16.
42
However, the instructions relating to incineration are not other-
wise abbreviated in 4:1112, and the prescription in 16:27 assumes knowl-
edge of these verses, not the other way around. Aside from the fact that the list
of animal parts is fuller in 4:11 than in 16:27, only 4:12 identies the location
outside the camp where incinerations of purication-offering animals are to
take place: a pure place . . . the ash dump.
43
M. Noth notices the massing
of place details here, including the only occurrence in the Hebrew Bible of
the full technical term for the place where the fat ashes are to be disposed of:
O oO, the ash dump.
44
When personal purication is specied for ritual participants (Lev 16:26,
28; cf. Num 19:7, 8, 10), it is a postrequisite part of the ritual that cannot be
assumed on the basis of purely practical necessity. So I do not believe that
Lev 4 would have omitted mention of the assistants purication simply be-
cause this activity is not involved in treatment of the animal.
40. Kurtz argued against scholars who restricted the expiations of the Day of Atone-
ment to sins that had been unknown and therefore had remained unexpiated: The
universality expressed so strongly in the words of Lev. xvi. 16 . . . is irreconcilable with
this idea; moreover, the sins which had remained unknown had already been expiated
once in the numerous sin-offerings of the feasts and new moons. The coa of this day
applied rather to all the sins of the whole nation without exception, known or un-
known, atoned for or not atoned for (Sacricial Worship, 386).
41. Cf. P. Heinisch, Das Buch Leviticus (HSAT 1; Bonn: Hanstein, 1935) 76;
Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual, 210.
43. Translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1271; idem, Leviticus 116, 226.
44. M. Noth, Leviticus (trans. J. E. Anderson; OTL; London: SCM, 1965) 40.
Chapter 12 280
We can derive a methodological principle here. The inner-sanctum puri-
cation offerings in Lev 16 are unique in a number of ways, including the
fact that they are the only Israelite rituals in which the high priest wears plain
linen vestments, enters the inner sanctum, and performs blood manipula-
tions at all three areas of the sanctuary.
45
Activities belonging to a unique rit-
ual do not provide a reliable basis for reconstructing activities belonging to
other rituals. In fact, a unique instruction provided with a unique ritual, for
example, a rule for personal purication of an assistant, is likely included pre-
cisely because it applies only in this unique context.
Reversal of blood applications in the outer sanctum
Interpreters have assumed that the sevenfold sprinkling in the outer sanc-
tum on the Day of Atonement, covered by the abbreviation likewise in
Lev 16:16b, is located in the same place as in the outer-sanctum purication
offering, before the veil (4:6, 17). They have also assumed that this expres-
sion refers to a location west of the incense altarthat is, between the in-
cense altar and the inner veil.
46
Combining these assumptions results in agreement with Ibn Ezras inter-
pretation of 16:16b: the high priest sprinkles seven times before the veil and
then puts blood once on the horns of the incense altar. This view, with a 7x
sprinkling behind the incense altar and a 1x application to the golden altar it-
self on the Day of Atonement is fairly comfortable, because it simultaneously
preserves the 7 + 1 pattern that appears in outer-sanctum offerings (Lev 4:6
7, 1718) and maintains the consistent progression of blood applications away
from the ark, beginning from the ark cover and progressing eastward to the
outer altar along the central westeast axis of the sanctuary.
Some dissonance remains. In the inner sanctum the pattern of blood ap-
plications is not 7 + 1 but 1 + 7: once on the ark cover and seven times in
front of it (16:1415). Milgrom resolves this tension by proposing a symmetri-
cal inversion in the scheme of blood applications performed on the Day of
Atonement: inner sanctum1 + 7; outer sanctum7 + 1; outer altar
1 + 7.
47
However, this approach does not do justice to the force of likewise
(a) in the context of 16:16b, which refers back to the 1 + 7 pattern set in the
inner sanctum.
45. Cf. R. Rendtorff, Leviticus (BKAT 3; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,
1985) 3:21920.
46. E.g., idem, Leviticus, 2:158; cf. 159, 160; G. J. Wenham, The Theology of Old
Testament Sacrice, in Sacrice in the Bible (ed. R. Beckwith and M. Selman; Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1995), 83; cf. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 103435, 1038.
47. Ibid., 1038.
Earlier we found that, if my interpretation of nao :o nx, before the
veil, in 4:6 and 17 is correct, sevenfold sprinklings of blood in outer-sanctum
purication offerings are located in front (east) of the incense altar, in the
main part of the outer sanctum (see above ch. 4). This agrees with the fact
that likewise in Lev 16:16b, pointing to the pattern established in the inner
sanctum (cf. vv. 1415), calls for a single application of nxon blood to the
horns of the incense altar (cf. Exod 30:10), followed by a sevenfold sprinkling
in front (east) of it (see above, ch. 10). Since other blood applications required
by Lev 4 and 16 are performed in the same locations on the Day of Atone-
ment as they are during the rest of the year, such correspondence regarding
the location of sevenfold sprinklings in the outer sanctum is to be expected,
in agreement with the assumption mentioned above.
Now we nd a surprise, which was recognized by C. F. Keil and F. De-
litzsch. Comparison between outer-sanctum and inner-sanctum purication
offerings (Lev 4 and 16, respectively) shows that between them there is a re-
versal in the order of blood applications performed in the outer sanctum.
48
In
4:67 and 1718 the blood manipulations in outer-sanctum offerings are as
follows:
Sevenfold sprinkling in front of the veil (i.e., in front [east] of the
incense altar).
Daubing once on the horns of the incense altar.
Thus the high priest moves westward, toward the ark of the covenant, where
Yhwhs Presence is located (see g. 1).
49
48. While C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch assumed that in both Lev 4 and Lev 16 the
single applications of blood to the horns of the incense altar represent expiation for the
priests or the community, they concluded that placement of the sevenfold sprinkling
rst in ch. 4 and last in ch. 16 represents a difference in function: whereas the sprin-
klings in ch. 16 purify the sanctuary, the same activity in ch. 4 served as a preliminary
and introduction to the expiation (Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament [Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952; orig. 1874] 2:304). However, while it seems clear that Lev 4
and 16 present a difference in meaning, the text does not support the ideas that the
sevenfold sprinkling in Lev 4 was simply preliminary or that the single application of
blood to the incense altar in Lev 16 expiates for persons rather than cleansing the sanc-
tuary. Kiuchi has noticed another reversal that is less direct: In 16:1819 blood appli-
cations consist of putting (n:) blood on the outer altar and then sprinkling (I ) it,
reversing the outer-sanctum sequence found in Lev 4:67 and 1718, where blood is
sprinkled (I ) before the inner veil and put (n:) on the horns of the incense altar
(The Purication Offering, 128).
49. This is not contradicted by the fact that, in outer-sanctum purication offerings,
following blood applications in the Tent, the high priest goes eastward to pour out the
Chapter 12 282
By contrast, reconstruction of the abbreviated prescription in 16:16b shows
that the order of blood manipulations in the outer sanctum is reversed, with
movement away from the ark of the covenant.
Daubing once on the horns of the incense altar.
Sevenfold sprinkling in front (east) of the incense altar.
This order is in harmony with the fact that the sanctuary is cleansed from the
inside out, as we would expect for the housecleaning job that it is: inner
sanctum outer sanctum outer altar (see g. 2).
Rather than Milgroms symmetrical inversion within the inner-sanctum
offerings themselves, what we have is an inversion or ritual chiasm between
the blood applications in the outer sanctum during the year7 + 1and
those performed on the Day of Atonement1 + 7.
50
This reversal correlates
with evidence presented earlier that, throughout the year, evils are transferred
from offerers into the sanctuary, toward the ark, but on the Day of Atonement
the same evils are purged out.
51
What goes in must come out!
Our present argument for a complementary relationship between the Lev
4 and 16 rituals is based on the order of the ritual activities themselves. By
50. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, 150, 16068.
51. Cf. Hasel, Studies in Biblical Atonement II, 11516, 118; A. Treiyer, The
Day of Atonement as Related to the Contamination and Purication of the Sanctu-
ary, in The Seventy Weeks, Leviticus, and the Nature of Prophecy (ed. F. Holbrook;
DARCOM 3; Washington, D.C.: Biblical Research Institute) 217.
Fig. 1. Blood Applications in the Outer Sanctum during the Year (Leviticus 4)
approximate location of
sprinkling of blood seven times
in front of veil
ark
v
e
i
l
incense altar
table
OUTER SANCTUM
= LIVING ROOM
basin altar
INNER SANCTUM
= THRONE ROOM lamp
1 2
remaining blood at the base of the outer altar (Lev 4:7, 18). This pouring is not a fur-
ther application of blood, in this case to the altar, but simply disposal of the remainder
(ibid., 238; Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 14748).
stripping away the semantic component describing activities in order to de-
rive a simple example of the ritual syntax approach developed by F. Staal,
we can lay bare the logic of the argument (see g. 3).
52
In the reversed order,
and therefore direction, of the blood applications in the outer sanctum, we
have found further support for the concept that nxon sacrices throughout
the year and on the Day of Atonement, respectively, are complementary, not
merely in the quantitative sense that those of the great Day accomplish
52. F. Staal, Rules without Meaning: Ritual, Mantras and the Human Sciences
(New York: Peter Lang, 1989); cf. idem, Ritual Syntax, in Sanskrit and Indian Stud-
ies: Essays in Honour of Daniel H. H. Ingalls (ed. M. Nagatomi et al.; Dordrecht, Hol-
land: Reidel, 1980) 11942; R. Payne, Feeding the Gods: The Shingon Fire Ritual
(Ph.D. diss., Graduate Theological Union, 1985). My own dissertation explains the
ritual syntax methodology (ch. 3) and presents complex structural analyses (with dia-
grams) of the sophisticated rituals belonging to the Day of Atonement, the fth day of
the Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring, and the fourth day of the Hittite Ninth
Year Telipinu Festival (R. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure).
Fig. 2. Blood Applications on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16)
Fig. 3. Blood Applications in Outer Sanctum
A = sprinkling 7x
B = daubing 1x
ark
v
e
i
l
incense altar
table
OUTER SANCTUM
= LIVING ROOM
basin
altar
INNER SANCTUM
= THRONE ROOM lamp
1 2 3 4 5&6
A B B A
Leviticus 4

nxon

Leviticus 16

nxon

Chapter 12

284
cleansing from more serious evils by extending blood manipulations into the
inner sanctum, but in the qualitative sense that inner-sanctum sacrices ac-
complish a second stage of

oa

with regard to evils handled earlier by outer-
altar and outer-sanctum offerings.

Conclusion

Some scholars have maintained that each expiable sin remedied by a pu-
rication offering is treated in one phase of sacricial

oa

, which removes the
pollution of the sanctuary that was caused by the offense when it occurred.
However, the biblical data support an alternative view that expiable

nxon

sins
are treated in two major phases: (1) purgation (

oa

) of the offerers/sinners,
prerequisite to forgiveness (

n"o

), through noncalendric outer-altar or outer-
sanctum sacrices (e.g., Lev 4:20, 26, 31, 35), and (2) purgation (

oa

) of the
sanctuary through calendric, corporate, inner-sanctum sacrices on the Day
of Atonement, resulting in moral purication (

o

) of the people (Lev 16:30).
So the results of the two phases of

oa

for the people are (1) forgiveness (

n"o

)
and (2) moral cleansing (

o

).

285

Chapter 13

Trajectories of Evils

Interpreters have often regarded the three terms for moral faults in Lev
16:16 and 21

vOo

,

nxon

, and

\v

(usually rendered transgression, sin,
and iniquity, respectively)as combining to imply comprehensive treat-
ment of sin, but individually imprecise and overlapping in semantic range, in
accordance with usage of these nouns and other words from the same roots
elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Exod 34:7; Ps 32:12, 5; Dan 9:24).

1

For
example, H. L. Strack regarded

nxon

, the third word for evil in Lev 16:16, as
expressing the general category, under which the rst two terms,

xoo

(im-
purity/uncleanness) and

vOo

, are subsumed.

2

The words

[vp

,

tafj

, and

w[

represent distinct
categories of evil

Some scholars have perceived that in Leviticus

vOo

,

nxon

, and

\v

may
be used more narrowly and represent distinct categories of evil. For example,
R. Knierim recognizes that, although formulaic combination of the three

1. K. Elliger,

Leviticus

(HAT 4; Tbingen: Mohr, 1966) 200201, 2057, 209;
H. Seebass,

vOo

p

as

a

,

TDOT

12:145, 148; G. Andr,

xoo

a

m

e

,

TDOT

5:333;
A. Noordtzij,

Leviticus

(trans. R. Togtman; BSC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982)
166; R. Pter-Contesse and J. Ellington,

A Handbook on Leviticus

(UBSHS; New York:
United Bible Societies, 1990) 250, 253; P. Jenson,

Graded Holiness: A Key to the
Priestly Conception of the World

(JSOTSup 106; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1992) 207;
E. Gerstenberger,

Leviticus: A Commentary

(trans. D. Stott; OTL; Louisville, Ken-
tucky: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 22021; B. Jrgens,

Heiligkeit und Vershnung:
Levitikus 16 in seinem literarischen Kontext

(Herders Biblische Studien 28; Freiburg:
Herder, 2001) 11415; cf. J. Calvin,

Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses
Arranged in the Form of a Harmony

(Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996) 1:320. On similarities
between general usage of the three major roots for sin (

xon

,

\v

/

\v

,

vOo

), see, e.g.,
R. Youngblood, A New Look at Three Old Testament Roots for Sin, in

Biblical and
Near Eastern Studies: Essays in Honor of William Sanford LaSor

(ed. G. A. Tuttle;
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978) 2015. For additional bibliography on attempts to ex-
plain the evils dealt with on the Day of Atonement, see A. Rodrguez,

Substitution in
the Hebrew Cultus

(AUSDS 3; Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press,
1979) 114 n. 1.
2. H. L. Strack,

Die Bcher Exodus, Leviticus, Numeri

(Munich: Beck, 1894) 335.

Chapter 13

286
terms (Exod 34:7; Num 14:18; Ezek 21:29[24]; Ps 32:12, 5; 59:4[3]; Dan
9:24) has the effect of summarizing the totality of moral faults, they are not
strictly synonyms but retain their basic meanings:
3
Each disqualies sin in
its own way.
4
N. Kiuchi goes so far as to say that generally the confusion of
terms such as sin, guilt and uncleanness has obscured the whole issue of
transference of sin/guilt.
5
J. Milgrom points in the direction of discrete categories by distinguishing
between cvOo, brazen sins characterized by open and wanton deance of
the Lord, and n\xon, all of the wrongs except for the psam.
6
Milgrom interprets the n\:\v heading the list of evils borne by Azazels
goat in Lev 16:21 and 22 as the causes of the sanctuarys impurities, all of
Israels sins, ritual and moral alike, of priests and laity alike.
7
So for him
the n\:\v do not represent an intermediate grade of severity according to the
way in which they are committed.
8
Rather, they embrace the other two
categories. Correspondingly, Milgrom interprets the n\xoo that head the
list of evils in v. 16 as an overarching category: Here, this term refers to the
ritual impurities described in chaps. 1115 and the moral impurities gener-
ated by the violation of the prohibitive commandments.
9
So included in
the n\xoo is pollution caused by the brazen cvOo as well as by the nxon
sins. The difference between the list of evils purged out of the sanctuary by
means of the slain, sacricial bull and goat (v. 16) and the list of evils ban-
3. R. Knierim, Die Hauptbegriffe fr Snde im Alten Testament (Gtersloh: Mohn,
1967) 22935.
4. R. Knierim, xon To Miss, TLOT 1:410.
Function (JSOTSup 56; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1987) 115.
6. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 1034; cf. 1044
psam, correctly dened by the rabbis as mradm rebellions (t. Yoma 2:5, Sipra,
Aare par. 2:4), for which they cite scriptural proof, 2 Kgs 8:22 (Sipra, Aare 4:3) and
2 Kgs 3:7 (b. Sebu. 12b . . .). For Milgrom the n\xon would presumably include an
accumulation of pollution generated unconsciously, for which individuals had no
responsibility (idem, Impurity Is Miasma: A Response to Hyam Maccoby, JBL 119
[2000] 731; idem, Leviticus 2327 [AB 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2001] 2460). In tra-
ditional rabbinic exegesis, vOo is rebellious sin, nxon covers inadvertent sin, and \v
denotes presumptuous sin (t. Yoma 2.1; b. Yoma 36b). D. Hoffmann, Das Buch Leviti-
cus (Berlin: Poppelauer, 19056) 174, 446, 448; A. Mdebielle, Le symbolism du sac-
rice expiatoire en Isral, Bib 2 (1921) 282; Noordtzij, Leviticus, 169; M. Weinfeld,
Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (Jerusalem: Magnes /
Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 209.
8. Unlike t. Yoma 2.1 and b. Yoma 36b, where n\:\v are dened as n\:\I, deliberate
sins.
9. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1033; cf. J. Hartley, Leviticus (WBC 4; Dallas: Word,
1992) 240.
Trajectories of Evils 287
ished from the camp on Azazels live goat (v. 21) is that the former refers to
the sanctuarys impurities, meaning the effect of the brazen sins and other
sins, and the latter refers to the moral faults themselves, the causes of the
sanctuarys delement.
10
Somewhat similarly to Milgrom, R. Rendtorff takes nxoo in Lev 16:16 to
be the primary term, with cvOo and cnxo n explaining it.
11
This interpre-
tation requires the waw in cvOoo (and from their vOo sins; 16:16) to be
explicative, so that the verse reads: impuritiesthat is, brazen sins and
other sins (v. 16). However, an explicative waw here demands the assump-
tion that the semantic range of xoo is expanded beyond the physical ritual
pollution denoted by this word elsewhere, including in 15:31 at the con-
clusion of instructions regarding treatment of bodily impurities. Conversely,
expansion of xoo in 16:16 requires the waw to be explicative. So this ap-
proach raises the suspicion of circular reasoning.
A. Bchler suggested that, in spite of the conjunctive waw in cvOoo,
the last two terms in 16:16 (cvOo and n\xon) qualify the rst (n\xoo) in that
they refer to delements (n\xoo) done deliberately (cvOo) or unwittingly
(n\xon).
12
However, recognizing that the waw should not be overlooked,
Bchler settled on the idea that the three terms are parallel synonyms and
proposed further that v. 21 refers to the same evils from a different perspective,
so that iniquities would be identical with uncleannesses. In relation to the
Sanctuary sins arising from an attitude of slight and contempt are dele-
ments, but for him who commits them they are iniquities.
13
This comes
close to anticipating Milgroms position (cf. above).
N. Kiuchi levels the distinction between impurities and moral faults in
Lev 16:16 by arguing in the reverse direction that the impurities are moral
faults committed with regard to physical ritual impurities.
14
He proposes that
10. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 857, 103335, 104344; cf. idem, Rationale for Cul-
tic Law: The Case of Impurity, Semeia 45 (1989) 107; idem, Leviticus 2327, 2445,
2448; D. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hit-
tite and Mesopotamian Literature (SBLDS 101; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 1820,
79. In taking the n\xoo to be the predominant category in Lev 16:16, Milgrom follows
D. Hoffmann, who, however, explained the cvOo as sins committed with regard to
physical uncleanness, that is, by entering the sacred precincts or eating sacred food,
and cnxo n"a" as a more precise designation for cvOoo\, like a genitive (Das Buch
Leviticus, 448).
11. R. Rendtorff, Leviticus (BKAT 3/3; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,
1985) 220.
Century (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1967) 265.
13. Ibid., 267.
14. Compare the view of Hoffmann, cited above.
Chapter 13 288
cnxo n"a" in this verse, which he renders with respect to all their sins,
modies not only cvOo (their vOo sins), but also "xO :a nxoo (the
impurities of the Israelites), which are therefore limited to violations of
Yhwhs rules regarding physical ritual impurities rather than such impurities
themselves.
15
In v. 21 he understands \v as guilt that is a consequence of
sin/uncleanness and suggests: Furthermore, since the syntactical construc-
tion in v. 16a regarding cnxon "a" is the same as that in v. 21a, it seems prob-
able that n:\v in v. 21a expresses the other side of the same nxon. This
conrms the inference drawn in Chapter 2 that nxon (sin) consists of un-
cleanness and guilt.
16
However, aside from the fact that the text does not
qualify the n\xoo in v. 16 as violations regarding impurities, Kiuchi does not
adequately justify or clarify his interpretation of the relationship between the
cvOo and the n\xon. Are the cvOo violations of Yhwhs rules regarding
vOo sins? What sense would that make, and where are these rules recorded?
B. Schwartz has another approach. Giving due weight to the fact that the
waw in cvOoo is a simple conjunction, he nds that the text species ex-
traction of two distinct pollutants from the sacred domainimpurities and
vOo sinsrather than impurities including cvOo.
17
However, while he thus
distinguishes between n\xoo and cvOo, he takes the cvOo, which he under-
stands to be deliberate offenses, to be a subcategory of n\xon, sins in general.
18
A great deal hangs on his interpretation of the words cnxo n"a" cvOoo in
16:16 (cf. v. 21), which he renders and among all their sins, of deliberate of-
fenses and adds, which, of course, are the only type of sin that penetrates the
adytum.
19
Here he is assuming Milgroms general nxon theory, according to
which evils dynamically invade the sacred sphere to varying degrees in pro-
portion to their severity and must subsequently be purged from the parts of the
sanctuary to which they have penetrated by purication offerings throughout
the year and on the Day of Atonement.
20
15. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 15455; cf. J. Porter, Leviticus (CBC; Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 130.
16. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 15556; cf. 154, 188 n. 57.
17. B. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature, in Pomegranates
Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 67, 17.
Theology (JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990) 82.
19. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin, 18.
20. Cf. ibid., 56; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 257; idem, Israels Sanctuary: The
Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray, RB 83 (1976) 393.
To evaluate the view of Schwartz we must briey examine cnxo n"a",
which appears at the end of the lists of evils in 16:16 and 21. Elsewhere in Le-
viticus, when "a" (lit., to all) is placed just before a nal item in a list, if this
item includes all of the previous terms in its semantic range, it is a summariz-
ing category, as in 11:42: You shall not eat anything that crawls on its belly,
or anything that walks on all fours, or anything that has many legs, comprising
all ("a") creatures that swarm on the earth, for they are an abomination.
21
However, if the nal item following "a" does not include all of the previous
ones, it represents a separate item to which the list is extended, as in v. 46:
These are the instructions concerning quadrupeds, birds, all living creatures
that move in the water, and all ("a"\) creatures that swarm on the earth.
22
Returning to 16:16, the usage is like that of 11:46 in that cnxo n, the nal
item following "a", cannot be an overall summarizing category because it
does not include in its semantic range the earlier "xO :a nxoo and
cvOo.
23
Even if it could be argued that n\xon include cvOo, the former
clearly do not include n\xoo
24
because elsewhere in pentateuchal law xoo
is only physical ritual impurity (5:3; 7:20, 21; 14:19; 15:3, 25, 26, 30, 31; 18:19;
22:3, 5; Num 5:19; 19:13). On Lev 14:19 Milgrom reminds us:
The distinction between moral and physical impurity is indicated not only
by the terms for the causes of the sanctuarys pollution (um versus e)
but by the consistant use of two different verbs that describe the effect of the
1284; Hebrew supplied; idem, Leviticus 116, 645. Compare the use of "a" in Exod
28:38; 36:1; Lev 5:3, 4.
22. Translation by Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1284; Hebrew supplied; idem, Leviti-
cus 116, 645. Milgrom explains the " in "a" here: The lamed coming at the end of
a series is conjunctive in force, but stronger than the waw and, thus, may also be ren-
dered including (ibid., 689; cf. idem, Studies in Levitical Terminology, I: The En-
croacher and the LeviteThe Term Aboda [Berkeley: University of California Press,
1970] 64 n. 237, 72 n. 262, 77 n. 279).
23. Kiuchi justly criticizes the common translation whatever their sins as impre-
cise and aptly describes the most common usage: "a" basically means with respect
to all (cf. BDB 514; Orlinsky, Notes, p. 30). The lamed functions to specify what pre-
cedes it (see Williams, op. cit., 271) while "a expresses the totality of what follows it.
In other words, "a" as a whole functions to specify what precedes it from a different
viewpoint. Cp. Exod 28.38; Lev 5.34; 22.18; Num 5.9; 18.8 (The Purication Offer-
ing, 187 n. 50). However, Kiuchi does not realize that in Lev 11:46 and 16:16 this in-
terpretation does not apply because "a" does not cover the preceding listed items from
a different viewpoint.
24. Against the neb and Porter, Leviticus, 130.
Chapter 13 290
purgation: physical impurity is puried (aher); moral impurity is forgiven
(nisla).
25
I would provisionally render Lev 16:16: And he shall effect purgation for
the (most) holy place from the (physical ritual) impurities of the Israelites and
from their cvOo as well as ("a") all their n\xon.
26
Similarly, v. 21 lists all
the n\:\v of the Israelites and all their cvOo as well as ("a") all their n\xon.
Therefore, rather than leveling distinctions between these terms and/or sub-
suming some evils under others as a number of scholars have done, we must
conclude that physical ritual impurities (n\xoo) and two separate kinds of
moral faults (cvOo and n\xon) are purged from the inner sanctum by the
blood of the slain nxon animals, and the live goat carries away three distinct
kinds of moral faults (n\:\v, cvOo, and n\xon).
In 16:16 the privative preposition o, from, appears with the rst two
categories of evil (nxooo and cvOoo), but not with cnxo n. However, "a"
before this nal item extends to it the conditions applying to the earlier terms
in the list. So the inner sanctum is also purged from the n\xon. Compare
Lev 11:46 (see above), where the last item ("v nxD Oo: x , creatures
that swarm on the earth), following "a", is a category of creatures governed by
the chapters \n, instruction, as much as earlier items that are in construct
with \n, even though "a" breaks the construct chain.
In 16:21 "a, all/every, occurs with all three terms for evil. However, in
v. 16 it appears only with the nal n\xon. This should not be taken to indi-
cate that the nxon category is more encompassing by virtue of the addition
of the modier all.
27
Compare 11:42 and 46, where similar inconsistency
is stylistic, unaccompanied by evidence for any substantive difference be-
25. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 857. This explains why the root xoo is absent in Lev
4, which deals with moral faults rather than physical ritual impurities. Milgrom com-
ments on this absence: This is so because the wrongdoer contaminates the sanctuary
but not himself. He remains in a ritually pure state. Therefore . . . he is not contagious
either to the sacred, to persons or to things. He undergoes no purication rites as do
the physically impure (Leviticus 2327, 2466). But the lack of xoo in Lev 4 proves
only that in this chapter the offerers are not affected by physical ritual impurity. It does
not prove that they are not sullied by their moral faults, which must be purged (oa)
from (privative o; v. 26) them (see ch. 6 above).
26. W. Shea misses the function of "a" within the lists of evils in Lev 16:16 and 21
and suggests that the n\xon here could be sin offerings (Literary Form and Theo-
logical Function in Leviticus, in The Seventy Weeks, Leviticus, and the Nature of
Prophecy [ed. F. Holbrook; DARCOM 3; Washington, D.C.: Biblical Research Insti-
tute, 1986] 16365).
27. Contra Shea, ibid., 163.
tween the relative comprehensiveness of categories marked by "a and those
that lack "a.
Categories of evil have different dynamic properties
The list of evils in Lev 16:16 is abbreviated in v. 19, which species the
evils removed from the outer altar by referring only to the rst item: :a nxoo
"xO. A similar kind of incipit shows up in v. 22, where cn:\v abbreviates the
list of faults confessed upon Azazels goat in v. 21, also by mentioning the rst
item.
28
Obviously the goat bears into the wilderness (v. 22) all three kinds of
evil placed upon it (v. 21), not just the n\:\v.
Now we are ready to make a potentially profound observation. In v. 30 the
effect of purgation (oa) is to purify (o) the Israelites canxo n "ao, from
all your n\xon. The other two categories are not mentioned here. Lest this
should appear to be an accident, we also nd in v. 34 that the benet of the
Day of Atonement ceremonies for the people only includes purgation (oa)
of the n\xon. References to n\xon in these verses cannot serve as abbrevia-
tions for the lists in vv. 16 or 21 because this category does not appear rst in
either list. Therefore, although n\xoo, cvOo, and n\xon are removed from
all parts of the sanctuary, including the outer altar, and n\:\v (rather than
n\xoo), cvOo, and n\xon are carried away from the camp on Azazels goat,
only n\xon are cleansed from (privative o) the people on the Day of Atone-
ment.
29
At rst glance this is strange, but the possibility that categories of evil
28. Hoffmann arrived at the same net effect by regarding cn:\v"a in v. 22 as a
general expression for all kinds of sin (Das Buch Leviticus, 456). Not grasping that
v. 19 abbreviates, Elliger takes the continuation in v. 16cnxo n"a" cvOoo
and its parallel in v. 21 to be a generalizing addition of the latest compositional phase
that unsharpens the distinction between n\xoo (v. 16) and n\:\v (v. 21) and between
the respective functions of the two goats by bringing all offenses under the designa-
tion n\xon, as in vv. 30 and 34 (Leviticus, 200201, 2057, 209; cf. Wright, The Dis-
posal of Impurity, 1821).
29. Jenson thinks n\xon in v. 30 should be translated impurities because the con-
text indicates that the primary idea is purication (Graded Holiness, 204 n. 4). It is true
that in the Pentateuch this is the only place where o expresses purication from
nxon (cf. elsewhere Ps 51:4[2]; Prov 20:9). But if physical ritual impurities are in view
here, why doesnt the text refer to n\xoo, as in Lev 16:16, rather than using the term
nxon, which consistently refers to moral faults in vv. 16, 21, and elsewhere in pen-
tateuchal ritual law? Even the common theory that vv. 2934a stem from another
source or redaction (H versus P) would be hard pressed to account for such a radical
terminological shift, particularly given the reappearance of n\xon in the summary of
34a. Are these also physical ritual impurities, as in v. 30? It is far less exegetically
expensive to accept that the unique combination of terms in v. 30 expresses a unique
effect of what is unquestionably a unique ritual complex.
Chapter 13 292
follow different trajectories according to their distinct dynamic properties
makes perfect sense in light of comparison with appearances of the same evils
earlier in Leviticus.
We have already found that in pentateuchal law n\xoo are only physical
ritual impurities. Now we will briey examine the three terms for moral faults
in Lev 16:16 and 21 in order to dene more closely the relationships between
them in this context. So that we do not arrive at premature conclusions re-
garding the rarer terms based upon insufcient evidence, we will begin with
the well-attested nxon category and proceed in descending order of fre-
quency to the \v and vOo categories.
The term tafj, an expiable nondeant sin
In the Hebrew Bible, including pentateuchal narrative, nxon is a broad
term denoting a deed that violates an existing relationship/partnership.
30
When one of the partners is Yhwh, it is a general word for sin, whether inten-
tional or not.
31
A nxon can be a wrongful act itself (e.g., Lev 4:3, 14, 23
with the verb xon) or trouble that results from it (Num 32:23; cf. 12:11).
In general usage the term nxon can apply to serious kinds of offenses for
which no sacricial expiation would be available if the cultic system were op-
erating (see, e.g., Exod 32:30, 32, 34; cf. Gen 4:7; 18:20; 50:17).
32
However, in
pentateuchal ritual law
33
the nxon category is restricted to expiable nonde-
ant sins, including inadvertent sins (e.g., Lev 4:3, 14, 23, 26, 28, etc.), sins of
forgetting to perform a duty to Yhwh (Lev 5:6; cf. vv. 24), and some deliber-
ate sins (Lev 5:6; cf. v. 1; Num 5:67; see also the verb xon in Lev 5:21
23[6:24]),
34
but excluding sins committed o a, high-handedly, mean-
ing deantly, for which the wrongdoer is condemned to the terminal divine
punishment of extirpation (na), without subsequent opportunity for expia-
tion (Num 15:3031; contrast vv. 2229).
35
30. Knierim, Die Hauptbegriffe, 5760; idem, xon To Miss, 4079.
31. Knierim, Die Hauptbegriffe, 6768; idem, xon To Miss, 409.
32. Cf. G. Robinson, A Terminological Study of the Idea of Sin in the Old Testa-
ment, IJT 18 (1969) 11920.
33. Not including Lev 26:18, 21, 24 and 28 in covenant curses.
34. B. Levine unconvincingly explains the negligence in Lev 5:1 as a form of in-
advertence (Leviticus [JPS Torah Commentary: Philadelphia: Jewish Publication So-
ciety, 1989] 27).
35. R. Rendtorff, Leviticus (BKAT 3; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,
1985) 2:14950; cf. B. Janowski, Shne als Heilsgeschehen: Studien zur Shnetheolo-
gie der Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament
(WMANT 55; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982) 25455.
In Lev 16 all n\xon are purged from the sanctuary (v. 16) and conse-
quently cleansed from the people (vv. 30, 34). We can understand these to be
expiable nondeant sins, in accordance with use of the term nxon earlier in
Leviticus (see above).
36
Does this mean that a person who has committed a
nxon but wantonly neglected to bring a required expiatory sacrice receives
the benet of oa and forgiveness for his sin on the Day of Atonement? The
evidence indicates a negative answer. In Num 19:13 and 20 wanton neglect
to avail oneself of the ritual remedy for an evil (corpse contamination) be-
comes an inexpiable wrong in its own right, for which the offender is termi-
nally condemned to extirpation (na).
37
Leviticus 5:1, 56 show that a sinner
bears his culpability (\v) until he acknowledges his sin and brings his indi-
vidual noncalendric sacrice, which provides oa that is prerequisite to di-
vine forgiveness (cf. 4:20, 26, 31, 35). However, while the corporate oa of the
Day of Atonement provides moral cleansing (o) for the people, this is not
oa prerequisite to forgiveness (n"o), which does not appear in any biblical
Day of Atonement text.
38
So the n\xon cleansed from the people on the Day
of Atonement can include expiable nondeant sins that are already expiated
through noncalendric sacrices,
39
but not sins for which sacrices have been
wantonly neglected.
36. Cf. N. Kiuchi, A Study of aa and aat in Leviticus 45 (FAT, 2nd series;
Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003) 84: Indeed, in Leviticus only expiable sins are
called aat. In this monograph, Kiuchi introduces and develops a new proposal
that the verb xon means to hide oneself and the noun nxon means hiding one-
self. For him, such hiding refers to the overall attitude of a person or a community
to the Lord, and not to a concrete violation of the Lords commandment, takes place
in ones heart and mind, and he who hides himself is mostly not aware of that, but
rather justies himself, hence in unconscious hypocrisy (p. 96).
37. Cf. N. Zohar, Repentance and Purication: The Signicance and Semantics
of nxon in the Pentateuch, JBL 107 (1988) 614 n. 27.
38. The high priests confession over Azazels goat, along with double hand-leaning,
is the means of transferring moral evils to the nonsacricial animal vehicle so that
they can be eliminated from the camp (Lev 16:2122), thereby freeing the community
from corporate responsibility with regard to any of these sins, whether the sinners them-
selves are forgiven or not (cf. Deut 21:19). There is no indication that confession of
sins in Lev 16:21 serves to gain pardon for those who committed them (contra the im-
plication of m. Yoma 6:2).
39. Cf. A. Rodrguez, Transfer of Sin in Leviticus, in The Seventy Weeks, Leviti-
cus, and the Nature of Prophecy (ed. F. Holbrook; DARCOM 3; Washington, D.C.:
Biblical Research Institute, 1986) 180.
Chapter 13 294
The term w[, culpability
In the Hebrew Bible \v can represent any part of the process of wrongful
act-blame-punishment, whether the act is intentional or not.
40
In Lev 116,
however, \v is restricted to blame in the sense of culpability, that is, conse-
quential liability to punishment that an offender must bear (xO:; 5:1, 17; 7:18)
unless a priest bears it (10:17).
41
Here \v is not distinguished from nxon as a
separate act of sin. This is clear in 5:1, 56 where a witness who sins (verb
xon) by failing to give required testimony bears his \v, culpability, unless/
until he confesses what he has sinned (verb xon) and brings a purication of-
fering for the sin that he has sinned (xon Ox \nxon ) and the priest effects
purgation on his behalf from his sin (\nxono). Compare 5:17, where sinning
(verb xon) also results in bearing \v. This kind of usage is like that of Ps 32:5,
where the construct nxon \v means the culpability of [i.e., resulting from]
my sin.
42
The term [vp, an inexpiable deant sin
Like nxon, the term vOo denotes a morally faulty act (Gen 31:36; 50:17;
Exod 22:8[9]; 23:21; 34:7; Num 14:18) that can result in culpability (\v),
as indicated by Jer 33:8, where Yhwh promises to forgive all their culpabil-
ities (n\:\v) that they have xon-sinned against me and that they have vOo-
sinned against me. The idea that cvOo are often actions that break rela-
tionships is supported by use of the verb from the same root, which means
rebel (i.e., cast off allegiance), whether against God (Isa 1:2; 43:27; Jer 2:8;
33:8) or an earthly overlord (1 Kgs 12:19; 2 Kgs 1:1; 3:5, 7; 8:20, 22).
43
40. R. Knierim, \v awon Perversity, TLOT 2:864. For unintentional \v, Knierim
cites Gen 15:16; 19:15; Lev 22:16; Num 18:1, 23. Cf. idem, Die Hauptbegriffe, 23738,
24142; W. Zimmerli, Zur Vorgeschichte von Jes. LIII, Congress Volume: Rome,
1968 (VTSup 17; Leiden: Brill, 1969) 239; Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 50.
41. Schwartz convincingly interprets \v xO: and its parallel xon xO: as meta-
phors for consequential sin-bearing, that is, bearing of guilt/culpability (The
Bearing of Sin, 1015); cf. W. Zimmerli, Die Eigenart der prophetischen Rede
des Ezechiel, ZAW 66 (1954) 1012; T. Frymer-Kensky, The Strange Case of the
Suspected Sotah (Numbers V 1131), VT 34 (1984) 22.
42. K. Koch, \v awon, TDOT 10:553, 559; cf. E. Jacob, Theology of the Old Tes-
tament (trans. A. Heathcote and P. Allcock; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958) 286;
A. Schenker, Der Unterschied zwischen Sndopfer chaat und Schuldopfer ascham
im Licht von Lv 5,1719 und 5,16, Pentateuchal and Deuteronomistic Studies: Pa-
pers Read at the XIIIth IOSOT Congress: Leuven, 1989 (ed. C. Brekelmans and J. Lust;
BETL 94; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1990) 117.
43. Cf. Snaith, Leviticus and Numbers (Century Bible, new ed.; London: Nel-
son, 1967) 114; G. H. Livingston, vOo (pasha) Rebel, Transgress, Revolt, TWOT
2:74142; R. Harrison, Leviticus: An Introduction and Commentary (TOTC; Leicester:
Inter-Varsity, 1980) 173.
G. Robinson applies this meaning to religious contexts, where vOo indi-
cates sin as wanton deance against the will of God. It exposes the human
motivation behind the act. It is not simply a mistake; it is a rebellion, a wilful
disobedience.
44
On the basis of passages such as Exod 22:8, R. Knierim has argued that
vOo was already very early a legal technical term for crimes that were sub-
ject to legal penalties.
45
He summarizes theological usage:
Whoever commits pesa does not merely rebel or protest against Yahweh
but breaks with him, takes away what is his, robs, embezzles, misappropri-
ates it. Although it always implies a conscious behavior, the term per se
does not describe the attitude but the criminal act that consists in removal
of property or breach of relationship. As a result, in the OT the most serious
aspect of the sin phenomenon is the offense as breach.
46
J. C. de Moor and P. Sanders criticize Knierim for basing his conclusion on
inadmissable etymologizing and maintain that in Israel, as in Ugarit, this
most severe degree of transgression would involve intentional/open rebel-
lion.
47
However, it appears that Knierims point is not to deny that commit-
ting a vOo is accompanied by a rebellious attitude but simply to say that this
term denotes the act itself.
48
Rather than criticizing Knierim, Kiuchi draws a wrong implication by
thinking that one who commits vOo is less than rebellious: It appears that
since vOo is associated with crimes, in Lev 16.16 cvOo can include sins
which the cOx offering deals with.
49
But Knierim clearly places vOo crimes
against God in contexts of rebellion: Whoever commits pesa does not merely
rebel or protest against Yahweh (emphasis mine; see above).
In pentateuchal ritual law, vOo shows up only in Lev 16:16 and 21 in the
context of the Day of Atonement. No offense that appears earlier in Leviticus,
where noncalendric sacrices to remedy moral faults are prescribed, is
termed vOo. This plus the serious nature of wrongs referred to by the noun
44. Robinson, A Terminological Study, 113.
45. R. Knierim, vOo pesa Crime, TLOT 2:103435.
46. Ibid., 1036.
47. J. C. de Moor and P. Sanders, An Ugaritic Expiation Ritual and Its Old Testa-
ment Parallels, UF 23 (1991) 284, esp. n. 7.
48. Cf. Knierim, vOo pesa Crime, 103334; idem, Die Hauptbegriffe, 17684,
esp. 180.
49. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 187 n. 49; cf. A. Treiyer, The Day of Atone-
ment as Related to the Contamination and Purication of the Sanctuary, in The Sev-
enty Weeks, Leviticus, and the Nature of Prophecy (ed. F. Holbrook; DARCOM 3;
Washington, D.C.: Biblical Research Institute, 1986) 238.
Chapter 13 296
vOo and its related verb elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (see above) suggest
that cvOo are inexpiable, by contrast with the expiable n\xon. So scholars
such as Milgrom, Gorman, and Wright identify the cvOo of Lev 16:16 as the
inexpiable high-handed category of wrong condemned in Num 15:3031.
50
Dynamic properties of the cvOo in Lev 16 conrm the gravity of their na-
ture. They dele the sanctuary and must be purged from it on the Day of
Atonement (v. 16), but they are not cleansed from the people as are the n\xon
(vv. 30, 34), for which oa can be received throughout the year by means of
noncalendric expiatory sacrices. In other words, while the yearly, communal
oa of the Day of Atonement benets the sanctuary with regard to the cvOo,
the people who have committed these wrongs receive no benet; they remain
condemned as before.
51
Milgrom is right when he says that the brazen deer
of Gods commandments is ineligible for sacricial expiation (Num. 15:30
31), but the temple must be purged of his sins and impurities.
52
The only
specic cases that t this prole are the cultic offenses of Molek worship
(20:3) and wanton neglect to be puried from corpse contamination (Num
19:13, 20), both of which short-circuit the ritual system by deling the sanc-
tuary automatically from a distance when they are committed and are punish-
able by na, with no opportunity for ritual expiation.
53
While we can safely conclude that the cvOo of Lev 16:16 are like the
high-handed category of Num 15:3031, in that both are committed de-
antly/rebelliously and therefore the offenders are barred from the benet
of expiation, perhaps the cvOo are a subcategory of high-handed sins.
Only the severe cultic sins regarding Molek worship and corpse contami-
nation just mentioned (Lev 20:3; Num 19:13, 20), which we have now iden-
tied with the cvOo, are said to dele the sanctuary when they are
committed. But the fact that this kind of automatic delement is not men-
tioned in Num 15:3031 leaves open the possibility that other cases of de-
ant sin do not affect the sanctuary in this way.
54
Whereas in 19:20 the
50. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 257; idem, Leviticus 1722, 1425; Gorman, The Ideol-
ogy of Ritual, 82; D. Wright, The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity, in Priesthood and
Cult in Ancient Israel (ed. G. A. Anderson and Saul M. Olyan; JSOTSup 125; Shef-
eld: JSOT Press, 1991) 163.
51. Cf. D. Wright, Two Types of Impurity in the Priestly Writings of the Bible,
Koroth 9 (1988) 18689; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 257.
52. J. Milgrom, Atonement, Day of, IDBSup, 83.
53. A. Schenker has seen the unpardonable case of wanton neglect in Num 19:20
as analogous to high-handed sin in Num 15:3031 (Interprtations rcentes et
dimensions spciques du sacrice aat, Bib 75 [1994] 67).
54. Wright assumes that all deliberate sins punishable by na cause pollution of
the sanctuary, which must be removed by the special Day of Atonement purication
reason (introduced by a) for extirpation is the fact that the sinner has de-
led Yhwhs sanctuary (cf. Lev 20:3), in Num 15:3031 the reason (also
introduced by a) for extirpation is the fact that the sinner has despised
Yhwhs word and broken his commandment.
Outside the ritual system, Yhwh can save people from their cvOo by bear-
ing/forgiving, expiating, blotting out, and not remembering these offenses if
the sinners repent (e.g., Exod 34:7; Num 14:18; Ps 32:1; 51:3[1]; 65:4[3];
103:12; Isa 43:25; Ezek 18:22; Mic 7:18; cf. 1 Kgs 8:50; Ps 25:7; 2 Chr 33:1
13).
55
However, this clemency is granted directly by Yhwh and goes beyond
the reconciliation that he offers through rituals.
56
So the passages just cited
should be clearly distinguished from Lev 16:16 and 21.
57
In the cult, includ-
ing the awesome rites of the Day of Atonement, there is no provision at all for
removing cvOo from those who commit them, even if they repent, so that
they can receive the benet of forgiveness.
58
55. Cf. Seebass, vOo pasa, 803.
56. A. von R. Sauer speaks of Yhwhs direct forgiveness of Davids sin, for which
no sacricial expiation was available (The Concept of Sin in the Old Testament,
CTM 22 [1951] 711). Such forgiveness of severe sin in narrative is not the same as di-
rect forgiveness promised by legislation in Num 30:6[5], 9[8], 13[12], where this is le-
niently granted by God without a sacrice in the case of a woman who is not able to
fulll her vow because it is nullied by her father or husband (cf. J. J. Stamm, Erlsen
und Vergeben im Alten Testament: Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung [Bern:
Francke, 1940) 55, 129.
57. Because Knierim does not make this distinction, he regards cultic expiation as
available for persons who commit cvOo (Die Hauptbegriffe, 184).
58. With T. Frymer-Kensky, who has noted in connection with pollution of the
land by sinful acts such as murder, sexual abominations, and idolatry: repentance is
seen as a privilege that is not automatically available (Pollution, Purication, and
Purgation in Biblical Israel, in The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth [ed. C. Meyers
and M. OConnor; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1983] 408). Contra Knierim,
Die Hauptbegriffe, 184; J. Milgrom, Day of Atonement as Annual Day of Purgation
in Temple Times, EncJud 5:138485; Treiyer, The Day of Atonement, 211, 23839.
The unforgivability of cvOo may be implicitly acknowledged by Temple Scroll 26:10
12, which inserts forgiveness (o" n"o:\, and they shall be forgiven) from Lev 4:20
into the goal of the lay communitys purication offering of a goat on the Day of
Atonement (ch. 16) but then replaces cvOo , their vOo sins, by onoOx, their
guilt, in the list of evils confessed by the high priest over Azazels goat (v. 21), appar-
ently to avoid the contradiction that cvOo are forgiven. Because Harrison assumes
that oa for cvOo on the Day of Atonement implies that those who have committed
them are forgiven, he attempts to downgrade them: These latter would be regarded
as sins of error or accident if the sinner by true penitence showed that his mis-
demeanours were mostly the product of ignorance (Leviticus, 173). This is similar to
offerings (Two Types, 18687). The Dead Sea community regarded automatic de-
lement of the temple as also occurring in the case of intercourse with a menstruating
woman (CD 5:6).
Chapter 13 298
Through sacrices, God extended pardon with acknowledgment of jus-
tice: a cost was involved in the process of composition/reconciliation with
him.
59
But the ritual system was inadequate to provide even a token cost of
composition in cases of rebellious sin, which were all too frequent in Israels
history. Nevertheless, Yhwh forgave repeatedly.
60
So Yhwhs grace was not
limited by cultic constraints.
Categories of evil follow different trajectories
Having differentiated between the categories of evil mentioned in Lev 16,
we can further trace their trajectories into the sanctuary before the Day of
Atonement and then out of it and away from the Israelite camp on the great
Day. Table 14 shows that each kind of evil (in order of appearance in Lev
16), conceived as a quasi-physical entity,
61
has a different pattern of move-
ment according to its nature. We will nd that these dynamic proles reect
a variety of relationships to Yhwh.
A xoo, physical ritual impurity, is puried (o) from an impure per-
son by ritual during the year. If the bodily delement is severe, the ritual pro-
cess includes a purication offering to purge (oa) residual impurity from
(optional privative o) the person (Lev 12:7; 14:19; 15:15, 30; cf. Num 8:21
oa to purify them), in which case this impurity must also be purged from the
sanctuary on the Day of Atonement. But such physical contamination is not
banished on Azazels goat, presumably because it is destroyed when the
nxon carcass into which it has been absorbed is incinerated outside the
camp (Lev 16:27).
59. Cf. A. Schenker, Koper et expiation, Bib 63 (1982) 3246.
60. As A. Tunyogi has observed, that a god or gods forgive a series of conscious
and deliberate rebellions is something peculiar to Israels faith (The Rebellions of
Israel, JBL 81 [1962] 385).
61. Cf. B. Baentsch, Exodus-Leviticus-Numeri (HKAT; Gttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1903) 381.
Milgroms rabbinic approach of downgrading deliberate sins to inadvertencies by post
hoc repentance (The Priestly Doctrine of Repentance, RB 82 [1975] 195205; idem,
Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance [SJLA 18;
Leiden: Brill, 1976] 10910, 11927; idem, Leviticus 116, 3012, 37478; idem, Le-
viticus 2327, 2449), which we examined in ch. 9 above. W. C. Kaiser holds that di-
vine forgiveness encompasses every sin (including vOo), except the high-handed
sin of Num 15:3031. But to sustain a difference between vOo and high-handed sin,
he must import the New Testament concept that unpardonable sin is restricted to
blasphemy or sinning against the Holy Spirit (The Book of Leviticus, NIB 1:1109,
1113, 1114).
The n\xoo purged from the sanctuary may include corpse contamination
(and other physical impurities?) for which purication has been wantonly ne-
glected (Num 19:13, 20). If so, the physical pollution presumably would have
affected the sanctuary automatically along with the vOo sin of wanton neglect
when this sin occurred.
62
Also purged would be any physical impurities that
have deled the sanctuary by direct contact (cf. Lev 15:31).
A vOo, inexpiable deant sin, is cleansed from the sanctuary and ban-
ished from the camp on the Day of Atonement, but it is not removed or
cleansed from the sinner at any time.
A nxon, expiable nondeant sin, is purged (oa) from (optional privative
o) the sinner by a noncalendric (outer-altar or outer-sanctum) nxon sacrice
(Lev 4:26; 5:6, 10), and on the Day of Atonement it is purged from the sanc-
tuary by an inner-sanctum purication offering, thereby cleansing (o) the
sinner, and is banished from the camp on Azazels goat.
An \v, culpability, is removed from an eligible (nondeant) sinner by a
noncalendric purication offering so that he no longer bears (xO:) it (Lev 5:1,
56). In eaten purication offerings (excluding a nxon sacrice ofciated by
a priest at least partly for himself ), ofciating priests who eat the esh bear
(xO:) the culpability (10:17) in some sense, although they are immune to its
effects.
63
They do this as the cultic representatives of Yhwh, who bears moral
Table 14. Movement Patterns of Various Evils
Throughout Year On Day of Atonement
Removed from
offerer (Lev 45,
12, 14, 15)
Borne by
priests
(10:17)
Purged from
sanctuary
(16:16)
Banished
from camp
(16:21)
Cleansed from
people
(16:30, 34)
xoo xoo
vOo vOo
nxon nxon nxon nxon
\v \v \v
62. While the text does not set a time limit, the fact that the penalty of na in
Num 19:13 and 20 is administered by Yhwh implies that he knows when delay con-
stitutes wanton neglect.
63. See ch. 5 above. Koch afrms: Part of the task of priests and Levites, however,
is to remove awon from Israel or from the sanctuary itself, to bear that awon repre-
sentatively, and by virtue of their own inherent quality to render it harmless (Ex. 28:38;
Lev. 10:17; Nu. 18:1,23) (\v awon, 559). On priestly immunity, see Milgrom,
Leviticus 116, 623, 63839, 1048.
Chapter 13 300
evils when he extends pardon (xo n\ vOo\ \v xO: ; Exod 34:7; cf. Num
14:18).
64
On the Day of Atonement all n\:\v, apparently comprising or at least
including the culpabilities borne by the priests for the people,
65
are trans-
ferred to Azazels goat through the high priests confession and banished to
Azazel in the wilderness (Lev 16:2122; cf. v. 10).
66
The n\:\v do not need to
be purged from the sanctuary because they have affected the priests instead.
67
The role of Yhwh in bearing moral evils is represented in the cultic sys-
tem by his sanctuary and priests together: When sinners receive oa during
the year, the sanctuary bears their n\xon (Lev 16:16) and the priests bear the
n\:\v that have resulted from the n\xon (Lev 10:17). The priests can bear
the n\:\v because these are consequential culpabilities and, as such, they
can be transferred from one person to another (cf. 2 Sam 14:9; ch. 16 be-
low). This transferability reects the legal fact that one person can be con-
demned to punishment for a wrong that another person has committed.
The purpose of the Day of Atonement is to preserve the justice
of Yhwhs administration
We have found that several kinds of human evil affect and are affected by
the cult of Yhwh in various ways. For the Israelites, the weightiest distinction
is between expiable and inexpiable moral faults. Since these sins are differen-
tiated according to whether or not they are deant/rebellious in nature, it is
clear that for Yhwh loyalty is the bottom line. He does not demand absolute
perfection from mortal, imperfect people, but he does require loyalty. If basi-
cally loyal people make mistakes, even some deliberate ones, they have op-
portunity for reconciliation with him through sacricial oa and subsequent
forgiveness. But if they defy him, whether actively or by neglecting the ritual
remedies or other requirements that he has commanded, they sever their
connection with him and irrevocably forfeit their future.
64. Cf. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin, 910.
65. Because the n\:\v resulting from expiated n\xon are borne separately by the
priests (Lev 10:17), they are separately represented in the list of evils placed on Azazels
goat (16:21). But perhaps the n\:\v in this list do not include culpabilities resulting
from cvOo, which are not separated from those who committed them.
66. Kiuchi notes the striking correspondence between the bearing of guilt by the
priests and by Azazels goat (The Purication Offering, 116). Koch explains: Further-
more, the high priest is also able through confession and leaning a hand on the ani-
mals head to transfer the awon to that animal such that the scapegoat is now the one
bearing it (Lev. 16:21f.) (\v awon, TDOT 10:559).
67. B. Levine is partially correct but imprecise when he comments: By sins (Heb
wnt) was meant those acts which deled the sanctuary and its attending priest-
hood (Leviticus, Book of, ABD 4:315).
Yhwhs treatment of people according to their loyalty or lack of it reveals
that his system of justice is sovereign in nature. As A. Bchler pointed out,
sin is basically disobedience and revolt against the divine sovereignty, the
Kingship of God.
68
We are reminded of King Solomon, who gave Adonijah,
Abiathar, and Joab a second chance after they attempted to put Adonijah on
the throne but held them accountable to continuing loyalty to himself
(1 Kgs 12).
The royal nature of Yhwhs justice does not exempt him from the need to
demonstrate that he accepts responsibility for his decisions. When a person
guilty of a nxon brings a sacrice and receives divine forgiveness, Yhwh tem-
porarily bears that nxon in his sanctuary and its consequential \v on his
priests. Why? Because clemency toward truly guilty people affects the admin-
istration of a ruler by calling his justice into question. Compare 2 Sam 14:9,
where the woman of Tekoa offers to bear \v that King David would otherwise
bear, so that the king and his throne will be clean (; :) if he absolves her (c-
titious) son of the death penalty for murder (cf. ch. 16 below).
The purpose of the Day of Atonement is not to extend pardon to those
who have already forfeited it. Rather, it is to preserve the justice of Yhwhs ad-
ministration by clearing it of two kinds of accumulated negative factors:
1. Judicial responsibility with regard to expiable sins that Yhwh has for-
given throughout the year. When these n\xon are purged from the sanctuary,
they are simultaneously cleansed (o) from the people in the sense that
their earlier forgiveness is now vindicated (Lev 16:30). Conrmation of an
earlier favorable ruling benets the defendant along with the judge. While
the people need this second phase of oa for expiable moral faults, they do
not need it for n\xoo. It is true that physical impurities arising from the birth
death cycle of mortality must be purged (oa) from the sanctuary of immortal
Yhwh, which remains in this imperfect environment (v. 16). But the people
themselves require no further cleansing with regard to their n\xoo, from
which they have earlier been puried (o; Lev 12:78; 14:20; etc.) rather
than forgiven.
2. The slanderous effect of rebellious vOo sins, committed by individuals
who have been among Yhwhs people at least nominally. Compare the fact
that King David was constrained to distance himself from Joab (2 Sam 3)
and ultimately to order Solomon to destroy him in order to absolve the
house of David from bloodguilt that automatically sullied it when Joab
Century (LBS; New York: KTAV, 1967) xviii.
Chapter 13 302
murdered Abner and Amasa while he was under Davids command (1 Kgs
2:56, 3132).
Conclusion
Having previously established that in the Israelite system of ritual expia-
tion there are two major phases of oa for expiable moral faults, the second of
which occurs on the Day of Atonement, I have now traced the trajectories of
distinct categories of evilphysical ritual impurity (xoo), inexpiable de-
ant sin (vOo), expiable nondeant sin (nxon), and culpability (\v)to the
sanctuary or priests throughout the year and from them on the Day of Atone-
ment. Each kind of evil has a different dynamic prole in relation to the cult
according to its nature. By treating these evils in different ways, the ritual sys-
tem shows that Yhwh extends remedies for impediments to the divine-human
relationship that are generated by those who are basically loyal to him, but he
withholds such remedies from those whom he rejects because they are dis-
loyal to him. So at the heart of the Pentateuch, the Israelite cultic system
characterizes Yhwh as a just ruler.
Part 4
Cult and Theodicy
305
Chapter 14
Divine Justice and the Cost of Kindness
Here we expand on the conclusions and implications of preceding chapters
for the meaning of ritual pollution and cleansing of the Israelite sanctuary. We
have found that ritual states and processes function as dynamic metaphors for
factors and interactions involved in the relationship between Yhwh and his
people.
1
But what, more precisely, do these ritual metaphors signify?
The Day of Atonement is Israels judgment day
The cult reects relationships with Yhwh as fates of Israelites are decided
individually throughout the year and corporately on the yearly Day of Atone-
ment. In the movement of evils into and out of the Israelite sanctuary, we
have seen a cultic mirror of relationships between Yhwh and various kinds
of people (see ch. 13 above). The Israelites are imperfect in two major ways:
(1) they are susceptible to physical ritual impurities, and (2) they are prone
to commit moral faults. But in their treatment of Yhwhs commandments,
including his instructions regarding remedies for imperfection, Israelites
show themselves loyal or disloyal to him.
Those who defy Yhwh by agrantly breaking his commandments or who
wantonly neglect the ritual remedies that he provides are disloyal to him.
They are terminally condemned when they commit these sins (Lev 20:3;
Num 15:3031; 19:13, 20).
2
On the other hand, those who do not deantly
break Yhwhs commandments, who individually receive ritual oa and di-
vine forgiveness for their nondeant commandment violations, and who
are cleansed from their physical impurities are provisionally loyal
3
and
1. Cf. I. Gruenwald, Rituals and Ritual Theory in Ancient Israel (BRLJ 10; Leiden:
Brill, 2003) 15: Rituals can be seen as patterns of behaviour that give expression to re-
lational attitudes.
2. Compare rabbinic views that divine judgment takes place before the Day of
Atonement, whether collectively on Rosh Hashanah or individually at times appointed
for people (b. Ros Has. 16a; y. Ros Has. 1.3; see further below).
3. A. Mdebielle has pointed out that, through expiatory sacrices, offerers render
homage to the Master whom they have offended (Le symbolism du sacrice expia-
toire en Isral, Bib 2 [1921] 300).
Chapter 14 306
therefore eligible for a further, corporate stage of oa on the Day of Atone-
ment (Lev 16:30).
4
On the Day of Atonement there is another opportunity to show loyalty,
this time by obeying Yhwhs commands to practice self-denial and abstain
from work (Lev 16:29, 31). Meeting these conditions for oa can benet only
those who are provisionally loyal; there is no evidence that such obedience
plays a role in freeing anyone from condemnation to the terminal penalties
of extirpation (na) or death.
5
Any Israelites who are eligible for oa on the Day of Atonement but who
fail to practice self-denial and/or keep Sabbath at this time, are condemned
to extirpation and/or destruction (23:2632). So they are ultimately no better
off than if they had been disloyal from the start. Yhwh wants people who are
loyal and remain loyal. It is not enough to have shown loyalty at some time in
the past. Obedience to Yhwh while the high priest ofciates on the Great
Day is essential for receiving the benet of his work.
6
Fates of Israelites are affected or even decided throughout the year accord-
ing to the ways in which they relate to Yhwh. But separation between truly
loyal and disloyal people is completed on the Day of Atonement. By the end
of this day there are only two classes of Israelites: (1) a remnant who are mor-
ally pure, that is, having no impediments to their relationship with Yhwh
(Lev 16:30),
7
and (2) those who have no future with Yhwh and his people
4. M. Anderson and P. Culbertson summarize: The sacrice of Yom Kippur re-
quires prior restitution for sins committed. If such restitution is not made, the Yom
Kippur liturgy is considered effective for the community as a whole, but not for
those individuals who have failed to make rectication (The Inadequacy of the
Christian Doctrine of Atonement in Light of Levitical Sin Offering, AThR 68
[1986] 312). The Day of Atonement does not exempt Israelites from bringing their
private nxon sacrices, even if the Day passes before they have opportunity to offer
them (m. Ker. 6:4). Cf. m. Yoma 8:9, where a person must be reconciled to his fellow
in order to receive the benet of oa on Yom Kippur, just as restitution is prerequi-
site to a reparation offering (Lev 5:2026[6:17]).
5. Apparently contra m. Yoma 8:8, where the Day of Atonement atones for serious
transgressions (n\\on). A. Noordtzij recognizes that rabbinic exegesis goes beyond
pentateuchal law, in which all of the sins from which the sanctuary and people are
freed on the Day of Atonement does not include deant sins, for which the sinner was
immediately cut off (Num 15:30; Leviticus [trans. R. Togtman; BSC; Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1982] 169).
6. A. Schenker, Vershnung und Shne (BibB 15; Freiburg: Katholisches Bibel-
werk, 1981) 114, 116; cf. A. Dillmann, Die Bcher Exodus und Leviticus (Leipzig: Hir-
zel, 1897) 581.
7. Cf. H. C. Brichto, On Slaughter and Sacrice, Blood and Atonement, HUCA
47 (1976) 36. Thus the cult reects a kind of remnant dynamic that was repeated
many times in biblical history: Yhwh puries a chosen group by removing the disloyal
from the loyal.
Divine Justice and the Cost of Kindness 307
(23:2930). So we nd that, within the Israelite cultic year, the Day of Atone-
ment completes the determination of destinies on the national level and in
this sense can be regarded as Israels judgment day.
8
The rabbis recognized that the Day of Atonement involves judgment.
B. Ros Has. 16a records the opinion that human beings are judged on New
Year (Rosh Hashanah, Tishri 1) and their verdict ( I) is sealed (cnn:) on
the Day of Atonement (Tishri 10). In 16b there is a more complex view,
which differentiates between classes of people:
R. Kruspedai said in the name of R. Joanan: Three books are opened [in
heaven] on New Year, one for the thoroughly wicked, one for the thor-
oughly righteous, and one for the intermediate. The thoroughly righteous
are forthwith inscribed denitively in the book of life; the thoroughly
wicked are forthwith inscribed denitively in the book of death; the doom
of the intermediate is suspended from New Year till the Day of Atonement;
if they deserve well, they are inscribed in the book of life; if they do not de-
serve well, they are inscribed in the book of death.
9
In y. Ros Has. 1.3 a variant form of the same quotation emphasizes that the
fully righteous and fully wicked have already received their verdicts by Rosh
Hashanah and claries the basis on which the intermediates receive their ver-
dicts: the ten days of repentance between Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur
were given to them. If they repented, they are inscribed with the righteous;
and if not, they are inscribed with the wicked.
10
No wonder these ten days
have become days of awe! Who would be so condent of belonging to the
wholly righteous that he/she would neglect repentance, which could tip the
scales in favor of a favorable verdict?
The talmudic statements just cited agree on the following:
1. New Years Day and the Day of Atonement are judgment days.
11
2. The divinely administered judicial process involves two components:
judgment = investigation, and sentencing. The investigative aspect is
8. Cf. K. A. Strand, An Overlooked Old Testament Background to Revelation
11:1, AUSS 22 (1984) 322.
9. Translation by M. Simon, Hebrew-English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud:
Rosh Hashanah (ed. I. Epstein; London: Soncino, 1983).
10. Translation by E. Goldman, The Talmud of the Land of Israel: A Preliminary
Translation and Explanation (ed. J. Neusner, W. Green, and C. Goldscheider; CSHJ
16; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) 42.
11. On implications of these and other rabbinic opinions regarding the judg-
ment, according to which judgment and sealing of the sentence are both on Rosh
Hashanah, judgment is on Rosh Hashanah and sentencing at times appointed for
each person, or both judgment and sentencing are at times appointed for each one,
see y. Ros Has. 1.3.
Chapter 14 308
especially clear in y. Ros Has. 1.3, where judgment on Rosh Hashanah
is described: The Holy One Blessed be He says to the ministering
angels: set up the platform, let the defenders rise and let the prosecutors
rise.
12
3. On New Years Day God reviews people to make basic distinctions
between the righteous and the wicked (cf. m. Ros Has. 1:2).
4. The Day of Atonement has a special role beyond distinguishing
between people who are clearly righteous or wicked.
By comparison with b. Ros Has. 16a, the more complex view of 16b and
y. Ros Has. 1.3 makes the qualication that sentencing on the Day of Atone-
ment is functionally relevant only for the intermediate class, because the pro-
cess of judgment for the other two classes has already been completed by
Rosh Hashanah. While the rst opinion is that all verdicts are reached on the
New Year, and on the Day of Atonement the same sentences are sealed, the
second opinion is that the Day of Atonement decides the less obvious fates of
those who are between the wholly righteous and the wholly wicked. Both of
these have analogies in human law: sealing sentences can follow verdicts re-
garding guilt or innocence, and ambiguous cases can take extra time.
The rabbis import two extrabiblical concepts. First, there is no penta-
teuchal evidence that the day of remembrance signied by trumpet blasts
(v n \aI) at the beginning of the seventh month (Lev 23:24) is New Years
Day or a day of judgment.
13
A new year that affects human destinies is not al-
together lacking in the Pentateuch, but it begins on the Day of Atonement
when the Jubilee year of release, the ftieth year, begins after seven sabbatical-
year cycles, totaling forty-nine years (Lev 25:810).
14
Regarding yearly obser-
12. Translation by Goldman, The Talmud of the Land of Israel, 44.
13. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 2327 (AB 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2001) 201213,
201718.
14. On the nature and implications of the Jubilee release, see, for example, my
Laws of the Seventh and Fiftieth Years, JAGNES 1 (1990) 216. The connection
between the Jubilee and the Day of Atonement is implicitly reinforced by the fact
that the special complex of inner-sanctum purication offerings, through which the
sanctuary is purged, includes a total of 49 blood applications, counting applications
of blood to each horn of the inner and outer altars separately (Lev 16:1415, 16b, 18
19; J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 [AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991] 103839). Accord-
ing to my calculations there is another numerical correspondence: 50 nonprepara-
tory individual rituals are to be performed during the Day of Atonement as a whole.
Not including preparatory priestly ablutions (Exod 30:1721; Lev 16:4, 24) and the
lot ritual (vv. 710), there are 13 performances of regular rituals (6
1
/
2
in the morning
and the same in the evening; the half is the lamp ritual; Exod 30:78; Num 28:18),
28 of additional festival offerings (1 purication offering + 9 burnt offerings with their
vance of the special Day of Atonement ritual complex that restores the com-
munity and theocratic cult of Yhwh in its midst while the community ceases
labor and expresses humility, some have suggested that it could be viewed as
enacting a communal rite of passage that reects characteristics of annual
new year festivals.
15
However, since it is on the tenth day of the seventh
month rather than the rst day of the rst month (cf. Exod 12:2), it is not New
Year as such. Once postbiblical tradition came to regard Tishri 1 as New
Years Day, it was a short step to associate this day with judgment, in accor-
dance with enduring ancient Near Eastern traditions that placed judgment
in the context of New Year celebrations.
16
Second, the biblical text does not divide people into wholly righteous and
intermediate categories. All Israelites who are not already condemned come
to the Day of Atonement together in one category: those who have been basi-
cally loyal to Yhwh throughout the year.
Although the rabbinic notion of corporate judgment on Tishri 1 is not in
the Pentateuch, it does agree with the biblical evidence in the sense that some
people are condemned before the Day of Atonement. The idea that fates are
sealed on the Day of Atonement (b. Ros Has. 16a) also reects biblical data:
fates of Israelites who have shown themselves to be disloyal before the Day of
Atonement are sealed on this day in the sense that they are excluded from re-
ceiving the benet of nal oa. On the other hand, fates of loyal Israelites are
sealed on the Day of Atonement in the sense that their freedom from con-
demnation and reconciliation with Yhwh are conrmed through the rituals
that purge the sanctuary.
15. F. H. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the Priestly
Theology (JSOTSup 91; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1990) 6162, 9095; cf. A. van Gen-
nep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960) 17880.
16. See ch. 17 below; M. Weinfeld, Social and Cultic Institutions in the Priestly
Source against Their Ancient Near Eastern Background, Proceedings of the Eighth
World Congress of Jewish Studies; Panel Sessions: Bible Studies and Hebrew Language
(Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies/Perry Foundation for Biblical Research,
1983) 11617; cf., e.g., H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1948) 331; M. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East
(Bethesda, Maryland: CDL, 1993) 44748.
accompanying grain and drink offerings; Num 29:711), and 9 of special rituals pre-
scribed in Lev 16 (2 purication offerings, Azazels goat, and 2 burnt offerings with
their accompanying grain and drink offerings). See R. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Struc-
ture (Gorgias Dissertations 14, Religion 2; Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias, 2004)
3089.
Chapter 14 310
The Israelites are to demonstrate their continuing loyalty
to Yhwh on the Day of Atonement
We have found that for Yhwh the bottom line is loyalty. All Israelites are
prone to imperfection, but only those who maintain loyalty to the deity, both
throughout the year and on the Day of Atonement, maintain their benecial
relationship with him.
Israelites participate in noncalendric sacrices on their behalf throughout
the year. But the corporate Day of Atonement ceremonies are performed by
the high priest alone, except that assistants lead Azazels goat into the wilder-
ness and dispose of the purication-offering carcasses. The rest of the people
play no ritual role. Nevertheless, Yhwh requires them to be involved at a dis-
tance by showing loyalty to him through observance of two commands regu-
lating their activity: they are to practice self-denial and cease from work (Lev
16:29, 31; 23:2632; Num 29:7).
17
These instructions contribute to the
uniqueness of the day: Yhwh requires self-denial only on the Day of Atone-
ment, and apart from the weekly Sabbath, this is the only day on which all
work of any kind is prohibited.
Any residual doubt that the peoples observance is linked to oa performed
by the high priest on their behalf is dispelled by the structure of Lev 16:29
31. The commands for self-denial and keeping Sabbath that are stated in v. 29
are reiterated in reverse order in v. 31, with ca" x \naO naO , It is a super-
Sabbath for you (v. 31),
18
serving as the functional equivalent of ax"o"a
Ovn x", you shall not do any work (v. 29). Reversal here produces a chiasm
between vv. 29 and 31.
19
These chiastically linked verses frame and therefore
highlight v. 30, which supplies the motive for the stipulations: For on this
day shall purgation be effected on your behalf to purify you of all your sins;
17. B. Levine comments: the ceremonial identication of the people with the ac-
tual purication of the sanctuary effected a purication of the populace. By fasting
and other forms of abstinence, and by declaring this day a twenty-four-hour period of
complete rest, the people were involved in the purication of the sanctuary in a mean-
ingful way (Leviticus, Book of, ABD 4:315; cf. G. B. Gray, Sacrice in the Old Tes-
tament: Its Theory and Practice [Oxford: Clarendon, 1925] 319; J. L. Mays, The Book
of Leviticus, The Book of Numbers [LBC 4; Atlanta: John Knox, 1963] 52; P. Jenson,
Graded Holiness: A Key to the Priestly Conception of the World [JSOTSup 106; Shef-
eld: JSOT Press, 1992] 201).
18. B. Levine explains that \naO naO conveys the force of a superlative (Leviticus
[JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989] 109).
19. I. Knohl, The Priestly Torah versus the Holiness School: Sabbath and the
Festivals, HUCA 58 (1987) 86, esp. n. 61; D. Wright, cited in Milgrom, Leviticus 1
16, 1057; D. Wright, Day of Atonement, ABD 2:73; Milgrom, Leviticus 2327, 2020.
you shall become pure before Yhwh.
20
Because of what the high priest does
on behalf of the people by purging the sanctuary, thereby morally purifying
them, they are to practice self-denial and observe Sabbath.
An integral connection between the purgation of the sanctuary and the
moral cleansing of people who demonstrate their loyalty on the Day of
Atonement goes against the grain of Milgroms argument that the commands
to practice self-denial and abstain from work in Lev 16:2931 and 23:2632
arise from
Hs premise that sins pollute not only the sanctuary (Ps thesis), but also the
sinners themselves, and simultaneously with the purgation of the sanctuary,
they must purge themselves. Ps theology of sin, it will be recalled (vol.
1.25461), postulates that the sinner is unpolluted by his sin, but he pol-
lutes the sanctuary. H disagrees with P and shifts the emphasis on the Day
of Purgation from Israels sanctuary to Israel itself: the quintessence of this
day is self-purgation.
21
Chapter 6 above has undermined this thesis by showing that the so-called P
material also has the sinner polluted by his sin, which must be purged (oa)
from (privative o) him by means of a noncalendric expiatory sacrice.
Leviticus 23:2632 repeats and stresses the commands to practice self-de-
nial and abstain from work on the tenth day of the seventh month. This pas-
sage adds several elements.
22
First, it provides a name for the day: coa c\,
the Day of Purgation (v. 27; cf. v. 28). Second, it attaches penalties for non-
compliance: extirpation and destruction (vv. 2930). Third, the duration of
the observance is specied: from evening on the ninth day of the month until
the next evening (v. 32).
H. Brongers argues that, because the Day of Atonement provides oa for
all faults of Israel in its entirety, the prohibition of labor and practice of self-
denial are matters of the community, not of individuals.
23
However, while
it is true that the sanctuary rituals are performed for Israel as a community,
20. Translation by J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 1294; cf. idem, Leviticus 116,
1011.
v. 29
v. 30
v. 31
deny yourselves do no work
MOTIVE: PURGATION
keep Sabbath deny yourselves
22. Cf. ibid.
23. H. Brongers, Fasting in Israel in Biblical and Post-Biblical Times, OtSt 20
(1977) 16.
Chapter 14 312
Lev 23:2632 makes it crystal clear that any person (Oo:"a; vv. 29, 30) who
fails to participate according to Yhwhs directions will be punished by Yhwh
(nx x\ Oo:, v. 30). It is not that the community as a whole will be pun-
ished. Rather, one who treats the Day of Atonement like all other days is ex-
tirpated or destroyed from (the midst of ) his/her people (vv. 29, 30). As far
as Yhwh is concerned, such an individual is no longer a member of the
community of Israel.
24
Self-denial
Leviticus and Numbers do not explain the nature or meaning of the ob-
servance denoted by the command canOo:nx :vn or canOo:nx cn:v\ ,
literally, you shall afict yourselves (Lev 16:29, 31; 23:27, 32; Num 29:7; cf.
Lev 23:29). The nature and function of the activity (or lack of activity) are
also assumed in Num 30:14[13], where a womans vow to practice self-
denial (Oo: n:v") is subject to the approval of her husband. The fact that
husband-wife relations are involved here suggests the possibility that self-
denial could include sexual abstinence.
25
For more information regarding self-denial, we must look outside the Pen-
tateuch. The piel of :v also appears with Oo: in Ps 35:13, where the psalm-
ists voluntary self-denial to express distress/mourning at the sickness of a
friend is carried out by means of fasting while wearing sackcloth and is asso-
ciated with prayer. In Isa 58:3 and 5 fasting (c\x) and practicing self-denial
(Oo: :v) before Yhwh, probably on the Day of Atonement when he required
this, are functional equivalents. In v. 5 this behavior is associated with bowing
the head and lying in sackcloth and ashes.
Ezra 8:21 and Dan 10:12 use the hitpael of :v, rather than the piel of
this root with Oo:, for the reexive idea of denying oneself. For Ezra and his
group of returning exiles, the purpose of voluntary self-denial through fasting
(c\x) is to beseech God for a safe journey. Daniels self-denial also accompa-
nies a petition, in his case to understand a vision. Verses 23 describe his be-
havior as mourning and specify that he abstained from luxurious food and
drink and from anointing himself, the equivalent of using skin moisturizing
lotion.
We have found that when self-denial is voluntary, it is an outward expres-
sion accompanying supplication to God at a time of grief, fear, or inner dis-
24. S. Agnon, Days of Awe (New York: Schocken, 1948) 189, citing Siddur ha-
Minhagim.
25. Cf. Exod 19:15, where Yhwh commanded the Israelites to abstain from sexual
relations in preparation for his theophany on Mt. Sinai.
tress (Ps 35:13; Ezra 8:21; Dan 10:12).
26
Temporary suspension of eating and
other normal activities acknowledges human dependence on the power of
the deity (cf. Dan 5:23), whose aid is humbly requested. Giving up everyday
activities also allows a person to concentrate on God without interrupting the
petitionary mode.
27
Returning to the Day of Atonement, the physical observance of self-denial
involves corporate fasting and other forms of abstinence that are associated
with mourning, in this case with regard to sins.
28
Whereas Daniels fast lasted
three weeks and was limited to abstaining from luxurious food and drink
(Dan 10:23), the one-day observance on the Day of Atonement most likely
entails a total fast. Associated departures from normal activity on the Day of
Atonement could include wearing sackcloth, bowing the head, abstaining
from oil to anoint oneself, and sexual abstinence. Rather than specifying such
behaviors, as m. Yoma 8:1 does, the biblical text requires self-denial in general
terms that appear to allow leeway for individual discretion. It could be sug-
gested that Oo: :v is a technical expression for a cluster of behaviors, but va-
riety of usage indicates uidity of practice beyond fasting. It seems that the
fact of self-denial is more important than uniformity among the Israelites in
every detail of observance.
The intended function of mandatory self-denial on the Day of Atonement
appears to be basically the same as that of voluntary self-denial at other times:
to express humble dependence upon God at a time of special need and to al-
low for uninterrupted concentration on him. In this case the need arises from
26. Cf. R. K. Harrison, Leviticus: An Introduction and Commentary (TOTC;
Leicester: Inter-Varsity, 1980) 175.
27. Philo, Special Laws 2.196; R. Pter-Contesse and J. Ellington, A Handbook on
Leviticus (UBSHS; New York: United Bible Societies, 1990) 258.
Ruprecht, 1903) 386. For corporate fasting (c\x) at times of special need, including
times when repentance is necessary, see Judg 20:26; 1 Sam 7:6; Joel 1:14; 2:12, 15;
Jonah 3:5; Esth 4:16; Neh 9:1; 2 Chr 20:3. On fasting as an expression of mourning
(e.g., 1 Sam 31:13; 2 Sam 1:12) under various circumstances in Israel and the an-
cient Near East, see T. Podella, m-Fasten: Kollektive Trauer um den verborgenen
Gott im Alten Testament (AOAT 224; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker / Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1989); cf. Brongers, Fasting, 37. K. Aartun adduces
rabbinic and biblical evidence and Ugaritic and Hittite parallels to show a connec-
tion between the Day of Atonement and situations of distress and/or death (Studien
zum Gesetz ber den grossen Vershnungstag Lv 16 mit Varianten: Ein ritualge-
schichtlicher Beitrag, ST 34 [1980] 8893). Jewish tradition interprets Oo: :v as
fasting (see, e.g., Ibn Ezra on Lev 16:29), but J. Milgrom points out that Oo: :v,
practice self-denial, has a broader meaning than c\x, fast (Fasting and Fast
Days, EncJud 6:1189; cf. Brongers, Fasting, 23).
Chapter 14 314
the fact that the moral faults of the Israelites have polluted Yhwhs sanctuary.
If their sins continue to accumulate there, they will be left disastrously bereft
of his protection and support (cf. Ezek 9:3; 10:4, 1819; 11:2223).
29
Power-
less to do anything about the problem they have caused, the people can only
rely on Yhwhs acceptance of the rituals performed in the sanctuary on their
behalf.
30
Uniquely on this day, self-denial is required as a response to an in-
stitutional cultic event because the fate of the entire community depends on
it.
31
Leviticus does not require the Israelites to make verbal petitions to Yhwh
on the Day of Atonement. But the sanctuary rituals constitute their corporate
supplication for oa.
32
By accompanying the activities of the high priest with
their self-denial, the people act like pious individuals who voluntarily accom-
pany their prayers with self-denial on other occasions.
33
By expressing distress for causing evils that have deled Yhwhs sanctu-
ary
34
and humble recognition of dependence on him for restoration from im-
perfection, sincere (not hypocritical; cf. Isa 58; m. Yoma 8:9) self-denial serves
as an outward sign of inner repentance and desire for continuing moral reha-
29. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 260; repr. from Israels Sanctuary, 39798.
30. Cf. C. F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1952 [orig. 1874]) 2:4056.
31. B. D. Eerdmans explains the need for humility and fasting before God on
the Day of Atonement as due to the fact that on this last day of the holy period that
opens the year, God deliberates concerning the fate of the people in the coming
year. Up to this day, the decision of God is not nally determined (Das Buch Leviti-
cus [ATS 4; Giessen: Alfred Tpelmann, 1912] 78).
32. Compare the fact that Lev 4 does not require verbal petition or even confession
with a purication offering for inadvertent sin. The ritual actions constitute the peti-
tion for oa.
33. Gorman identies the ritual humbling of the people as one of the two central
acts of the Day of Atonement, the other being the oa performance of the high priest
(The Ideology of Ritual, 63).
34. At rst glance a statement in y. Ros Has. 1.3 appears to represent a rabbinic re-
peal of the biblical scenario: Customarily, a man who knows that he is on trial wears
black, and wraps himself in black, and lets his beard grow, for he doesnt know how
his trial will turn out. But Israel is not thus, rather they wear white, and wrap them-
selves in white, and shave their beards, and eat, drink, and rejoice. They know that
the Holy One Blessed be He does for them miracles (translation by Goldman, The
Talmud of the Land of Israel, 44). Here judgment is associated with rejoicing rather
than mourning. But presumably this would be the rabbinic judgment day of Rosh
Hashanah, which is not a fast day, rather than the Day of Atonement. It is easy to see
how the rabbis would prefer Rosh Hashanah to be the initial time of judgment rather
than the Day of Atonement, when powerful mourning behavior could overwhelm
even legitimate condence.
bilitation.
35
Thus the Israelites make a profound statement concerning their
choice of loyalty to Yhwh and his law.
Cessation of work
Yearly festival days other than the Day of Atonement can be characterized
as \naO, cessation/rest (Lev 23:24, 39) and carry prohibitions to perform
zv nax"o , laborious work (vv. 7, 8, 21, 25, 35, 36).
36
But the Day of
Atonement, like the weekly Sabbath and the sabbatical year, is called naO
\naO, Sabbath of cessation or super-Sabbath, and requires complete rest
(Lev 16:31; 23:32; cf. Exod 31:15; 35:2; Lev 23:3; 25:4). As on the weekly Sab-
bath, all ax"o, work, of any kind is prohibited (Lev 16:29; 23:28, 30, 31;
Num 29:7; cf. Exod 20:10; Lev 23:3; Jer 17:22).
37
Since the prohibition of labor on the weekly Sabbath is due to consecra-
tion of the entire seventh day (cf. Gen 2:3; Exod 20:11), it is clear that the
Day of Atonement is also totally consecrated. Other festival Sabbaths, on
which light work is allowed, are consecrated to a lesser degree. The special
sanctity of the Day of Atonement corresponds with the fact that the high
priest enters the holy of holies only on this day. Enacting holiness by total rest
would also make it possible for the Israelites to focus fully on their relation-
ship with Yhwh, as expressed by their self-denial.
To conclude this section, we have found that Israelites who obey Yhwhs
commands to practice self-denial and keep Sabbath on the Day of Atone-
ment express loyalty and submission to him, respect for his holiness, and rec-
ognition of the crucial importance of cleansing his sanctuary. In this way the
35. Cf. S. Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus (EB; New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900)
261; A. Clamer, Lvitique, Nombres, Deutronome (La Sainte Bible 2; Paris: Letouzey
et An, 1946) 131; Noordtzij, Leviticus, 171. M. Yoma 8:89 and b. Yoma 86ab em-
phasize repentance in connection with the Day of Atonement. B. Bamberger rightly
notes that the traditional rendering afict your souls is misleading, but his statement
that Lev 16 is not concerned with inner contrition (Leviticus [TMC 3; New York:
Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1981] 867) should be qualied to read: is
not explicitly concerned with inner contrition.
36. On zv nax"o as laborious work, not including light household chores, see
Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 105455; cf. idem, Studies in Levitical Terminology, I: The
Encroacher and the LeviteThe Term Aboda (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1970) 7781.
37. B. Jrgens sees this Sabbath as a link between Creation and the Day of Atone-
ment, on which partial restoration of the Creation order is represented (Heiligkeit und
Vershnung: Levitikus 16 in seinem literarischen Kontext [Herders Biblische Studien
28; Freiburg: Herder, 2001] 42329).
Chapter 14 316
community of the faithful participates in the great Day so that its efcacy ap-
plies to them.
38
Moral cleansing beyond forgiveness recognizes the need
for loyalty to endure
Why does Yhwh require his people to demonstrate loyalty to him through
two phases of ritual oa, in which evils are transferred into his sanctuary and
then out of it? The Israelites need for mercy does not provide an adequate
rationale for expiatory sacrices performed at the sanctuary. Yhwh was able to
forgive people apart from the sanctuary cult before it began to function (e.g.,
Exod 34:6, 7) and while it was in operation (e.g., 2 Sam 12:13; 2 Chr 33:12
13; cf. 30:1819). Even when ritual oa was ofciated by priests at the sanctu-
ary, it did not accomplish forgiveness but was only prerequisite to forgiveness
granted directly by God (Lev 4:20, 26, 31, 35).
Why should Yhwh deal with sin through sacrices at the sanctuary when
he could do it without such procedures? One possible answer is that the cult
was meant to teach moral values. For example, according to S. Kellogg the
purpose of the Day of Atonement rituals once per year was to expiate sin
in the highest and fullest sense then possible. . . . The fact of such an ordi-
nance for such a purpose taught a most impressive lesson of the holiness
of God and the sinfulness of man, on the one hand, and, on the other, the
utter insufciency of the daily offerings to cleanse from all sin . . . the sol-
emn observances of this day, under God, were made for many in Israel a
most effective means to deepen the conviction of sin.
39
D. Wright has pointed in the same direction by suggesting that the system of
purities had a didactic purpose: to teach Israelites the difference between
categories such as holy, profane, pure, and impure, which they would need to
understand in order to relate to the resident deity in the proper manner. Rem-
edies for lesser impurities would teach about potential danger from more se-
vere contaminants that could inict serious harm on society. As they focus
on these lesser impurities, this Pentateuchal tradition really has the larger
moral issues and goals of religion as a major concern.
40
Both physical impu-
rities and moral faults are dened in relation to Yhwh and must be remedied
38. Cf. P. Heinisch, Das Buch Leviticus (HSAT 1; Bonn: Hanstein, 1935) 76.
39. Kellogg, The Book of Leviticus, 25960.
40. D. Wright, The Spectrum of Priestly Impurity, in Priesthood and Cult in An-
cient Israel (ed. G. Anderson and S. Olyan; JSOTSup 125; Shefeld: JSOT Press,
1991) 180; cf. 17179.
by rituals. The natures and trajectories of the two kinds of evils coincide to a
sufcient degree that each kind helps to explain the other.
If nxon sacrices, which remedy sins and physical impurities, contribute
to teaching the contrast between divine holiness and human imperfection,
how do we account for differences between the trajectories of these evils?
Most notably, why does an Israelite need a second major stage of oa for his/
her sins in order to arrive at moral purity (o; Lev 16:30) when a noncalen-
dric nxon sacrice for severe bodily impurity completes a persons physical
purication (o) in only one major stage of oa (e.g., 12:78; 14:1920;
15:15, 30)? What does this difference teach?
Unlike ritual impurities, moral faults raise the question of loyalty to Yhwh.
Although expiable (i.e., nondeant) sins do not sever the divine-human rela-
tionship, they create moral imbalance and compromise loyalty. Repentance,
as expressed by confession if necessary and expiatory sacrice as required, in-
volves humble acknowledgment of accountability to Yhwh and acceptance
of his gracious provision for restoration. So repentance with sacricial oa,
which is the precondition for forgiveness, afrms loyalty to Yhwh. In addi-
tion, self-denial on the Day of Atonement demonstrates that the penitence,
and therefore loyalty, of people who have already been forgiven continue.
Thus the Israelite system of oa, with moral cleansing beyond forgiveness
(Lev 16:30), simultaneously recognizes the frailty of human nature, with its
penchant for eeting repentance, provides assurance that the moral equilib-
rium is restored, and encourages long-term moral rehabilitation.
41
S. Geller identies another dimension of reconciliation beyond for-
giveness:
the logic of the covenantal relationship between God and Israel requires
that sins be more than merely forgiven. It is a known fact that, despite the
proverbial expression, it is impossible really to forget offenses one has
supposedly forgiven. The memory of the crime remains as a shadow on
future relations. When two people begin to quarrel, each soon resurrects
the full inventory of sins the other has committed in the past. For the
covenant to remain effective, God must wipe out completely this residual
effect of sin . . . and so renew the pristine nature of the bond. For this pro-
cess an expression like purgation of impurity would then be a priestly
metaphor.
42
41. Cf. H. Cohen, The Day of Atonement: I, Judaism 17 (1968) 357; idem, The
Day of Atonement: II, Judaism 18 (1969) 8687.
42. S. Geller, Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the Priestly Work of the
Pentateuch, Prooftexts 12 (1992) 108.
Chapter 14 318
While Geller does not clarify differences between forgiveness extended by
human beings and forgiveness that is granted by God, his insight has some
biblical support. For example, in the new covenant passage of Jer 31, Yhwh
promises to forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more (v. 34).
The point of remembering no more is not that God needs to develop a self-
induced state of amnesia so that he will not be tempted to resurrect wrongs
that he has already forgiven. Rather, this is an anthropomorphic expression of
the concept that God will do something that goes beyond his initial grant of
forgiveness: he will make sin irrevocably irrelevant to the future of the rela-
tionship, just as a grievance between two human beings loses its potential for
revival if it is forgotten.
43
In the context of Leviticus, we have found that restoration of the divine-
human relationship with regard to a given expiable sin is a process that in-
cludes two major phases, the rst leading up to forgiveness (n"o) and the
second leading up to a kind of moral cleansing (o). The process cannot
be completed in one stage because an act of sin calls into question the sin-
ners loyalty to Yhwh, and full restoration and demonstration of loyalty takes
time.
Yhwhs kindness/mercy carries a cost of judicial responsibility
In pursuing the question of why Yhwh requires his people to demonstrate
loyalty through two phases of ritual oa, in which evils are transferred into his
sanctuary and then out of it, we have accounted for the need to express con-
tinuing loyalty. But why is sacrice necessary to show repentance, why do for-
given sins pollute Yhwhs sanctuary so that it must be purged on the Day of
Atonement, and why does this purgation result in moral cleansing of forgiven
sinners?
P. Jenson starts us on a productive track by observing with regard to Lev 16:
The comprehensive phraseology suggests that the scope of the ceremony
was intended to include every kind of sin. This could include even those
which may already have been dealt with, from the human side by the civil
law, or from the divine side by direct action. What happens outside the
43. For an illustration of the way in which forgiveness can be revoked while the
debt is remembered, see a parable of Jesus (Matt 18:2335). B. Schwartz shows
that in Ezekiel, Israels postexilic restoration is through a different process: In spite of
the peoples lack of repentance, Yhwh restores them and resumes permanent
residence with them (Ezekiels Dim View of Israels Restoration, in The Book of
Ezekiel: Theological and Anthropological Perspectives [ed. M. Odell and J. Strong;
SBLSymS 9; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000] 4367).
sanctuary affects in some way what goes on inside, since it is the same God
who dwells in the sanctuary and who is sovereign over all that Israel does.
It would be appropriate to have some sort of cultic ritual which acknowl-
edges the implications for God of human sin.
44
At the Israelite sanctuary, Yhwh is enthroned above the ark of the covenant
(Exod 25:22; Num 7:89; cf. 1 Sam 4:4; 2 Sam 6:2, etc.). So the sanctuary is his
earthly administrative center, and his place of enthronement represents his
authority, character, and reputation for justice, upon which his rule is
founded (cf. Ps 97:2), just as the throne of a human king stands for his admin-
istration (e.g., 2 Sam 14:9).
45
In the ancient Near East, including Israel during the monarchy, human
kings were responsible for establishing and maintaining justice in society (cf.,
e.g., 2 Sam 15:24).
46
Similarly, in the Pentateuch the self-characterization
of Yhwh takes the guise of the just king, who must not only promulgate and
interpret law, but enforce it as well.
47
45. Compare the way ofcial dwellings, such as the White House and Buckingham
Palace, represent the reputations of their chief occupants. See the name theology of
Deuteronomy, according to which Yhwhs name is to reside at the location he
chooses for his sanctuary (12:5, 11, 21; 14:2324; 16:2, 6, 11). For the idea that Yhwhs
name involves his reputation, see, for example, Ezek 20:9. In Ezekiel, Yhwhs depar-
ture from his temple and subsequent permanent return to a restored temple is moti-
vated by his concern for his own reputation (Schwartz, Ezekiels Dim View, 4367).
By saving his people at this time, Yahweh vindicates the holiness of his profaned
name (G. Andr, xoo ame, TDOT 5:338). Notice that in Leviticus, while God and
his name are never directly deled (xoo; Milgrom, Leviticus 1722, 173536), his
sanctuary can be deled (xoo; Lev 15:31; 20:3; Num 19:13, 20). The fact that Yhwhs
administration was at the sanctuary indicates to M. Kline that covenant and cult coa-
lesced: in Israel the cultus absorbed various vital features of covenantal administration
which elsewhere were not cultic but matters of state. . . . Yahweh is Israels covenant
suzerain; Israels covenant lord is the Lord God . . . the palace of the great king is one
and the same as the sanctuary of the vassals God. . . . The sacricial system of the cult
was a means of making amends for offenses against the treaty stipulations and, in gen-
eral, it was through Israels participation in the cult that they most immediately expe-
rienced the covenant as a personal relationship with the Lord God (The Structure of
Biblical Authority [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972] 4950).
46. M. Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East
(Jerusalem: Magnes / Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 4556; for examples of Mesopo-
tamian terminology referring to royal justice and mercy, see I. Engnell, Studies in
Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East (2nd ed.; Oxford: Blackwell, 1967) 19495.
47. J. Watts, Reading Law: The Rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch (BSem 59;
Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press, 1999) 107; cf. 89106, 1089, 129; cf. K. van der
Toorn, Sin and Sanction in Israel and Mesopotamia (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1985) 21.
Chapter 14 320
As the divine king, lawgiver, and judge of his people, Yhwh possesses full
authority to punish or pardon those who violate his law.
48
But as an ideal ruler
who desires a reputation for justice and the social stability that goes with it,
Yhwh cannot abandon his justice when he condemns or when he forgives.
49
He must maintain balance and harmony between justice (e.g., ;x) and
kindness/mercy (e.g., on and words from the roots cn and :n), the two
sides of his character (Exod 20:56; 34:6, 7; Ps 85:11[10]; 89:14[15]).
50
Attempting to uphold kindness without justice would have the unkind results
48. Cf. b. Ber. 12b, which emphasizes the kingship of God in connection with
judgment. On Ugaritic and Hebrew descriptions of deities as kings and judges, see
M. Korpel, A Rift in the Clouds: Ugaritic and Hebrew Descriptions of the Divine (UBL
8; Mnster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1990) 28189. A Namburbi text from Mesopotamia con-
tains the following incantation addressing the god Samas:
9. Samas, king of heaven and [earth,]
10. judge of the upper and lower regions,
11. [lord] of the dead, director [of the living,]
12. who saves lives, who . . . ,
13. who averts [evil] portents. . . .
(K. 8932 [Tablet LIX], lines 913; translation by R. Caplice,
Namburbi Texts in the British Museum. III, Or 36 [1967] 27879)
Another Namburbi incantation is particularly interesting for us in that it emphasizes
the role of the deity as judge in the context of a purication ritual (here for freeing a
man from a portent of impending evil):
10. Samas, you are judge: judge my case! You are decider: decide for me!
11. May the evil of this bird [not] come near, may it not come close, may it
not affect me!
12. . . . all evil, the evil mouth, the evil tongue.
13. . . . may the evil be released from my body!
rev. 4u. . . . [its evil] will not approach [the man or] his house.
(BBR no. 58, lines 1011; 80719, 91 [Tablet LIX], lines 10rev. 4u;
translation in ibid., 28081)
49. Watts has pointed out Yhwhs use of and adherence to internationally recog-
nized ideals of justice (Reading Law, 9698). On the international attraction of Yhwhs
reputation as an equitable judge in Isa 2:14, see B. Schwartz, Torah from Zion: Isa-
iahs Temple Vision (Isaiah 2:14), in Sanctity of Time and Space in Tradition and
Modernity (ed. A. Houtman, M. Poorthuis, and J. Schwartz; Leiden: Brill, 1998) 2122.
50. On the unity of love and justice in the character of God, see H. Cohen, The
Day of Atonement: II, 84. Words for mercy do not appear in pentateuchal ritual law.
Yhwh grants forgiveness when his own preconditions are met through performance of
expiatory activities that he has legislated. Narrowly speaking, Yhwh shows delity in
this context rather than mercy, which would not be legislated. However, in a broader
sense Yhwhs legislation shows mercy in relation to the lofty standard of his holiness.
In spite of the gap between his holiness and faulty Israel, he condescends to dwell with
his people in the sanctuary (Lev 16:16b) and to provide remedies for their faults so that
this intimate relationship can continue. The fact that forgiveness is not automatic
(nipal of n"o in Lev 4:20, 26, 31, 35) and the ritual remedies are so minor when
compared with the consequences of not performing them (Num 19:1120; cf. Lev 5:1,
of chaos and unchecked evil.
51
Canceling culpability for wrongs without at
least a token reminder of the just retribution that the sinner would otherwise
face could beget wantonness rather than reformation.
52
The system of expiatory sacrices addresses the need for Yhwh to balance
justice and kindness. When a sinner sacrices a domestic animal that costs
him something (Lev 45; cf. 2 Sam 24:24; Mal 1:614),
53
Yhwhs justice and
benevolence are administered simultaneously. However, this justice is only
represented by a token.
54
Even if a price could be attached to restoration of
the divine-human relationship that is damaged by violation of Yhwhs law,
an animal sacrice could not pay it because it does not transfer to Yhwh any-
thing that he does not already own or that he needs (Ps 50:913).
55
So when
he grants forgiveness following sacrice, he does so as an act of grace in re-
sponse to a ritual expression that is incapable of purchasing his clemency
(cf. Ps 49:89[78]). In other words, when Yhwh accepts sacrices as tokens,
it is he who bears the real cost of sin.
It almost goes without saying that a judge should be fair, vindicating the
innocent and condemning the guilty (cf., e.g., Exod 23:68; Deut 1:1617).
This applies to Yhwh as judge, as conrmed by Solomons prayer when the
temple was dedicated:
51. J. Wenham, The Enigma of Evil: Can We Believe in the Goodness of God?
(Grand Rapids: Academie, 1985) 6364, 6869. Cf. Mesopotamian advice to a king:
If a king does not heed justice, his people will be thrown into chaos, and his land
will be devastated. If he does not heed the justice of his land, Ea, king of destinies, will
alter his destiny and will not cease from hostilely pursuing him (translation by W. G.
Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature [Oxford: Clarendon, 1960; repr., Winona
Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1996] 113, lines 13; for the Akkadian, see p. 112).
52. Cf. Wenham, The Enigma of Evil, 6466.
53. That the cost of sacrice is a signicant factor is shown in Lev 4 by gradation
in the value of purication-offering animals, proportional to the cultic status of the sin-
ners: the high priest or entire community must offer a bull, the most expensive animal,
but a chieftain is only required to bring a male goat, and a commoner sacrices a fe-
male goat or sheep. Compare 5:713, where a sinner who cannot afford a sheep or
goat as a graduated nxon is permitted to offer birds or even a grain offering instead.
54. E. Leach recognizes with regard to animal sacrices in general: The material
body of the sacricial victim may well be a serious economic cost to the giver of the
sacrice, but, at the metaphysical level, economics is not the issue. What matters is
the act of sacrice as such, which is indeed a symbol of gift giving, but gift giving as
an expression of reciprocal relationship rather than material exchange (The Logic of
Sacrice, Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament [ed. B. Lang; Philadel-
phia: Fortress, 1985] 139). Note that we would refer to purication offerings as obliga-
tory payments rather than gifts in the narrow sense of voluntary transfers.
55. W. C. Kaiser, The Book of Leviticus, NIB 1:1015.
56) indicates that they do not fulll the full demands of justice. Rather, they are to-
kens that Yhwh accepts, but he takes up the slackthat is to say, he is merciful.
Chapter 14 322
hear in heaven and take action to judge Your servants, condemning him
who is in the wrong and bringing down the punishment of his conduct on
his head, vindicating him who is in the right by rewarding him according
to his righteousness. (1 Kgs 8:32; njpsv; cf. 2 Chr 6:23)
A judge who forgives a guilty person is responsible for such a ruling.
56
But
Yhwh does precisely that: he forgives guilty people and therefore incurs ju-
dicial responsibility, which constitutes a cost of kindness that he chooses to
bear.
57
This helps to explain why he bears (xO:) sins when he forgives (Exod
34:7), as represented in the ritual system by the fact that his sanctuary and
priesthood, representing his administration, carry nxon, expiable sin (Lev
16:16), and \v, culpability (10:17).
On the Day of Atonement, Yhwh has all effects of human imperfections
physical impurities, deant sins, and forgiven sinsremoved from himself, as
enacted by the transfer of evils from his sanctuary and priesthood (16:16, 21).
Since pollution of the sanctuary by forgiven sins (n\xon) represents Yhwhs
responsibility for having forgiven guilty persons, removal of this delement
presumably signies vindication of his justice with regard to the favorable de-
cisions that he has granted them. This clearing of judicial responsibility si-
multaneously clears/cleanses (o) the forgiven sinners (v. 30) because it is
the rightfulness of their verdicts that has been in question. Vindication of the
judge conrms a prior verdict for the person whom he has freed from con-
demnation, provided that the person maintains proper moral standing by
showing respect for authority and by manifesting desire to cause no further
trouble.
58
Thus, while Yhwh has himself cleared of all responsibility, as en-
acted by the solemn rituals at his sanctuary, only those who remain loyal to
him, as demonstrated by their self-denial and abstention from work (vv. 29,
31), receive vindication.
Obviously Yhwh would not be just if he allowed his clearing to benet
previously forgiven sinners who have turned disloyal, as shown by their dis-
regard of his commands to practice self-denial and refrain from work. So
he maintains his justice with regard to them by condemning them to extir-
pation/destruction (Lev 23:2930).
Thus far we have found that the two-phased process of oa for expiable
sins acknowledges and addresses Yhwhs judicial responsibility for releasing
guilty but repentant people from condemnation. On the Day of Atonement,
56. See my discussion of 2 Sam 14 (esp. v. 9) in ch. 16 below.
57. Cf. W. Carson, What It Costs God to Forgive Sin, Int 4 (1950) 16875.
58. This would be analogous to a superior court judge vindicating the ruling of a
lower court, thereby vindicating the defendant along with the lower judge.
Yhwhs justice is vindicated, whether those who remain loyal are cleared or
those who now eschew humility and obedience to him are condemned.
Israelites who sin deantly (Num 15:3031; cf. Lev 20:3), wantonly ne-
glect Yhwhs remedies for imperfection (Num 19:13, 20), or fail to show loy-
alty on the Day of Atonement (Lev 23:2930) have chosen to forfeit Yhwhs
kindness. Without anyone to bear their responsibility for them, they must
bear it themselves, all the way to the bitter end of retributive justice.
The fact that certain inexpiable cultic violations dele Yhwhs sanctuary
(Lev 20:3; Num 19:13, 20) so that this vOo pollution must be removed on the
Day of Atonement (Lev 16:16) indicates that they temporarily affect Yhwh.
But this is not because he forgives them. Rather, such sins defame him be-
cause they are committed by people who have been his, at least in the nomi-
nal sense that they are within the scope of the very cult that has beneted
them by maintaining his presence among them. Just as a human leader (e.g.,
President Ronald Reagan) is known by the deeds of those under his adminis-
tration (e.g., Colonel Oliver North), so Yhwhs reputation is affected by the
behavior of his people. On the Day of Atonement, removal of cvOo from the
sanctuary indicates that the name of Yhwh is cleared from any residual asso-
ciation with inexpiable deeds that have gravely misrepresented him, the per-
petrators of which have already been justly condemned. Thus Yhwhs
repudiation of evil is reafrmed at the same time as his forgiveness of repen-
tant, nondeant sinners is vindicated. Yhwh is just and kind, as he claims to
be. God is great. God is good.
Conclusion
At the Israelite sanctuary, cultic oa maintains equilibrium between jus-
tice and kindness as Yhwh extends forgiveness and restoration to the faulty
people among whom he condescends to dwell. Sacrices throughout the year
and the special rituals of the Day of Atonement, accompanied by self-denial
and cessation from work, enact a two-phased process of reconciliation be-
tween the Israelites and their divine King, in which his holy and balanced
character is revealed. On the Day of Atonement, Israels judgment day, fates
are sealed as Yhwh sheds judicial responsibility that he has incurred by for-
giving guilty people, who share his vindication if they remain loyal, and clears
his name of association with those who have been disloyal, whether before or
during the great Day.
324
Chapter 15
Divine Presence and Theodicy
The ancient Israelite cult has not generally been regarded as a rich source
of theodicy, which has been dened as the attempt to reconcile belief in
God with the worlds suffering.
1
For example, a ne collection of essays en-
titled Theodicy in the Old Testament, edited by J. Crenshaw, covers the con-
fessions of Jeremiah, the book of Job, Ps 73, Sirach, and Qoheleth. However,
the genre of ritual texts is not represented.
2
In his profound piece on Ps 73,
M. Buber does regard v. 17Until I came into the sanctuaries of Godas
the turning point of the psalmists struggle to understand how a just God
could allow the wicked to prosper. But he interprets the verse abstractly, away
from the idea that the sacred precincts of the temple (pl. of O;o; cf. Jer
51:51) are loci of theodicy: This does not mean the Temple precincts in Je-
rusalem, but the sphere of Gods holiness, the holy mysteries of God. Only to
him who draws near to those is the true meaning of the conict revealed.
3
The Israelite cult involves theodicy on the corporate level
Unlike Buber, Crenshaw, as well as J. H. Eaton, H.-J. Kraus, and W. Brueg-
gemann place the psalmists pivotal theodicy experience (v. 17) in the literal
1. B. L. Whitney, Theodicy: An Annotated Bibliography on the Problem of Evil,
19601990 (New York: Garland, 1993) vi. G. Mattingly explains: Theodicy refers to
the attempt to justify the ways of God to man. If a theodicy is successful, it solves the
problem of evil for a particular theological system, showing that the existence of suf-
fering is not inconsistent with belief that a morally good God created and rules the
world. In other words, a theodicy seeks to eliminate contradictions from within a
theological system and explain why things happen as they do (The Pious Sufferer:
Mesopotamias Traditional Theodicy and Jobs Counselors, in The Bible in the Light
of Cuneiform Literature: Scripture in Context III [ed. W. W. Hallo, B. W. Jones, and
G. Mattingly; ANETS 8; Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen, 1990] 312).
2. J. Crenshaw, ed., Theodicy in the Old Testament (IRT 4; Philadelphia: Fortress /
London: SPCK, 1983); neither is there a section on ritual texts in A. Laato and J. C.
de Moor, eds., Theodicy in the World of the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
3. M. Buber, The Heart Determines: Psalm 73, in Theodicy in the Old Testa-
ment, 113. See p. 114: he comes to the sanctuaries of God. Here he receives the
revelation of the continually. He who draws near with a pure heart to the divine mys-
tery learns that he is continually with God.
Divine Presence and Theodicy 325
sanctuary/temple precincts and nd this cultic setting to have signicance for
him as the place of Yhwhs presence.
4
Other scholars have implicitly or ex-
plicitly connected the Israelite cult with theodicy in various ways. Some have
found the cult linked to Creation and re-creation,
5
which are major factors for
discussion of Gods character in relation to the problem of evil and suffering.
6
W. F. Albright regarded the widespread ancient scapegoat class of rituals, in-
cluding the Israelite ritual of Azazels goat (Lev 16:2022), in which an object,
animal, or person was charged with the sin or suffering of a group and then
sacriced or driven off to carry the evil away, as enacting a kind of theodicy.
7
A. Rodrguez goes further:
During the Day of Atonement impurity is removed from the presence of
God, from His sanctuary. It then becomes clear that holiness and impu-
rity have nothing in common; that impurity is something foreign to Yah-
wehs nature; and that the Lord Himself is now returning it to Azazel, its
ultimate source. What we have here is a cultic theodicya ritual justify-
ing of God. In spite of the fact that Yahweh forgives the sin of His people,
4. J. Crenshaw, Theodicy, ABD 6:445; cf. idem, A Whirlpool of Torment (OBT 12;
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 105; J. Eaton, Kingship and the Psalms (2nd ed.; Shef-
eld: JSOT Press, 1986) 78; H.-J. Kraus, Psalms 60150: A Commentary (trans. H. C.
Oswald; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989) 89, 92; W. Brueggemann, The Message of the
Psalms: A Theological Commentary (AOTS; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984) 121; idem,
The Psalms and the Life of Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 64. Brueggemann em-
phasizes the importance of this theodicy when he suggests that, in the canonical
structuring of the Psalter, Psalm 73 stands at its center in a crucial role. Even if the
psalm is not literarily in the center, I propose that it is central theologically as well as
canonically (The Psalms and the Life of Faith, 204; cf. 2059).
5. U. Cassuto, Commentary on the Book of Exodus (trans. I. Abrahams; Jerusalem:
Magnes, 1967) 404, 47677, 483; P. Kearney, Creation and Liturgy: The P Redaction
of Ex 2540, ZAW 89 (1977) 37586; M. Weinfeld, Sabbath, Temple and the En-
thronement of the Lord: The Problem of the Sitz im Leben of Genesis 1:12:3, in
Mlanges bibliques et orientaux en lhonneur de M. Henri Cazelles (ed. A. Caquot
and M. Delcor; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker / Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Ver-
lag, 1981) 50112; R. Gane, Bread of the Presence and Creator-in-Residence, VT
42 (1992) 179203. S. Geller draws a parallel between the renewal/purication of the
cult on the Day of Atonement and return to the pristine state of Creation that God
accomplished through the Flood (Blood Cult: Toward a Literary Theology of the
Priestly Work of the Pentateuch, Prooftexts 12 [1992] 11315, 119, 12122).
6. J. Crenshaw links Creation and judgment by pointing out that a nal judgment
of all mankind can only come from the Creator of all (Popular Questioning of the
Justice of God in Ancient Israel, ZAW 82 [1970] 391; cf. 390).
7. W. F. Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1940) 252.
Chapter 15 326
He remains Holy and can, therefore, challenge Israel to be holy also
(Lev 19:2).
8
In a seminal study published in Hebrew in 1970, in English in 1976, and
incorporated into his monumental 1991 commentary on Leviticus 116,
J. Milgrom has argued that theodicy plays a central role in Israelite priestly
theology.
9
Sins of the Israelites leave marks on the sanctuary that are purged
from it by nxon sacrices throughout the year (e.g., Lev 4) and on the Day
of Atonement (Lev 16). If the sanctuary is not purged in a timely manner,
God will abandon it to destruction because he will not dwell in an exces-
sively polluted sanctuary. To use the analogy of a nuclear reactor, we can say
that a critical mass of evil would result in meltdown.
Milgrom concludes:
If this reconstruction of the priestly theology of the aat is correct, then
we have succeeded in uncovering one of the ethical supports upon which
the sacricial system was reared. It constitutes the priestly theodicy. . . . It
is found not in utterances but in rituals, not in legal statutes but in cultic
proceduresspecically, in the rite with the aat blood. I would call
their response the Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray. On the analogy of Oscar
Wildes novel, the Priestly writers would claim that sin may not leave its
mark on the face of the sinner, but it is certain to mark the face of the
sanctuary; and unless it is quickly expunged, Gods presence will depart.
In truth, this teaching is not a startling innovation; it is only an extension
of the doctrine of collective responsibility, a doctrine that, all concur, is
basic to the Priestly theology. It is only natural that they would regard the
sanctuary of which they were the stewards as the spiritual barometer to
measure and explain Gods behavior to his people. They knew full well
that the prophet was justied in protesting why does the way of the
wicked prosper? (Jer 12:1), and they provided their answer: the sinner
may be unscarred by his evil, but the sanctuary bears the scars and, with
its destruction, he too will meet his doom.
10
8. A. Rodrguez, Transfer of Sin in Leviticus, in The Seventy Weeks, Leviticus,
and the Nature of Prophecy (ed. F. Holbrook; DARCOM 3; Washington, D.C.: Biblical
Research Institute, 1986) 196.
9. J. Milgrom, nxon z; ;on (The Function of the aat Sacrice),
Tarbiz 40 (1970) 18; idem, Israels Sanctuary: The Priestly Picture of Dorian Gray,
RB 83 (1976) 39099; repr. in Studies in Cultic Theology and Terminology (Leiden:
Brill, 1983) 7584; idem, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 25461;
cf. idem, Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance
(SJLA 18; Leiden: Brill, 1976) 12728.
10. Idem, Leviticus 116, 260; repr. from Israels Sanctuary, 39798.
Leviticus 16:16b supports Milgroms idea that, according to the biblical text
the God of Israel would not dwell in a sanctuary excessively polluted by the
sins of his people. On the Day of Atonement, having purged the inner sanc-
tum from the physical ritual impurities and moral faults of the Israelites, the
high priest is to do likewise for the outer sanctum, which abides with them
in the midst of their pollution (v. 16b).
11
The quintessentially holy, pure
deity abides among an imperfect people. To maintain his presence here, he
requires the purication of his sanctuary because the peoples moral and
physical imperfection, which affect his dwelling place, are incompatible with
his nature.
12
There are two basic factors behind the Israelite rituals of expiation and pu-
rication: (1) inherent antagonism between divine holiness and human im-
perfection,
13
and (2) Gods desire for a positive relationship with his people.
14
If holiness and imperfection were compatible or if God wanted nothing to do
with faulty human beings, rituals to remedy imperfection would be irrelevant.
But establishing and maintaining a positive relationship between the holy
deity and imperfect people requires controlling boundaries between them
(cf. Exod 19:1015) and remedying human imperfection (cf. Job 42:79).
15
12. Cf. J. L. Mays, The Book of Leviticus, The Book of Numbers (LBC 4; Atlanta:
John Knox, 1963) 52. On the opposition between holiness and impurity, see Milgrom,
Leviticus 116, 73132; cf. J. Barr, Semantics and Biblical Theology: A Contribution
to the Discussion, in Congress Volume: Uppsala, 1971 (VTSup 22; Leiden: Brill,
1972) 1516.
13. J. Milgrom, Rationale for Cultic Law: The Case of Impurity, Semeia 45
(1989) 106; cf. W. C. Kaiser, The Book of Leviticus, NIB 1:997.
14. In the book of Exodus this relationship is expressed in terms of a covenant es-
tablished at Sinai (see esp. chs. 1931). R. Harrison places the instructions of Leviticus
within the covenant framework: these provisions furnish a great deal of information
about Gods character, and His will for those who are in a covenant relationship with
Him (Leviticus: An Introduction and Commentary [TOTC; Leicester: Inter-Varsity,
1980] 30; cf. 2627, 29, 31 on Leviticus in general and 176 with regard to the Day
of Atonement. Cf. R. Koch, Vers une morale de lAlliance? SM 6 (1968) 26, 3236;
J. Porter, Leviticus (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 810;
A. Noordtzij, Leviticus (trans. R. Togtman; BSC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982) 12,
166. P. Rigby views Israelite sacrices as mechanisms of maintaining and restoring a
gratuitous covenant relationship with God (A Structural Analysis of Israelite Sacri-
ce and Its Other Institutions, EgT 11 [1980] 301; cf. 350).
15. Earthly residence of the deity calls for a special system of safeguards because it
brings the adversarial holy and imperfect domains into a high degree of intimacy. In
fact, the two spheres overlap: Gods domain extends from the sanctuary to the Israelite
community, which he claims as his special possession within the larger context of
the entire world, which he also claims (Exod 19:46; Lev 20:26). The human sphere
Chapter 15 328
The concept that the sanctuary/temple is the dynamic locus of theodicy
explains how the psalmist could comprehend the end of the wicked when he
entered the sacred precincts (Ps 73:17). It also accounts for the departure of
the divine presence from the temple (Ezek 9:3; 10:4, 1819; 11:2223) shortly
before its destruction and Judahs collapse. Yhwhs abandonment of his own
temple was not arbitrary; it was perceived to result from the sins of his
people.
16
On this catastrophe T. Frymer-Kensky observes: Pollution was thus
thought to be one of the determinants of Israels history, and the concepts of
pollution and purgation provided a paradigm by which Israel could under-
stand and survive the destruction of the Temple.
17
If Milgrom and Frymer-Kensky are right, the Israelite ritual system has
to do not only with the divine attributes and the problem of sin, which are
peripheral subthemes of theodicy,
18
but also with the core issue of nding
16. M. Greenberg notes that, while Ezek 8:6 may refer to removal or alienation
from the temple of people committing abominations, some medieval and modern ex-
egetes make Yhwh the subject: so that I must alienate myself from my sanctuary
(Ezekiel 120 [AB 22; New York: Doubleday, 1983] 169; cf. 164, 194). Greenberg
points out that in the ancient Near East it was commonly believed that a temple was
destroyed because its deity had abandoned it, whether reluctantly under coercion of
a higher decree (Lamentation over the destruction of Ur, ANET
3
, pp. 455ff., . . . over
the destruction of Ur and Sumer, p. 617d), or in anger because of the offenses of the
worshipers (the Cyrus inscription, ANET
3
, p. 315c). . . . When, on the other hand, the
gods were reconciled and their temples rebuilt, they returned and took up their abode
among their worshipers again (pp. 200201). On accounts of divine abandonment in
the ancient Near East, including that of Ezekiel, see D. I. Block, The Gods of the
Nations: Studies in Ancient Near Eastern National Theology (ETSS; 2nd ed.; Grand
Rapids: Baker, 2000) 11447. On Yhwhs judgment and departure in Ezekiel, cf.
W. H. Shea, Selected Studies on Prophetic Interpretation (DARCOM 1; Silver Spring,
Maryland: Biblical Research Institute, 1992) 1821. Notice that, in spite of Ezekiels
connection with the priesthood, he does not say that Yhwh abandoned his temple
because it had not been properly cleansed by purication offerings from delement re-
sulting from the peoples sins. Rather, he sees this departure as resulting from pollution
by pagan cultic practices perpetrated at the temple (Ezek 8; cf. 2 Chr 36:14). Without
restoration that included removal of idolatry, ritual purgation of the temple (cf. Ezek
45:1820) would be pointless.
17. T. Frymer-Kensky, Pollution, Purication, and Purgation in Biblical Israel, in
The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth (ed. C. Meyers and M. OConnor; Winona Lake,
Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 399; cf. 4034, 4089; cf. R. C. Cover, Sin, Sinners: Old
Testament, ABD 6:3940.
18. Whitney, Theodicy, vii, 34647.
penetrates into the sanctuary, where Israelite priests serve their divine Lord (e.g., Exod
30:710; Lev 16). Because the quintessential source of holiness resides with God,
Israel is enjoined to control the occurrence of impurity lest it impinge on his realm
(Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 47).
meaning when God permits his people to suffer evil.
19
Crenshaw points
out that this problem was especially intense for Israel: Because of her spe-
cial covenant relationship with Yhwh, Israel knew which God was pun-
ishing her.
20
Theodicy is the attempt to defend divine justice in the face of aberrant phe-
nomena that appear to indicate the deitys indifference or hostility toward
virtuous people. Ancient Israels conviction that God shaped historical
events to benet a covenant nation exacerbated the issue, particularly in
the wake of events associated with 722 and 587 b.c.e.
21
It is true that, when God punishes Israel for her sins, it is not a contradiction
of Gods covenant faithfulness but an outow of it: because God adheres to
the covenant, he also adheres to its sanctions.
22
Nevertheless, the ubiquitous
assumption that good folk fare well
23
combined with Israels self-perception
of corporate chosenness and therefore basic goodness made it difcult for the
people to accept cultic and national meltdown.
Yhwh meted out retributive justice from his sanctuary
The Israelite sanctuary/temple was a center of theodicy. We have found
that the community would meet its doom if Yhwh justly withdrew on ac-
count of its depravity. Additionally, individuals and groups within the com-
munity could experience Yhwhs justice, including condemnation and/or
retribution, from or at the sanctuary while he resided among them. For one
thing, the cult barred the wanton/deant sinner from sacricial expiation, re-
fusing to rescue him from divine wrath (Num 15:3031). He might manage
to prosper for a time as he arrogantly and greedily violates divine norms and
social justice, thereby challenging a righteous persons understanding of the
character of the deity who tolerates such a state of affairs, but this affront does
19. Cf. Crenshaw, Popular Questioning, 380.
20. Idem, Theodicy, IDBSup, 896; cf. idem, Popular Questioning, 38485.
21. Idem, Theodicy, ABD 6:444; cf. 447. On similar effects from destruction of
the Second Temple, see R. Kirschner, Apocalyptic and Rabbinic Responses to the
Destruction of 70, HTR 78 (1985) 2746.
22. A. van de Beek, Why? On Suffering, Guilt, and God (trans. John Vriend; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990) 57.
23. Crenshaw observes: Even if we refuse to join K. Koch in afrming a sphere of
destiny in which the deed activated a principle that guaranteed punishment for trans-
gression, and prefer rather H. Graf Reventlows view that Gods freedom transcends
any such nexus of guilt and punishment, the point still stands that priest, prophet and
wise man labored under the assumption of a correlation between good conduct and
earthly reward (Popular Questioning, 38384).
Chapter 15 330
not go unchecked forever (cf. Ps 73).
24
Divine retributive justice may be de-
layed, raising questions in the minds of some suffering souls, but without oa
the evildoer is doomed.
Yhwh purged the community by permanently removing wanton sinners,
including violators of cultic holiness. One way he did this was to condemn
them to the penalty of na, cutting off (e.g., Lev 7:20; Num 15:3031), that
is, extirpation. On some occasions he immediately destroyed wrongdoers by
unleashing destruction from or at his sanctuary headquarters. When Nadab
and Abihu offered incense at the sanctuary with unauthorized re, divine re
came out from before Yhwh and consumed them (Lev 10:2).
25
When Korah
and his associates added usurpation of priestly function to their rebellion,
Yhwh destroyed them too (Num 16). Rebellious complaining that cast doubt
on Gods reputation and authority could also provoke divine re (Num 11:1)
or plague (Num 11:33; 14:37; 17:1114[16:4649]; 25:89).
The suspected adulteress ritual is a special case of divinely controlled, con-
ditional retribution.
26
At the sanctuary the suspected woman is to drink holy
water containing some dust from the oor of the holy sanctuary and some
curses stating the consequences if she is guilty (Num 5:1724). This is a kind
of litmus test in which she takes a holy substance into her body. While holi-
ness can contact purity with no consequence, it will harm someone who is
impure.
27
The ritual enacts a trial by the deity, functioning as judge at his
sanctuary. The verdict is shown by the onset or absence of punishment. A
guilty woman does not die, but her reproductive organs are painfully dam-
aged so that she cannot conceive (Num 5:2728). This punishment ts the
crime and is related to the penalty of extirpation, in that it affects a persons
ability to have a line of descendants.
24. Cf. W. Brueggemann, Theodicy in a Social Dimension, JSOT 33 (1985) 325.
25. Yhwh answered re with re. Ironically, his re consumed Aarons sons just
after re had come out from before him to consume the inauguration sacrices (Lev
9:24). Thus re of acceptance was followed by re of destruction. Cf. N. Kiuchi, The
Purication Offering in the Priestly Literature: Its Meaning and Function (JSOTSup
56; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1987) 69; Geller, Blood Cult, 109.
26. For an analysis of this ritual and some ancient parallels, see, for example,
J. M. Sasson, Numbers 5 and the Waters of Judgement, BZ 16 (1972) 24951.
27. This case deals with moral impurity, but the same principle applies to physi-
cal ritual impurity (Lev 7:20). Another test involving contact with holiness appears in
Num 16:67 and 1718, where Moses challenged Korah and his company to offer in-
cense in order to prove their claim that they were authorized by God to ofciate as
priests. They unked the test, as shown by the fact that divine re consumed them
(v. 35). While their censers became holy, the men could not survive this level of ho-
liness because they were unauthorized (17:23[16:3738]).
In addition to retributive justice carried out by himself, Yhwh authorized
the Israelites to punish individuals who violated his commandments. Need-
less to say, when this was capital punishment (e.g., Lev 24:1323; Num
15:3236), it purged the offender from the community. At least in some
cases, destroying sinners could spare the community from Gods wrath. For
example, by slaying an Israelite man and his Midianite paramour, Phinehas
effected oa for the community in the sense of saving it from a divine plague
already underway (Num 25:8, 13).
The case of Phinehas, a priest from the tribe of Levi, reminds us that his
tribe had gained the right to serve Yhwh at the sanctuary because they had loy-
ally carried out his punishment on other Israelites who were running wild at
the time of the golden calf episode (Exod 32:2529). So the role of the Levites
as cultic personnel served as an ongoing reminder of Yhwhs retributive justice.
Ritual remedies for human imperfection enact theodicy
J. Crenshaw nds that one of the rst ways of dealing with the problem of
theodicy was to recognize compassion in the deity. In short, sinners thrive be-
cause God grants them sufcient time to repent of their transgressions.
28
In
the context of the Israelite cult, sufcient time is given to nondeant sin-
ners, who receive the opportunity to express penitence through sacrices in
order to receive forgiveness from Yhwh and so escape his condemnation.
29
Ritual remedies provided by Yhwh remove imperfections from his faulty
people and from his sanctuary so that he can dwell among them without his
holy presence and retributive justice destroying them.
30
Since the expiable moral faults (n\xon) and physical ritual impurities
purged from (privative o) the sanctuary are those of the people (Lev 16:16),
which have been removed from (privative o) them at the sanctuary (4:26;
12:7, etc.), there is a dynamic relationship between removal of evils from
persons and from the sanctuary.
31
Yhwh requires his people to demonstrate
28. Crenshaw, A Whirlpool of Torment, 105.
29. Idem, Theodicy, ABD 6:446.
30. Milgrom explains: the only effective way to eliminate or, at least, minimize
the danger to the sanctuary is to purge its sourceman himself (Leviticus 116, 289).
B. Levine observes: The priestly system of expiatory sacrices and purications was
instituted largely so as to deal with Gods punitive wrath, and in order to protect indi-
viduals and the community in cases where the offense may have been inadvertent, but
evocative of divine wrath nonetheless (Review of Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 116,
Bib 74 [1993] 284). F. Gorman categorizes such expiatory procedures as restoration
rituals, which he distinguishes from founding and maintenance rituals (The Ide-
ology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the Priestly Theology [JSOTSup 91; Shef-
eld: JSOT Press, 1990] 5455).
31. Cf. Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 157.
Chapter 15 332
loyalty to him through two phases of ritual oa, in which evils are transferred
into his sanctuary and then out of it. These phases enact an equilibrium of
justice as Yhwh extends forgiveness and restoration to the faulty but loyal
people among whom he condescends to dwell but withholds restorative
remedies from the disloyal.
32
Thus the cult addresses the two aspects of moral
faults recognized by D. Davies:
one relating to the offender who was thrown out of proper relationship both
with God and his fellow men, and the other to God the offended one,
whose integrity or holiness might be brought into question if his covenant
partners were permitted to do whatsoever they willed. Theologically speak-
ing, sacrice is concerned with both of these aspects.
33
T. Fretheim has observed that the book of Jonah deals with the question of
theodicy in a fundamental but unusual way: Are Gods compassionate ac-
tions just?
34
For J. Wenham this question is not so unusual after all: be-
cause sin deserves death and we are all sinners, it means that all our mercies
are undeserved mercies. Any apparent unfairness in Gods treatment of us
arises not because some have too much punishment, but because some of us
appear to have too little.
35
We have found that the Israelite cult deals with
this issue on the Day of Atonement, when prior forgiveness is vindicated.
The cult also addresses the justice of Gods condemnatory actions. In the
context of the expiatory ritual system, sufcient time to repent is not
granted to deant sinners, who have unwisely chosen to sever their connec-
tion with Yhwh. Basic to this system is the principle that Israelites subject to
retribution and loss of Yhwhs presence because of their imperfections can es-
cape these disastrous effects if and only if they do not cast off their basic alle-
giance to him and if they obey his commands to remedy their imperfections
through the cult in the way that he has provided.
36
Thus the divine character
and sovereignty are afrmed as human character is revealed.
32. A. Mdebielle summarized the principal purpose of the Israelite cult as
removing the distance that separated the holy God from the fallible creature. For
Mdebielle, the temple is above all the theater of the justice and holiness of God (Le
symbolism du sacrice expiatoire en Isral, Bib 2 [1921] 300).
33. D. Davies, An Interpretation of Sacrice in Leviticus, ZAW 89 (1977) 39293.
While Davies does not recognize that the Day of Atonement deals with the issue of
Yhwhs integrity by delivering a second phase of oa for forgiven sins, he does empha-
size restoration of order on this day (pp. 39495).
34. T. Fretheim, Jonah and Theodicy, ZAW 90 (1978) 227.
35. J. Wenham, The Enigma of Evil: Can We Believe in the Goodness of God?
(Grand Rapids: Academie, 1985) 70.
36. See 2 Sam 24, where Yhwh stayed the retributive plague resulting from Davids
census, initiating the opportunity for the king to offer burnt and well-being offerings
In the present volume I have investigated the underlying function of the
Israelite expiatory system by studying the relationship between purication
offerings performed throughout the year and on the Day of Atonement. In
agreement with Milgrom, I have found that these rituals are intended to
remove imperfections that jeopardize continuation of the divine residence.
Moreover, in the operation of the cultic procedures I have discovered addi-
tional aspects of theodicy so fundamental and far-reaching that I dare say the
Israelite system of nxon rituals is all about theodicy. As we found in the last
chapter, the cultic message is that God is good.
Conclusion
As Milgrom has shown, theodicy is basic to the Israelite sacricial system
in that continuation of Yhwhs benecent presence with the Israelites re-
quires yearly purgation of his sanctuary from the accumulated imperfections
of the people. Yhwh is justied if he abandons his sanctuary to destruction,
and his people along with it, because it is their state that has excessively pol-
luted his precincts so that they are intolerable for him.
I have demonstrated that the system of purication offerings also enacts a
two-phased process of reconciliation between faulty Israelites and their divine
King, which reveals how he spares loyal ones from retribution without com-
promising his justice. By emphasizing the cost of kindness, as represented by
rituals at the heart of normative Israelite religion, the cult makes a profound
contribution to biblical theodicy by portraying Yhwhs character as he deals
with people of loyal and disloyal character.
at the threshing oor that he purchased from Araunah. 1 Chronicles 21:2822:1 and
2 Chr 3:1 identify the threshing oor as located on Mt. Moriah and also as the site of
the temple built by Solomon. Thus it appears that from the Chroniclers perspective,
the paradigmatic stories of Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah (Gen 22) and David at
the threshing oor of Araunah come together at the temple (cf. J. Myers, I Chronicles
[AB 12; Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965] 149; J. Thompson, 1, 2 Chronicles
[NAC; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1994] 163). Thus Chronicles implies that
sacrices performed at the temple altar have to do with Yhwh sparing his people (cf.
A. Anderson, 2 Samuel [WBC 11; Waco, Texas: Word, 1989] 287). On the paradig-
matic nature of the Gen 22 story, see G. Wenham, The Akedah: A Paradigm of Sac-
rice, in Pomegranates and Golden Bells: Studies in Biblical, Jewish, and Near
Eastern Ritual, Law, and Literature in Honor of Jacob Milgrom (ed. D. Wright, D. N.
Freedman, and A. Hurvitz; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 93102.
334
Chapter 16
Loyalty and Royalty in Hebrew Narrative
Thus far we have examined cultic laws to arrive at conclusions regarding
functions of nxon rituals. Now we are ready to enrich our perspective by
comparing at least some of these functions with dynamics involved in
divine-human and king-subject relationships that are reected in some bib-
lical narratives.
Numbers 14 illustrates divine sin-bearing
The way in which Yhwh bears (xO:) sin (Exod 34:7) is illuminated by
Num 14, where Moses quotes Yhwhs self-characterization back to him just
before the climax of his intercession for the Israelites when they have rebelled
at Kadesh:
17
And now, therefore, let the power of the Lord be great in the way that
you promised when you spoke, saying,
18
The Lord is slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, forgiv-
ing iniquity and transgression, but by no means clearing the guilty, visit-
ing the iniquity of the parents upon the children to the third and the
fourth generation.
19
Forgive the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your
steadfast love, just as you have pardoned this people, from Egypt even un-
til now. (vv. 1719; nrsv)
First of all, notice the parallel in v. 19 between I cv \v" x:n"o , For-
give the iniquity of this people, and I cv " nxO: , you have pardoned
this people, where forgiving (n"o) the \v (iniquity = culpability) of the
people is functionally equivalent to bearing (xO:) it (understood \v) for
them.
1
Unlike the priests, who bear the \v of the people as part of the cul-
tic oa process (Lev 10:17) that is only prerequisite to forgiveness (n"o),
Yhwh both bears and forgives \v.
1. Compare G. Olaffsons interpretation of Moses intercession for the Israelites in
Exod 32:32: Either you, God, naa the wrongs of the people [i.e., forgive them] or
let me naa them and suffer the consequences [i.e., die] (The Use of n in the
Pentateuch and Its Contribution to the Concept of Forgiveness [Ph.D. diss., An-
drews University, 1992] 261).
Loyalty and Royalty in Hebrew Narrative 335
Forgiveness by Yhwh carries with it a cost that he must bear.
2
Comparison
between his words in Num 14:1112 and Moses response in v. 19 indicates
one price of pardon: God must continue to pursue his relationship with a
people whose recalcitrance is of biblical proportions. But other factors in the
narrative imply a major additional cost to the deity, which sheds light on the
meaning of priestly sin-bearing through eating the esh of outer-altar puri-
cation offerings (Lev 10:17).
Moses not only appeals to Yhwhs self-proclaimed and previously demon-
strated mercy (Num 14:1719), he also invokes Gods concern for his own rep-
utation among the nations. If he destroys the Israelites, what will that say about
his ability to bring them into the land that he has promised them (vv. 1316)?
After Yhwh accepts Moses plea by forgiving the people (v. 20), he then
swears that the entire adult generation, except for Caleb and Joshua, will die
in the wilderness without reaching the Promised Land. Moreover, he exe-
cutes the 10 naysaying spies by means of a plague (vv. 2138). What kind of
forgiveness is this!? Although God overcomes the obstacle to maintaining his
relationship with the Israelites, his forgiveness does not include forgetting the
wrong-doing or removing all its consequences.
3
He pardons the nation on the
corporate level in terms of allowing its continued existence with his support
but purges out those who obstinately refuse to trust in him (cf. v. 11). Yhwh
adamantly refuses to give the Promised Land to rebels.
The common denominator between forgiveness of the Israelites as a group
and punishment of rebels among them, reecting divine concern for mercy
and justice, is Yhwhs reputation. His international standing as a powerful
and just deity would suffer a setback in one way if he failed to fulll his prom-
ise, but his reputation would be conversely compromised if he did fulll it for
people who withheld allegiance to his sovereignty as owner of the Promised
Land and failed to acknowledge accountability to his commands.
When Yhwh forgives the Israelites (v. 20), he demonstrates mercy that he
has previously proclaimed to Moses (Exod 34:67a; cf. Num 14:18a), but he
thereby bears the problem that this mercy can damage his reputation for jus-
tice, which he has also proclaimed to Moses (Exod 34:7byet by no means
2. Cf. ibid., 208, 27475.
3. Ibid., 20912. The fact that n"o does not rule out punishment (Num 14:1924)
leads J. Walton, V. Matthews, and M. Chavalas to conclude that in the context of cul-
tic expiation the concept concerns relationship rather than the judicial issue of pun-
ishment. The one who is offering these sacrices seeks reconciliation with God, not
pardon from punishment (The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
[Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000] 123).
Chapter 16 336
clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity [\v] of the parents upon the chil-
dren; nrsv) and which Moses has reiterated to him (Num 14:18b). His solu-
tion for maintaining both mercy and justice in dealing with a nation that
contains deant sinners is to preserve the nation but to purge the rebels from
it by slaying the negative spies and making the generation of adults bear their
own culpability in the wilderness (\v xO:; v. 34) until they die (vv. 3233). In
this way Yhwh absolves himself of the judicial cost of forgiveness constituted
by the negative impact on his reputation that arises from his pardon of a na-
tion that includes sinners who are ineligible for pardon.
In the sense just described, it could be said that Yhwh bears the \v of the
nation as a whole when he forgives it (vv. 1820), but he removes this \v from
himself by transferring it to the rebels (v. 34). Alternatively, Yhwh forgives the
nation on the corporate level but simply allows the rebels to continue carry-
ing their own \v.
4
In any case, Yhwhs forgiveness of the nation is not the
end of the matter; his reputation is a key issue, and ultimately rebels cannot
be cleared from culpability (\v) that leads to punishment.
Here we must remove our sandals and tread carefully. We are not argu-
ing for any actual limitation of Yhwhs sovereignty or defect in his charac-
ter. But passages such as Num 14 (cf. Exod 3233) show that Yhwh can
suffer loss in the world in the form of deteriorating or even destroyed rela-
tionships with human beings and/or through negative human perceptions
regarding him.
The idea that Yhwh bears a cost of extending mercy when he bears \v and
thereby forgives the faulty nation appears related to the fact that the Israelite
priests who bear \v by eating purication-offering meat (Lev 10:17) partici-
pate in the remedial process that Yhwh completes when he forgives faulty but
nondeant and repentant individuals within that nation. Obviously these na-
tional and individual scenarios are not the same, but it does appear that
priestly bearing of culpability (\v xO:) also reects divine \v xO: that has to
do with the cost of clemency to the reputation of Yhwh when he frees guilty
people from condemnation. The fact that the priests are not punished for the
\v that they bear for others
5
does not prove that xO: in this context means
4. On Num 14:20 Y. Muffs suggests that the author does not imply a total forgive-
ness, but rather the divine resolve to bear the sin of a sinful generation until the time
He actually punishes them, in other words, until they die a natural death (Love and
Joy: Law, Language and Religion in Ancient Israel [New York: Jewish Theological
Seminary, 1992] 22).
5. B. Levine, Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1989) 63.
simply remove rather than bear.
6
Rather, it proves that at some point the
priests are freed of their burden, as Yhwh is from his. As suggested by Koch,
it appears that the \v is removed from the priests when the high priest, rep-
resenting the priestly house, transfers this category of evil to Azazels goat on
the Day of Atonement and the animal bears it (\v xO:) to the wilderness
(Lev 16:22; cf. v. 21).
7
Kochs idea is strengthened by the fact that only in Lev
16:22 is \v xO: followed by a prepositional phrase referring to movement
away to another location:
8
I x"x, to an inaccessible region.
9
Some narratives concerning David and Solomon describe
a two-phased treatment of offenses, with loyalty as the
decisive factor in the ultimate verdict
Because the deity transcends everything human, B. Malina observes:
All can be known only by comparison with the human. Thus all God state-
ments are analogical. . . . The same is true of all interactions that have God
as one of the interacting partners . . . the superior beings of embedded do-
mestic and political religion are described analogically in terms of superior
domestic and political roles, obligations, privileges.
10
In the Bible Yhwh is regarded as the divine king (e.g., Exod 15:18; Num
23:21; Judg 8:23; 1 Sam 8:7; Ps 47; 93; 9699) and therefore the judge who
guarantees justice and maintains order (Ps 82; 96:1013; 97:2, 8; 98:9; 99:4).
So it is not surprising that underlying legal dynamics involved in relationships
between Yhwh and his people parallel relationships between human kings
and their subjects.
11
Particularly transparent examples of such parallels are
6. Contra ibid.; Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 623
25; B. Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature, in Pomegranates and
Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1995) 10, 16.
7. K. Koch, \v awon, TDOT 10:559; cf. Olaffson, The Use of n, 21718;
Kiuchi, The Purication Offering, 84. However, for Kiuchi, that which Aaron bears
and then transfers to Azazels goat is the guilt that results from the sin of Nadab and
Abihu.
8. Olaffson, The Use of n, 273, 304.
10. B. Malina, Mediterranean Sacrice: Dimensions of Domestic and Political
Religion, BTB 26 (1996) 2930.
11. Cf. K. W. Whitelam, King and Kingship, ABD 4:4246; idem, Israelite
Kingship: The Royal Ideology and Its Opponents, in The World of Ancient Israel: So-
ciological, Anthropological and Political Perspectives (ed. R. E. Clements; Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989) 12932. M. Greenberg has demonstrated that in
Chapter 16 338
found in the biblical narratives of 2 Sam 14 and 1 Kgs 2, which describe how
Kings David and Solomon dealt with problems involving justice and mercy.
2 Samuel 14
2 Samuel 14 illustrates the idea that a judge is morally responsible for his
judgments and must maintain justice when he grants clemency to the
guilty. Verses 57 record the pathetic story of a woman from Tekoa who ap-
pealed to King David for legal assistance. She claimed to be a widow who
had two sons, one of whom had killed the other and was consequently
threatened with capital punishment by clan justice. If he were put to death,
she would have no son, so her husbands name would be extinguished.
12

Reticent to release the womans son from punishment publicly, David told
her to return home, where he would send the verdict (v. 8). Wisely under-
standing Davids hesitation, she offered: My lord king, may the guilt be on
me and on my ancestral house; Your Majesty and his throne are guiltless
(v. 9; njpsv). Satised, David granted her request (v. 10) and afrmed his ver-
dict with an irrevocable oath: As the Lord lives, not a hair of your son shall
fall to the ground (v. 11; njpsv).
13
Thus the king saved the young man even
though he was morally blameworthy.
14
Davids reactions were genuine because he thought he was judging a real
case. The exchange between him and the woman was based on legal prin-
ciples that operated in Israelite society. However, vv. 13 tell us that the
womans story was ctitious. Joab had commissioned an able actress to re-
arrange Davids thinking toward his own son, Absalom, who was in exile be-
cause he had orchestrated the death of his brother, Amnon (cf. 2 Sam
13:2338).
12. The result would be equivalent to the penalty of extirpation (na).
13. On the nature of the protection that David guaranteed, see A. Phillips, An-
other Look at Murder, JJS 28 (1977) 11214.
14. Cf. E. Bellefontaine, Customary Law and Chieftainship: Judicial Aspects of
2 Samuel 14.421, JSOT 38 (1987) 63.
the Hebrew Bible petitionary address to a king or some other powerful person is
closely analogous to petitionary prayer to God (Biblical Prose Prayer [TLJS 6; Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983] 2024). C. Macholz has found a connection be-
tween passive address to kings and biblical expression of divinely granted forgiveness
by the passive of n"o (Das Passivum divinum, seine Anfnge im Alten Testament
und der Hofstil, ZNW 81 [1990] 24753, esp. 248, 25153). There are parables of
Jesus (Matt 18:2335; 22:114; Luke 19:1127) and rabbinic illustrations (e.g., y. Ros
Has. 1.3; b. Ros Has. 17b; cf. S. Agnon, Days of Awe [New York: Schocken, 1948] 211,
22021) in which kings are analogous to God. Outside Israel, see the Hittite Plague
Prayers of Mursili II (COS 1:15660; cf. ANET 39496) that address the gods, espe-
cially the Storm-god, as lords.
Uriel Simon places the womans story in the genre juridical parable.
Such a parable is a realistic story about a violation of the law, related to some-
one who had committed a similar offence with the purpose of leading the un-
suspecting hearer to pass judgement on himself.
15
A judicial parable could
only trap the hearer if he believed that the story actually happened and if he
did not immediately recognize the analogy with the real situation in which he
was involved.
16
Posing as a mother willing to bear blame so that her son could
be forgiven, the woman from Tekoa cast herself on the mercy of the king,
thereby seeking to arouse compassion that he could transfer to his own son.
17
The womans offer to take blame/culpability (\v)
18
on herself and her
fathers house (v. 9) was crucial to her success with David. This did not mean
that she would be her sons substitute as Abigail had taken upon herself the
\v of her guilty husband (1 Sam 25:24). Rather, she would be Davids sub-
stitute so that he could be legally clean (;:; cf. Exod 21:28), free from
liability/bloodguilt with regard to the case. She would bear the moral respon-
sibility that David as judge would incur if he pardoned a murderer who was
condemned by Israelite law to capital punishment (Exod 21:12; Lev 24:17; cf.
Gen 9:6), thereby interfering with the due process of justice administered by
the clan (2 Sam 14:7, 11; cf. Num 35:1621).
19
H. McKeating points out:
15. U. Simon, The Poor Mans Ewe-Lamb: An Example of a Juridical Parable,
Bib 48 (1967) 22021. Another parable of this sort is the story that Nathan told David
so that he would condemn himself for taking Bathsheba (2 Sam 12:140). Unlike
Nathan, the woman of Tekoa assumed a role in the story itself, and her trap had the
purpose of inducing the king to commit himself to clemency (p. 223; H. Hagan, De-
ception as Motif and Theme in 2 Sm 920; 1 Kgs 12, Bib 60 [1979] 311).
16. Simon, The Poor Mans Ewe-Lamb, 221, 223. Thus the woman of Tekoa
presented a case involving extenuating circumstances that did not apply to the real
case of Absalom: she was a widow and her guilty son was the only surviving heir
(pp. 22425). These factors were the basis on which she pleaded for exible applica-
tion of the law. It is not the general custom of blood vengeance that is questioned
by the widow but its strict application to her son (Bellefontaine, Customary Law,
54). The situation of Absalom was different in other ways, including the facts that
Absalom did not openly quarrel with Amnon but sought vengeance for the latters
rape of his sister (2 Sam 13:22), Absalom delegated the murder of his half-brother to
his servants (vv. 2829), Absalom was safely in exile (v. 38), and there is no evidence
that Davids clan was exerting pressure to have him executed.
17. Cf. Simon, The Poor Mans Ewe-Lamb, 225.
18. For the concept that \v in this kind of context refers to culpability, compare
Gen 4:13; 19:15; Lev 5:1; Num 14:34; Schwartz, The Bearing of Sin, 1015.
19. J. Hoftijzer describes this as the usual interpretation and then ineffectively ar-
gues against it, concluding that the woman of Tekoa, like Abigail (cf. 1 Sam 25:24),
acknowledged her inferior status by confessing guilt in order to plead for forgiveness
for a guilty relative (David and the Tekoite Woman, VT 20 [1970] 42428). This idea
Chapter 16 340
What we deduce from this text is that the untoward consequences which
follow bloodshed, though they attach themselves in the rst instance to the
slayer and his family, may be displaced on to anyone who, having the duty
to take legal vengeance, fails to do so, or who, having the power to interfere,
prevents vengeance being carried out.
20
Showing mercy by forgiving a guilty person has a cost, and Davids responsi-
bility was not only to his society; it was also to God.
21
But the woman offered
to bear the cost.
Comparing the womans speech in 2 Sam 14:9 with Abigails use of the
term \v in 1 Sam 25:24 when she offered to bear responsibility for the offense
of Nabal, her husband, L. L. Lyke suggests that this word may have two impli-
cations: the Tekoite likely both apologizes for her boldness and accepts the
guilt associated with her son.
22
However, Lyke does not adequately take into
account a crucial difference between Abigail and the woman of Tekoa. In
both stories there are three parties: a male offender, a female relative as medi-
ator, and David. Abigail assumes the \v of her husband, the offender, before
David acts to determine Nabals fate. The Tekoite, on the other hand, offers
20. H. McKeating, The Development of the Law on Homicide in Ancient Israel,
VT 25 (1975) 59. McKeating also raises the possibility that the womans appeal to Da-
vid may have been to ensure that the law should be applied normally in view of a
threat by the clan to apply it harshly (pp. 5052). However, Phillips points out that
McKeating does not account for Davids reluctance to intervene. For guilt can hardly
fall on David for ensuring that the law should take its normal course (Another Look
at Murder, 112).
21. Bellefontaine, Customary Law, 62.
22. L. L. Lyke, King David with the Wise Woman of Tekoa: The Resonance of
Tradition in Parabolic Narrative (JSOTSup 255; Shefeld: Shefeld Academic Press,
1997) 114; cf. 113.
may work in the case of Abigail, but the woman of Tekoa clearly contrasted her blame
with Davids cleanness, or lack of culpability (2 Sam 14:9). Because she would bear
it, he would not. This implies that, if she did not bear it, he would, and this potential
could only arise from his involvement in the case as judge. Another unconvincing de-
parture from the usual interpretation is that of P. K. McCarter, who nds v. 9 to be
isolated and disruptive in its present location and says that David simply ignored the
words of the woman recorded in this verse (II Samuel [AB 9; Garden City, New York:
Doubleday, 1984] 347; cf. 348). It is true that there are narratives in which persons ask
other individuals to forgive (xO:) their sins (vOo or nxon; Gen 50:17; Exod 10:17;
1 Sam 15:25), with no indication that the forgiver would consequently bear a weight
of responsibility (J. J. Stamm, Erlsen und Vergeben im Alten Testament: Eine begriffs-
geschichtliche Untersuchung [Bern: Francke, 1940] 67). However, these passages differ
from 2 Sam 14:9 in that the wrongdoers simply seek forgiveness for themselves. This
explains why transferable culpability (\v) does not come to the surface as it does in
the plea of the Tekoite on behalf of her son and in Abigails petition for David to for-
give (xO:) her transgression (vOo; 1 Sam 25:28), for which she claimed to be culpable
(\v; v. 24), but which in fact was her husbands trespass.
to take \v that would otherwise be borne by David after he determines the
fate of her son. This \v did originate in the deed perpetrated by the young
man, but here it is \v that has been transferred by a transaction of pardon, or
at least amnesty. The Tekoite woman is bold, but \v does not have to do with
boldness here, because this characteristic is not something that the woman
would bear instead of the king.
Not only did the wise woman of Tekoa recognize the nature of culpability
(\v) and its transferability,
23
she understood that the king and his throne
(2 Sam 14:9) needed to be free from anything that would give rise to a serious
charge of injustice. The throne obviously represents the royal institution of
order, legitimate authority, and justice, the integrity of which was essential
for holding the social fabric of the nation together (cf. 1 Kgs 2:12).
24
When the woman pointed out that Davids pardon in her case implicated
him for not restoring his own banished son (2 Sam 14:1317), the king
shrewdly recognized that Joab had sent her (vv. 1819). But he took the hint
and allowed Joab to bring Absalom back from Geshur (vv. 2123).
While the Tekoite could free David from blame with regard to her son,
there was nobody to free the king with regard to Absalom.
25
This may explain
why David instructed Joab to forbid Absalom to come into the kings presence
(2 Sam 14:24). Such ambivalence backred, arousing lethal resentment in
Absalom, who made his father pay the cost of mercy by taking his kingdom,
along with his concubines (2 Sam 16:1522).
In the end, David was willing to pay even more to save his sons life, cry-
ing, O my son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you! (2 Sam
19:1[18:33]; njpsv).
26
But because the young man had no lasting loyalty to his
father or acceptance of the amnesty that he had granted him, as demon-
23. Transferability of blame/culpability is primarily attested in cultic contexts:
Exod 28:38; Lev 10:17; 16:2122. But the fact that it also appears in the noncultic set-
tings of 1 Sam 25:24, and 2 Sam 14:9 shows that it is not as foreign to the mundane
sphere of life as K. Koch asserts (Shne und Sndenvergebung um die Wende von
der exilischen zur nachexilischen Zeit, EvT 26 [1966] 229).
24. Whitelam, King and Kingship, 42. Compare the way Americans speak of the
White House with reference to the administration of the president.
25. There are other ironic comparisons between the womans case and the real
situation involving Absalom. For example, in order to win the support of the popu-
lace, the prince claimed that his provision of justice would be better than that of
David (2 Sam 15:24). Also, David promised the woman of Tekoa that not a hair of
her son would fall to the ground (14:11), but Absalom met his end at the hand of
Joab when his notably hairy head (cf. v. 26) got caught in a tree, preventing him
from falling to the ground in order to escape (18:915; R. Bergen, 1, 2 Samuel [NAC
7; Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996] 391).
26. Hagan, Deception as Motif, 312.
Chapter 16 342
strated by his rebellious actions, Davids mercy did not help the young prince
in the long run.
Similar dynamics operate when Yhwh, as judge, forgives guilty persons.
Just as Davids throne represented his authority and justice, so Yhwhs place
of enthronement at his sanctuary stands for his administration. Just as David
and his justice needed to be legally clean (;:; 2 Sam 14:9), so Gods jus-
tice, represented by his sanctuary, must be justied.
27
Narrowing the gap between the context of David and that of Yhwhs sanc-
tuary is use of the root ;:, literally, be clean, in the prescription for the cul-
tic-legal suspected adulteress ritual. Here nipal verbs from this root refer to
immunity of an innocent woman from a conditional curse (Num 5:19, 28)
and to freedom of the husband of a suspected woman from blame for having
made a false accusation (v. 31). Verse 31 is particularly telling:
J:\vnx xDn x\ Dx\ \v o Ox ;:\
The man shall be free from culpability, but that woman shall bear her
culpability.
Being clean from culpability (\v ;:) is the opposite of bearing culpability
(\v xO:). By going through the prescribed procedure, the husband would be
free from culpability that he could otherwise incur for slandering his wife (cf.
Deut 22:1319). She, on the other hand, would simply bear her own culpa-
bility if she proved to be guilty. So, potentially, \v can result either from ones
own deed or from ones judgment of another person.
Although the case of David and the woman of Tekoa differs from that of
the suspected adulteress in the sense that \v stems from granting mercy, the
terminology and concepts are strikingly similar: if the Tekoite takes the \v,
the king will be ;:, clean, implying that if she does not do this, she will be
;: in this sense but he will bear the \v.
B. Levine comments profoundly on the legal sense of ;: in the suspected
adulteress ritual:
Ironically, forms of the root n-q-h in biblical Hebrew virtually never refer
to purely ritual purication. . . . Even when a worshiper states that he has
washed his hands in cleanliness, we are to understand his declaration met-
aphorically as referring to avoidance of evildoing (Pss 26:6; 73:13). In other
words, the semantic progression of the base meaning to be clean, pure
has gone all the way into another context, that of legal purgation and clear-
27. Compare the terminology of Dan 8:14: O; ;x:\ , then the sanctuary shall be
cleansed (njpsv), lit., . . . be justied (cf. HALOT 2:1003; BDB 842).
ance from liability or obligation. A similar semantic development is observ-
able in the Akkadian verb ebebu to be pure, clear, which most often relates
to legal circumstances, not to actual cleansing or ritual purication (CAD
E, 57, under ebebu, D-stem ubbubu). So Hebrew naq means innocent,
exonerated, just as in Job 4:17 the verb ahar to be pure appropriates the
connotation of being just or righteous: Can a mortal be more righteous
(yidaq) than God? Can a person be more just (yihar) than his maker?
The semantic elds of ritual and moral terms of reference often overlap;
they move toward each other in biblical Hebrew usage. Their interaction is
one of the most subtle and enlightening features of biblical diction.
28
The fact that Yhwh needs his sanctuary, representing his administration, to
be purged/puried (oa/ o) on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:16, 1819)
does not mean that he has done something wrong any more than an innocent
woman vindicated through the suspected adulteress ritual would need inner
restoration from moral impurity. Although the biblical text does not say that
Yhwh or his sanctuary is ;:, he maintains his legal purity by clearing only
those who should be cleared. The case of the suspected adulteress, which he
adjudicates at his sanctuary, demonstrates that he rightfully acquits (;:) the
right people (Num 5). In Exod 34:7 Yhwh says that he bears/forgives (xO:)
three moral evils\v, vOo, and xonbut he surely does not clear/vin-
dicate (; : x" ; :\) the guilty (understood). So although he is merciful (cf.
v. 6), his justice requires a limit to his mercy.
If Yhwh were to clear those who do not deserve it, he would not be ;:.
2 Samuel 14:9 conrms this by implying that a judge who lets a truly guilty
person off the hook is not ;:. Nevertheless, Yhwh forgives truly guilty people
at his sanctuary, in spite of the temporary consequences for himself. He is by
no means ashamed of his kindness. In fact, it is a hallmark of his character,
as proclaimed to Moses (Exod 34:67). But it is the ritual system that explains
how Yhwh can maintain his justice at the same time. Although he initially
bears the evils of his people through his sanctuary and their \v through his
priests (Lev 10:17), in a further stage enacted on the Day of Atonement, he
has his sanctuary purged and the \v permanently banished to the wilderness
(16:2122). In this way the rituals of the Day of Atonement conrm the right-
ness of forgiveness already granted by Yhwh so that his sanctuary is pure and
his people are clean from their n\xon, that is, expiable and expiated sins
(v. 30). This reafrming function may partly explain why inner-sanctum
nxon sacrices include application of blood in the outer sanctum and at the
28. B. Levine, Numbers 120 (AB 4; New York: Doubleday, 1993) 208.
Chapter 16 344
outer altar (vv. 16b, 1819), where bloods of noncalendric outer-sanctum and
outer-altar purication offerings have already been applied for the same expi-
able moral faults.
We have found that, in the narrative of 2 Sam 14, the dynamics of kind-
ness and justice parallel to a signicant extent the interactions between Yhwh
and his people. As David was to Absalom, Yhwh was to the Israelites. Like
Absalom, the Israelites sinned. Like David, God forgave them. Unlike David,
Yhwh was not constrained by moral weakness due to his own sin or inade-
quate wisdom to apply justice and kindness, the two sides of love, without
compromising either. But as judge, God was like David in that he was mor-
ally responsible for his judgments, including his forgiveness of guilty people.
He had to deal with the cost of kindness, and there was nobody to bear it but
himself, as represented by his cult. At the sanctuary, justice and kindness
were intertwined, reecting harmonious balance in the character of God (cf.
Ps 85:11[10]).
1 Kings 2
Relationships between David and Solomon and certain of their subjects
are analogous to relationships between Yhwh and various kinds of Israelites,
as reected in the ritual system.
Just before he died, David charged Solomon:
5
Further, you know what Joab son of Zeruiah did to me, what he did to
the two commanders of Israels forces, Abner son of Ner and Amasa son of
Jether: he killed them, shedding blood of war in peacetime, staining the
girdle of his loins and the sandals on his feet with blood of war.
6
So act in
accordance with your wisdom, and see that his white hair does not go down
to Sheol in peace.
7
But deal graciously with the sons of Barzillai the Gileadite, for they be-
friended me when I ed from your brother Absalom; let them be among
those that eat at your table.
8
You must also deal with Shimei son of Gera, the Benjaminite from
Bahurim. He insulted me outrageously when I was on my way to Maha-
naim; but he came down to meet me at the Jordan, and I swore to him by
the Lord: I will not put you to the sword.
9
So do not let him go unpun-
ished; for you are a wise man and you will know how to deal with him and
send his gray hair down to Sheol in blood. (1 Kgs 2:59; njpsv)
Joab was already condemned for murder (2 Sam 3:29; cf. Num 35:31), and
his execution was inevitable in spite of the fact that David had delayed pun-
ishment of the powerful general who had contributed so much to building
his empire.
29
Barzillais family had loyally assisted the king when he ed from
Absalom (2 Sam 17:2729; 19:3132) and was to be treated accordingly. Then
there was the difcult case of Shimei. In response to his plea that David for-
give him for cursing him when he was going into exile,
30
David had sworn to
Shimei that he would not die (19:1924[1823]; cf. 16:513), but at the end
of his life David expressed second thoughts. It appears that he had pardoned
Shimei against his better judgment, due to the need for healing political
wounds after the strife created by Absaloms coup.
31
Notice the order in which David mentioned the three individuals: Joab,
Barzillai, and Shimei. This mirrors in reverse the order of events in 2 Sam
1920, as David was returning from exile following his defeat of Absalom:
Shimeis repentance and amnesty (19:1724[1623]), Davids gratitude to Bar-
zillai (vv. 3240[3139]), and Joabs murder of Amasa (20:810).
Between the time that David met Shimei and parted from Barzillai, he
was also approached by Mephibosheth (19:2531[2430]), a member of
Sauls family like Shimei, who had inadvertently offended the king. When
he realized his mistake, Mephibosheth expressed his loyalty and remorse
through self-denial: He had not pared his toenails, or trimmed his mus-
tache, or washed his clothes from the day that the king left until the day
he returned safe (2 Sam 19:25[njpsv; 24 in other Eng. versions]). When
David asked why he had not accompanied him into exile, Mephibosheth
explained that he had been deceived and slandered by Ziba, his servant,
and he put himself at the kings mercy (vv. 2729[2628]). David accepted
Mephibosheths plea that he had really been loyal all along and that his
failure to go with the king into exile had not been due to rebellion on his
part (v. 30[29]).
29. Cf. F. E. Gaebelein et al., eds., The Expositors Bible Commentary (Grand Rap-
ids: Zondervan, 1988) 4:35.
30. By cursing a ruler, Shimei violated the law of Exod 22:27[28]. Greenberg uses
Shimeis request for amnesty (2 Sam 19:2021) as his primary example of the way in
which the language of petitionary prayer follows patterns of petitionary speech to a
powerful person such as a king (Biblical Prose Prayer, 2224).
31. See Gaebelein et al., eds., suggesting that David realized that Shimeis repen-
tance was insincere (The Expositors Bible Commentary, 35, 41); J. Walsh reminds us
that according to 2 Sam 19:18[17] a thousand Benjaminites were backing Shimei at
the time when David pardoned him (1 Kings [Berit Olam; Collegeville, Minnesota:
Liturgical Press, 1996] 42). Walsh also suggests that Shimei had to die in order to end
the inevitable effects of the curse that he had uttered, which would otherwise harm
Solomon (p. 43).
Chapter 16 346
Shimei, Mephibosheth, Barzillai, and Joab each had a different relation-
ship to David. Although Shimei had been recklessly rebellious, David
granted him amnesty. Mephibosheths fault had been inadvertent and he was
clearly loyal, so his relationship with the king was restored. Barzillai had
shown nothing but loyalty, but Joab was hopelessly condemned.
David left Solomon unnished business with regard to three of the four
men. Joab and Shimei should be brought to justice, but Barzillais sons should
be invited to eat at Solomons table. Apparently Mephibosheth needed noth-
ing new, so David did not mention him.
32
We are told how Solomon dramatically carried out his fathers wishes with
regard to Joab and Shimei, and we can assume that he quietly provided for
the sons of Barzillai. Because Joab had supported Adonijahs attempt to take
the throne while David was still alive (1 Kgs 1:510, 1819, 2426), his fate
was linked to that of the prince. When Solomon was acclaimed king by
shouting and trumpet blasts (vv. 3940), he became judge over Adonijah and
granted him conditional amnesty that implicitly applied to his supporters as
well: If he behaves worthily, not a hair of his head shall fall to the ground;
but if he is caught in any offense, he shall die (1 Kgs 1:52; njpsv).
In this context it is crystal clear that Solomon dened worthiness or wick-
edness in terms of loyalty or disloyalty to himself. By attaching the condition
of showing loyalty, thereby making reconciliation provisional, Solomon, in ef-
fect, sentenced Adonijah to probation
33
and thereby avoided the difculty
that David experienced when he granted unconditional reprieves to Absalom
and Shimei.
34
After David died, Adonijah asked Bathsheba, Solomons mother, to re-
quest for him permission to marry Abishag, who had belonged to David (cf.
1 Kgs 1:14). Since having a woman belonging to a previous king was a royal
privilege (cf. 2 Sam 16:2122), Solomon had Adonijah executed for attempt-
ing to regain his claim to the throne.
35
Because Abiathar had supported
32. He was already eating at the royal table before David ed from Absalom
(2 Sam 9:11).
33. J. S. Rogers, Narrative Stock and Deuteronomistic Elaboration in 1 Kings 2,
CBQ 50 (1988) 399.
34. Cf. B. O. Long, A Darkness between Brothers: Solomon and Adonijah, JSOT
19 (1981) 8687.
35. Cf. idem, 1 Kings with an Introduction to Historical Literature (FOTL 9; Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984) 5051. M. Garsiel explains: While in reality she was not a
concubine in the full sense, inasmuch as her relations with the king were not sexual,
in Solomons eyes Adonijah is endeavoring to treat her as a true concubine in order to
give weight to his renewed attempt to gain the throne (Puns upon Names as a Liter-
ary Device in 1 Kings 12, Bib 72 [1991] 383).
Adonijah, whose request for Abishag indicated possible renewal of plotting,
Solomon banished the priest.
When Joab, who had also backed Adonijah, heard what had happened, he
accurately assumed that he was next. Because he was not a priest, he knew
that his punishment would be like Adonijahs rather than Abiathars. So he
ed to the sanctuary and grasped the horns of the altar. When Benaiah, the
kings executioner, summoned him to come out, he refused and retorted: I
will die here (1 Kgs 2:30).
36
So Solomon commanded Benaiah:
31
. . . Do just as he said; strike him down and bury him, and remove guilt
from me and my fathers house for the blood of the innocent that Joab has
shed.
32
Thus the Lord will bring his blood guilt down upon his own
head, because, unbeknown to my father, he struck down with the sword
two men more righteous and honorable than heAbner son of Ner, the
army commander of Israel, and Amasa son of Jether, the army com-
mander of Judah.
33
May the guilt for their blood come down upon the
head of Joab and his descendants forever, and may good fortune from the
Lord be granted forever to David and his descendants, his house and his
throne. (1 Kgs 2:3133; njpsv)
By putting Joab to death, Solomon eliminated a dangerous threat to his
throne and at the same time honored Davids wish to have Joab executed for
murder. Solomons speech to Benaiah expresses his perception of the reason
that David wanted Joab executed in spite of his long and distinguished mili-
tary service. It was not simply a matter of revenge or punishment for killing
other generals who were militarily and/or politically important to David. Be-
cause David was closely associated with Joab, he was tainted with the latters
bloodguilt.
37
To be more specic, as king and therefore Joabs superior, under
whose protection Abner and Amasa were when Joab had murdered them, Da-
vid was ethically responsible for the actions of Joab and could only free him-
self and his house from this burden by exercising his royal judicial authority
to execute Joab.
38
This matter was of great importance to Davids con-
science and the integrity of his reign because the murders were not a private
36. See the law of Exod 21:14: When a man schemes against another and kills
him treacherously, you shall take him from My very altar to be put to death (njpsv).
37. K. Koch, Der Spruch Sein Blut Bleibe auf seinem Haupt und die israeli-
tische Auffassung vom vergossenen Blut, VT 12 (1962) 4056.
38. Cf. IB 3:3233; R. Nelson, First and Second Kings (IBC; Atlanta: John Knox,
1987) 24; B. Scolnic, Davids Final Testament: Morality or Expediency? Judaism 43
(1994) 2223; Walsh, 1 Kings, 41. At the same time, crimes done to persons for
whom David was responsible were done to him (S. De Vries, 1 Kings [WBC 12;
Waco, Texas: Word, 1982] 35).
Chapter 16 348
matter. . . . One might term Joabs murders as political assassinations. The na-
tional interest and conscience were involved.
39
It was not enough for David to declare himself ;:, clean/guiltless of Ab-
ners blood just after Joab murdered him (2 Sam 3:28). Nor was it enough to
place a curse on Joab that called for Abners blood to come back on the head
of Joab and his house (v. 29; cf. v. 39). In the absence of direct divine punish-
ment on Joab, David needed to make sure that the curse of retribution would
nd its target and thereby irrevocably free his own dynasty from any con-
nection with bloodguilt. From his experience with the bloodguilt of Saul re-
garding the Gibeonites (ch. 21), David knew well the havoc that unavenged
innocent blood could wreak on a dynasty.
40
So he commanded Solomon to
seek an opportunity for justice to be fullled.
41
G. Mendenhall perceives a parallel between the case of Joab and that of
the woman of Tekoa:
David granted her plea, but only after she specically took upon herself
and her house the curse, the divine punishment, of a murderer and any-
one who protected him (II Sam. 14). Likewise, David protected Joab dur-
ing his own lifetime, willing himself to incur the risk involved for the
sake of the personal relationship; but in order to protect the dynasty he
commanded Solomon to carry out the demand of the religious law upon
Joab (I Kings 2:5ff.).
42
We have already found the story of the Tekoite woman, who approached Da-
vid on behalf of her murderous son at the instigation of Joab, to illustrate
dynamics involved in Yhwhs judicial dealings with the Israelites, as enacted
in the cult. Now we see similar dynamics in the relationship between David
(and his son) and Joab himself as murderer. Like a human king, Yhwh is re-
sponsible for condemning the guilty. Wrongdoers whose offenses are inex-
piable must bear their own culpability (e.g., Num 15:3031). Retribution
(e.g., extirpation) may be postponed, but it will inexorably come.
39. Gaebelein et al., eds., The Expositors Bible Commentary, 40.
40. Cf. Scolnic, Davids Final Testament, 2124.
41. Rogers, Narrative Stock, 4012, 410. Scolnic points out that David would
have had an additional concern for Solomons protection in view of Joabs support of
Adonijah (Davids Final Testament, 21). J. W. Wesselius questions the motives of
David and Solomon on the basis of some complicating elements in the narrative, such
as the fact that, while David was not involved in the deaths of Abner and Amasa, he
beneted from them (Joabs Death and the Central Theme of the Succession Narra-
tive [2 Samuel IX1 Kings II], VT 40 [1990] 33840, 34345).
42. G. Mendenhall, Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Pitts-
burgh: Biblical Colloquium, 1955) 18.
Last on Davids nal list was Shimei. Because David had accepted his plea
for pardon, at least in the sense of not putting him to death, Solomon could
not justly execute this potentially dangerous Saulide without establishing an-
other legal basis for doing so.
43
Consequently, as with Adonijah, he put him
on probation:
36
Build yourself a house in Jerusalem and stay theredo not ever go out
from there anywhere else.
37
On the very day that you go out and cross the
Wadi Kidron, you can be sure that you will die; your blood shall be on your
own head.
38
That is fair, said Shimei to the king, your servant will do
just as my lord the king has spoken. And for a long time, Shimei remained
in Jerusalem. (1 Kgs 2:3638; njpsv)
Solomons stipulation was not simply arbitrary. Across the Wadi Kidron was
the territory of Benjamin, Shimeis tribe. If he returned home, he could work
with his kinsmen to fulll his earlier curse against David, whom he had al-
leged to be a man of blood (2 Sam 16:78), by restoring the family of Saul
to the throne.
44
After three years Shimei did leave Jerusalem. He went west rather than
across the Kidron for the innocent reason of pursuing his slaves, but he had
disobeyed Solomons broad interpretation of the command by leaving Jerusa-
lem.
45
So Solomon had him put to death for this. But in so doing, the king
carried out his fathers wish. As with Joab, he killed two birds with one stone.
Just before the execution, Solomon said to Shimei:
You know all the wrong, which you remember very well, that you did to my
father David. Now the Lord brings down your wrongdoing upon your own
head. But King Solomon shall be blessed, and the throne of David shall be
established before the Lord forever. (1 Kgs 2:4445; njpsv)
Notice the close parallel with Solomons earlier statement to Benaiah regard-
ing Joab, which referred to the latters evil returning upon his own head in
contrast to well-being for the Davidic dynasty.
46
43. Cf. L. Perdue, The Testament of David and Egyptian Royal Instructions, in
Scripture in Context II: More Essays on the Comparative Method (ed. W. W. Hallo,
J. Moyer, L. Perdue; Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1983) 9091.
44. J. Gray, I and II Kings (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963) 1089.
45. Cf. ibid., 109; Nelson, First and Second Kings, 28; Walsh, 1 Kings, 62. J. Fokkel-
man suggests that Solomon may have understood the border of the Kidron as pars pro
toto: the other paths leading out of Jerusalem are also taboo for Shimei (Narrative
Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel (SSN; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981) 1:406.
46. Since R. Yaron has found the same pattern in the Egyptian Judicial Papyrus of
Turin from the reign of Ramesses IV, he proposes that it is a kind of xed formula (A
Chapter 16 350
Shimeis disobedience to Solomon, by which he broke an oath (1 Kgs
2:42), neutralized the earlier amnesty that David had granted him and af-
rmed with an oath (2 Sam 19:24[23]). Consequently, what Shimei had
done came back on his own head. Unlike Joab, Shimei had received from
David a promise that he would not be punished. So Solomons sentence on
Shimei closely parallels Yhwhs condemnation of previously forgiven Israel-
ites who fail to show loyalty on the Day of Atonement by practicing self-
denial and abstaining from work (see Lev 23:2930).
In the stories of Joab and Shimei there is an air of inevitability.
47
David
relies on Solomon to punish them, but in order to maintain his justice, Solo-
mon waits patiently for them to present him with opportunities to pounce on
them for committing offenses against him. They do not let him down. This
is not surprising because David has willed their demise, and Solomon speaks
of Yhwh as bringing their evil back on their own heads (1 Kgs 2:32, 44).
Because of the character of Joab and Shimei, there is really no question
that they will stumble, and Solomon sees to it that this results in their com-
plete fall.
For David and Solomon, the bottom line was loyalty. J. S. Rogers
concludes:
Davids counsel is not that of an embittered, impotent old king seeking per-
sonal revenge, but that of a supreme political strategist whose dying charge
to his son and successor consists of specic instructions by which to ensure
the stability of the kingdom. . . . Solomon should act decisively and without
concern for the old loyalties his father owed Joab and Shimei, for they can-
not be trusted. Retribution is not the issue; calculated political advice based
on experience is.
48
47. Garsiel concludes: By creating a correspondence between names and plot ma-
terials, the biblical author evokes an atmosphere of order and coherence which occa-
sions a sense of predestinationas if everything had been planned beforehand by the
Lord and was explicitly or implicitly tted into the names of characters and places
(Puns upon Names, 386).
48. Rogers, Narrative Stock, 410.
Ramessid Parallel to 1 K ii 33, 4445, VT 8 [1958] 43233). For the idea of justice
when evil returns upon the head of its perpetrator, see in narratives of David and Solo-
mon: 1 Sam 25:39; 2 Sam 1:16; 1 Kgs 8:32; 2 Chr 6:23. Earlier God metaphorically
brought the wickedness of the Shechemites down on their own heads (Judg 9:57), but
Abimelechs punishment literally came down on his head in the form of an upper
millstone (vv. 53, 56). In Obad 1:15 notice the parallel between the talionic formula,
As you have done, it shall be done to you (cf. Lev 24:19; Deut 19:19; Judg 1:7; 15:11),
and your deeds shall return on your own head (nrsv).
But retribution cannot be separated from the issue of loyalty, on which the
stability of the kingdom depended, because retribution would eliminate those
whom the king could not trust. In an absolute monarchy, justice excludes tol-
erance of disloyalty.
49
We have found similar principles to operate in the kingdom of Yhwh, as
reected in his cultic system. For him too, loyalty is the bottom line. Punish-
ment of wanton sinners may be delayed. Persons who are only outwardly loyal
may escape condemnation for awhile, but ultimately they will fail as Joab and
Shimei did, and only the truly loyal will remain.
50
The evil perpetrated by
disloyal ones will return upon their own heads.
How David and Solomon treated subjects who were loyal (e.g., Barzillai),
inadvertently faulty but truly loyal (e.g., Mephibosheth), only outwardly
repentant (e.g., Shimei and Adonijah), or irredeemably culpable (e.g., Joab)
affected the royal reputation for justice. The same is true of Yhwh, who con-
demns those who deantly break his commandments and judges between
those who are provisionally/nominally loyal on the Day of Atonement.
K. Koch has argued against the existence of a real doctrine of retribution
in the Old Testament.
51
He denes retribution narrowly as necessarily in-
cluding a judicial process through which a higher authority assesses a per-
sons actions on the basis of an established norm and imposes punishment
from outside the actions themselves.
52
What he nds in the Old Testament,
particularly in the wisdom literature, prophets, and Psalms, is that Yhwhs
role as the higher authority is to bring to completion consequences that have
an inherent and inevitable relationship to actions.
53
We have certainly ob-
served Kochs Action-Consequences-Construct in the downfall of Joab and
Shimei, in which Solomon characterizes his role as reecting that of Yhwh
by bringing the inevitably disastrous results of wrongful actions to fruition.
49. Compare the Egyptian instruction for Merikare, which admonishes the king:
Punish with beatings, with dentention, / Thus will the land be well-ordered; / Except
for the rebel whose plans are found out, / For god knows the treason plotters, / God
smites the rebels in blood (translation by M. Lichtheim, Merikare, in COS 1:62);
cf. Perdue, The Testament of David, 8687).
50. Cf. Rogers, Narrative Stock, 402.
51. K. Koch, Is There a Doctrine of Retribution in the Old Testament? in Theodicy
in the Old Testament (ed. J. Crenshaw; trans. T. Trapp; IRT 4; Philadelphia: Fortress /
London: SPCK, 1983; rst published in ZTK 52 [1955] 142) 5787. For bibliography
of Koch and reactions to his thesis, see A. Rodrguez, Substitution in the Hebrew Cultus
(AUSDS 3; Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1979) 223 n. 1.
52. Koch, Is There a Doctrine of Retribution? 5861.
53. Ibid., 6082.
Chapter 16 352
The same construct of cause and effect is also reected in the Israelite cul-
tic system. Although Koch has not explored the cult on this question in detail,
he does mention the fact that key terms for sin, including nxon, vOo, and
\v, can expresss both sinful actions and their consequences, which implies
that the consequences are built-in.
54
While our earlier discussion of these
terms has found them to have more limited meanings in certain cultic con-
texts, consequential sin-bearing is an integral part of the cultic system (see
ch. 13 above). Koch also cites the suspected adulteress ritual (Num 5), in
which exoneration or punishment results from the womans moral state.
55
We can adduce further support for the existence of Kochs construct in the
cult. The fact that Israelite sins affect the sanctuary and can accumulate to
the point that Yhwh abandons it and his people to destruction shows that sin-
disaster is a process in which cause inevitably yields a corresponding effect
that Yhwh brings to completion.
56
While the Action-Consequences-Construct operates in the cult, it is also
true that Yhwh holds the Israelites accountable to a previously established
norm, consisting of his commandments. The ritual procedure of the Day of
Atonement implies a judicial process at an appointed time, as the rabbis rec-
ognized (b. Ros Has. 16a, b; y. Ros Has. 1.3). So we cannot view retribution
and Kochs construct as mutually exclusive. Rather, they are complementary
and combine in the ritual system to exhibit Yhwhs perfect justice. Yhwh does
mete out retribution, but it is not detached from a condemned persons char-
acter and deeds. His judgment is to recognize a persons nature and choices,
as indicated by actions, and destine him/her to reap the consequences.
57
The narratives concerning Shimei and Adonijah (cf. Absalom) illustrate
that amnesty from punishment does not necessarily lead to abiding loyalty,
without which reconciliation cannot last. So granting a reprieve does not
bring reconciliation to completion. A later event can result in conrmation
or annulment of kindness previously extended. In the cultic system, the later
54. Ibid., 7578.
55. Ibid., 86 n. 56.
56. Cf. Kochs comment on Hos 7:12: By virtue of deity, Yahweh cannot come
close to the people without this very nature triggering the consequences of the sins
which are exposed by divine presence. The actions of the people have determined
their destiny (ibid., 66).
57. Cf. ibid., 82; Rev 22:1112. In the present volume I have dealt with an impor-
tant question that Koch raised but was not able to pursue: Finally, what relationship
does the completion of actions with built-in consequences have in respect to Yahwehs
cultic actions or way of handling the nal judgment? (ibid., 83).
event is the Day of Atonement, when cleansing/vindication of forgiven sin-
ners is granted on condition that they show loyalty to Yhwh.
Davids relationship with Yhwh was restored following his sin with Bath-
sheba, due to his confession and sincere contrition (see, e.g., 2 Sam 12:13
14; Ps 51). However, I have not found an analogous example of lasting rec-
onciliation between David or Solomon and another person following com-
mission of a deliberate fault against the king in peacetime.
58
This kind of
reconciliation between human beings is difcult to achieve, as illustrated by
the agonizing process through which Joseph came to forgive his brothers for
the appalling wrong of kidnapping him and selling him into slavery (Gen
4245; cf. 37:2328).
59
Because they passed the character tests that he set up,
thereby revealing their deep change of heart and sorrow for what they had
done to him, he became willing to reveal his identity in order to forgive
them (45:115). But although this pardon was dramatic, it was not the end
of the story of reconciliation. After Jacob died, Josephs brothers were afraid
that he would carry out delayed revenge. So they asked for reconrmation of
his forgiveness (50:1521).
Josephs brothers knew that forgiveness, whether for a deliberate or an in-
advertent wrong, can be recalled (cf. Matt 18:2335). Security for the sinner
requires conrmation of pardon. Jeremiah acknowledged the same principle.
Not only will God forgive his people; he will remember their sin no more
(Jer 31:34). That is, he will make their sin eternally irrelevant to the divine-
human relationship and thereby render forgiveness irrevocable. Accordingly,
the two phases of oa in the Israelite sanctuary correspond to forgiving sin
(Lev 4) and making it irrevocably irrelevant (Lev 16).
Conclusion
Some biblical narratives illustrate relational dynamics that are encapsu-
lated in the purication-offering system. Numbers 14 highlights the impor-
tance of Yhwhs international reputation, illuminates the problem of judicial
responsibility that he bears when he forgives, and conrms the fact that he ul-
timately purges rebels from the community that benets from his kindness.
Interactions between human kings and their subjects of various kinds of
character, such as are found in 2 Sam 14 and 1 Kgs 2, are analogous in key
58. David did spare Sauls life on more than one occasion (1 Sam 24, 26), but this
did not lead to lasting reconciliation. Davids politically astute reconciliations with
Abner and Amasa, generals who had been his military enemies, were cut short when
they were murdered by Joab (2 Sam 3, 1920).
59. Compare the later law of Exod 21:16, where kidnapping is a capital offense.
Chapter 16 354
respects to divine-human relationships enacted in the cult of King Yhwh. In
both spheres, a king acting as judge incurs judicial culpability (\v) if he al-
lows moral evil to go unpunished, and a persons fate depends on his loyalty
to the sovereign. The loyal are rewarded, the disloyal are condemned, and
conditional amnesty can lead to later condemnation if loyalty, as demon-
strated by obedience to the monarch, is not maintained.
355
Chapter 17
Yearly Accountability in
Mesopotamian Cult
In the ancient Near East, cultic enactment of theodicy was not unique to
Israel. Yearly determination/judgment of human fates by deities appears in
Mesopotamian festival texts.
1
Particularly striking parallels to the Israelite
Day of Atonement are found in the Sumerian New Year celebration at the
temple of the goddess Nanshe and the Babylonian New Year (Akitu) Festival
of Spring, which were believed to enact renewal of relationships between dei-
ties and their human subjects.
2
As in the Israelite ritual system, the Mesopotamian cults of Nanshe and
Marduk included yearly accountability to their deities, with judgment based
on adherence to divine rules throughout the year and demonstration of loy-
alty on a festival day. In each case, continued human enjoyment of divine
benets was conditioned upon adherence to the cultic and ethical standards
of the deity during the preceding year.
3
Thus the justice and sovereignty of
the deity was afrmed, and the human community was encouraged to uphold
the divinely regulated order.
The Nanshe New Year
The Nanshe Hymn is an Ur III period (ca. 21002000 b.c.) Sumerian text.
4
A complete edition of the hymn was published with cuneiform, transliteration,
1. M. Weinfeld, Social and Cultic Institutions in the Priestly Source against
Their Ancient Near Eastern Background, in Proceedings of the Eighth World Con-
gress of Jewish Studies; Panel Sessions: Bible Studies and Hebrew Language (Jerusa-
lem: World Union of Jewish Studies/Perry Foundation for Biblical Research, 1983)
1059, 11617.
2. On divine-human renewal at the Ugaritic New Year, see J. C. de Moor, New Year
with Canaanites and Israelites (Kampen: Kamper Cahiers, 1972) 1:510.
3. On the connection between ethics and ritual in Israel and Mesopotamia, see
J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 2126; idem, Leviti-
cus 1722 (AB 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000) 1400.
4. The third dynasty of Ur began with the reign of Ur-Nammu and ended with the
reign of Ibbi-Sin: 21122004 b.c. according to conventional chronology and 2047
1940 b.c. according to low chronology (see, e.g., A. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East
Chapter 17 356
and English translation by W. Heimpel in 1981.
5
T. Jacobsen included quite
a different rendering in his 1987 collection of Sumerian poetry entitled The
Harps That Once. . . .
6
Subsequently, a revised translation by Heimpel has ap-
peared in the rst volume of The Context of Scripture (1997).
7
The Nanshe Hymn is unusual in that it contains only a small amount of
the kind of content we would expect in a hymn.
8
It focuses on two New
Years Day celebrations at the temple of Nanshe, called Sirara, in the city of
Nina. Jacobsen identies this city as the present Tel Zurghul, in the Lagash
region.
9
According to Heimpels interpretation, the rst part of the Nanshe Hymn
describes preparations for a New Year celebration under Gudea (ca. 2100
b.c.), ruler of Lagash. These preparations were unsuccessful because of lack
of grain and deterioration of the temple administration. Consequently, drastic
reforms in the temples economic program were implemented. The second
part depicts another New Year celebration that was carried out successfully,
apparently because the temple reforms were effective. The hymn is most
likely dated between Gudea and the end of the Nanshe cult in Nina,
10
some-
time late in the Ur III period.
11
There are similarities between the Nanshe New Year and
the Israelite Day of Atonement
Comparison between the Nanshe New Year and the Israelite Day of
Atonement, as prescribed in Lev 16 and 23:2632, shows that basic elements
of the Day of Atonement had early precedents in the Mesopotamian Nanshe
5. W. Heimpel, The Nanshe Hymn, JCS 33 (1981) 65139.
6. T. Jacobsen, The Harps That Once . . . : Sumerian Poetry in Translation (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) 12542.
7. W. Heimpel, To Nanshe (1.162), COS 1:52631.
8. Heimpel, The Nanshe Hymn, 66.
9. Jacobsen, The Harps, 125. It is possible that the text was intended to be recited
during the New Year celebration (Heimpel, The Nanshe Hymn, 68). The Nanshe
Hymn does not indicate the season in which New Years Day occurred.
10. Heimpel, ibid., 67.
11. Jacobsen, The Harps, 126.
c. 3000330 bc [London: Routledge, 1995] 1:56, 58, 63). S. N. Kramer recognized that
the date of rst composition may be earlier than the dating of the extant tablets on
which the text was copied, which he placed in the rst half of the second millennium
b.c. (Mercy, Wisdom, and Justice: Some New Documents from Nippur, University
Museum Bulletin 16 [1951] 34).
Yearly Accountability in Mesopotamian Cult 357
cult. An initial point of contact with the Day of Atonement is the fact that the
Nanshe Hymn mentions purgation of the divine residence: [ ] her house
Sirara where water is sprinkled (line 178).
12
More importantly, at the Nanshe New Year, deities judge the rights of hu-
man beings to continue enjoying their connections with them and their
cults.
13
On the edge of the year, the day of rites, that is, apparently a New
Years Day,
14
Nanshe inspects the reviewing of servants (line 97). Temple
servants who perform their work properly have their yearly contracts renewed,
but unfaithful workers are terminated.
15
According to Heimpel, the New
Years Day review extended beyond servants to other persons, including the
poor, who gained economic benets from the temple or exemptions from
contributions to the temple.
16
Renewal of yearly contracts at the Nanshe New Year is analogous to the
yearly review that takes place on the Isralite Day of Atonement. At this time
Israelites who are loyal to Yhwh are made clean before him (Lev 16:30)
that is, free from impediments to continuation of their relationship with
himand those who fail to show their loyalty by practicing self-denial and
abstaining from work are rejected (Lev 23:2930). Somewhat like the Day of
Atonement, the Nanshe New Year includes the possibility that persons can be
12. This and subsequent quotations of the Nanshe Hymn are from Heimpels
translation in To Nanshe. Jacobsen renders lines 17879: In her temple Siratr hav-
ing sprinkled water in her chamber for the midday nap, having swept it . . . (The
Harps, 138). These lines do not necessarily mean that Nanshes temple is cleansed
only on or for New Years Day.
13. While divine judgment takes place during the Ugaritic New Year Festival (U 5
V, no. 2, obv. 23), de Moor acknowledges that it is not clear who is judged but sup-
poses that those who have been unfaithful to the god during his absence are punished
(New Year, 1:8; 2:24).
14. See Heimpel, To Nanshe, 528 n. 18.
15. Compare the review of servants on New Years Day in a hymn to the goddess
Inanna (Jacobsen, The Harps, 122). Heimpel comments on the function of New
Years Day in Mesopotamia: A comparison with elements in the New Years ritual
in Babylon and the so-called Middle Assyrian royal ritual (see RlA s.v. Investitur 4)
demonstrates that the function of the New Years Day as day of appointments, re-
appointments and removal from ofce . . . was a common Mesopotamian feature
(The Nanshe Hymn, 68). Cf. R. Caplice, and W. Heimpel, Investitur, RlA 5:141.
For other texts in which New Years are days of inspection, see Heimpel, The Nan-
she Hymn, 110. In addition to yearly reappointment of ofcials, K. van der Toorn
points out promotion or demotion at the New Year (Form and Function of the New
Year Festival in Babylonia and Israel, in Congress Volume: Leuven, 1989 [ed. J. A.
Emerton; VTSup 43; Leiden: Brill, 1991] 5).
Chapter 17 358
cleared, that is, restored/vindicated, to good and regular standing: The or-
deal river in the house of Nanshe clears a person (line 130).
17
The nature of behavior during the previous year is relevant to the judg-
ment of temple dependents at the Nanshe New Year. The god Hendursag
does the following on this day:
He places a good person among good persons,
Hands over a bad person to a bad place.
He renders judgement for an orphan,
he also renders judgement for a widow,
(and) he sets right the judgement of a childs mother. (lines 18993)
Similarly, we have found that prior behavior also affects the Day of Atone-
ment judgment. Only nondeant sinners, who have already been forgiven if
they have committed expiable offenses, are eligible for the nal stage of oa
on this day.
Individuals dependent on the Nanshe temple are held accountable to
divinely appointed cultic and ethical standards. Cultic standards include
proper performance of temple duties, such as cleaning troughs of dough, that
is, apparently kneading-troughs, and maintaining the re at night (lines 114
15). Nanshes ethical standards prohibit behaviors such as bullying, altering
a boundary, dishonest use of weights and measures,
18
and mistreatment of
children by their mothers (lines 136, 139, 14243, 21223). Like Nanshes
rules, Yhwhs instructions include cultic and ethical requirements (see, e.g.,
Lev 19). Failure to keep any of Yhwhs commandments is regarded as sin
(Lev 4:2).
The Nanshe New Year, like the Israelite Day of Atonement, shows a con-
nection between cult and theodicy in that it involves judgment of persons on
the basis of loyalty that must be demonstrated by adherence to the deitys per-
sonal standards. This indicates at least a partial exception to J. Porters gener-
alization that priestly theology, which emphasizes law, contrasts with religion
outside Israel, in which gods
were usually arbitrary and capricious: they were bound by no rules and a
man could never be sure what attitude they would take to his actions. It
was therefore a great advance when Abraham could ask God, expecting a
positive answer, Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?
17. Heimpel has interpreted this as an ordeal for those who do not keep Nanshes
rules and/or for those who have been removed from ofce (ibid., 69).
18. Cf. Lev 19:3536.
(Gen. 18:25), that is, act in accordance with a standard which he himself
has set and which man can know.
19
To have their yearly contracts renewed, Sumerian temple servants must be
present for inspection at the temple of Nanshe on New Years Day:
On the day when the bowls of allotments are inspected
Nanshe inspects the reviewing of servants.
Did not her chief scribe Nisaba
place precious tablets on (her) knees?
She took the gold stylus in hand.
For Nanshe she organized the servants in single le. (lines 96101)
To be eligible for good standing, Israelites are also required to participate on
their day of judgment by practicing self-denial and abstaining from work
(Lev 16:2931; 23:2732).
Because the yearly judgment at Nanshes temple is regarded as carried out
by deities who possess superhuman powers of perception, there is no escaping
justice: The lady, caretaker of the provinces, Innin, mother Nanshe, sees
into their hearts . . . sees into the heart of the land as if it were a split reed
(lines 16364, 173). Leviticus 16 and 23, which prescribe the ceremonies of
the Day of Atonement, do not explicitly mention Yhwhs perception. But this
is assumed in the threat that anyone who does not practice self-denial will suf-
fer the divinely administered penalty of extirpation (Lev 23:29). Someone
could evade human detection, but Yhwh himself would enforce his law.
20
Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, Yhwhs divine perception is made ex-
plicit. For example: The Lord watches over the stranger; He gives courage
to the orphan and widow, but makes the path of the wicked tortuous (Ps
146:9; njpsv). Notice the parallel with lines 2024 of the Nanshe Hymn:
She knows the orphan, she knows the widow. She knows that person op-
presses person. A mother for the orphan, Nanshe, a caretaker for the widow,
nding a way for houses in debt, the lady shelters the abducted person,
seeks a place for the weak.
21

Here the special powers of Nanshe enable her, like Yhwh, to help the socially
disadvantaged who would otherwise suffer injustice (cf. Ps 82).
A solemn tone characterizes the Nanshe New Year. Heimpel describes the
atmosphere: The element of inspection dominates. The element of joy and
19. J. Porter, Leviticus (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 910.
21. For the idea of divine perception in the Bible, see, for example, 1 Kgs 8:39; Ps
1:6; 44:2122[2021]; 94:11.
Chapter 17 360
happy crowds is missing. This points to (an attempt at) a fresh start in times
when negligence, corruption, and greed threatened to ruin the temple.
22
The awesome Day of Atonement is also solemn, a time for Israelites to hum-
ble themselves by practicing self-denial while the high priest approaches the
presence of Yhwh in the inner sanctum to purge their sins.
Both in Mesopotamia and in Israel, divine administration of justice is
based on divine rule over a human community. Thus the scope of judgment
covers a community that is dened in relation to a temple/sanctuary and its
deity. Nanshe is described as the lady who [determines] the destiny like En-
lil, [who ] on the dais of Sirara (lines 22930). She determines fates of
people who receive food from her temple (line 96) because she rules them.
Similarly, Yhwh rules the Israelites from his place of enthronement in the
sanctuary above the ark of the covenant (1 Sam 4:4; 2 Sam 6:2; 2 Kgs 19:15;
cf. Exod 25:22; Num 7:89). Therefore he judges them. Psalm 9:8[7] makes
the connection explicit: But the Lord sits enthroned forever, he has estab-
lished his throne for judgment (nrsv).
There are differences between the Nanshe New Year and
the Israelite Day of Atonement
There are, of course, signicant differences between the Nanshe New Year
and the Israelite Day of Atonement:
1. The judgment at Nanshes temple takes place on New Years Day. The
Israelite Day of Atonement, on the other hand, is the 10th day of the seventh
month (Lev 16:29). This is not New Years Day for the Israelites, except that
the Jubilee year begins on this day every ftieth year (Lev 25:9).
23
2. The cleaning of Nanshes house by sprinkling with water (lines 178) ap-
pears to be purication simply from ordinary dirt and perhaps also from some
kind of ritual impurity. There is no indication that this activity has a result
like the purgation of Yhwhs sanctuary on the Day of Atonement, which re-
moves ritual impurities and moral faults generated by the people of the com-
munity throughout the year.
3. The Nanshe Hymn explicitly describes divine justice. For example,
On the day when the bowls of allotments are inspected Nanshe inspects the
reviewing of servants (lines 9697).
24
Leviticus, on the other hand, implies
divine justice through the facts that Yhwh requires his sanctuary to be
cleansed from the sins of his people in order for him to continue residing
23. See Ezek 40:1, where the 10th day of the month is at New Year (:D Ox ).
24. Cf. lines 18990.
among them (see Lev 16:16b; Ezek 9:3; 10:4, 1819; 11:2223),
25
and he
clears/cleanses those who show loyalty to him by practicing self-denial and
abstaining from work (Lev 16:30) but condemns those who do not (23:2930).
4. In Israel, wanton sinners, including those who choose to neglect their
ritual remedies, are condemned before the Day of Atonement (Lev 20:3;
Num 15:3031; 19:13, 20). The Nanshe Hymn, however, does not provide
evidence that contracts of offending temple dependents are revoked on days
other than the New Year.
5. The Sumerian hymn describes judicial investigation leading to verdicts
(lines 96101; see above) that are reached through the testimony of witnesses
(lines 1078) and through investigation by Hendursaga (lines 2079). Leviti-
cus 16 does not explicitly refer to judicial investigation. But the fact that the
rituals of the day deal with sins of the Israelites against their deity and the
people become either clean or condemned implies some kind of process
leading to verdicts. The idea that Yhwh has a judgment involving investiga-
tion is explicit elsewhere in the Bible (e.g., Qoh 12:14; Dan 7:10and books
were opened).
26
6. In the Nanshe Hymn, clearing from wrong-doing is through ordeal, and
the text does not indicate whether the cleared person was actually guilty or
was only suspected.
27
The Day of Atonement procedure deals with actual
guilt and involves rituals performed by the high priest, accompanied by self-
denial and abstaining from work (Lev 16). More signicant than the differ-
ence in outward procedure is that of underlying dynamics. In the Nanshe
Hymn a person can be cleared on New Years Day in a one-step process, but
an Israelite who becomes clean on the Day of Atonement has already been
forgiven through an earlier phase of oa.
26. For the idea that Yhwh uses records, see Exod 32:32; Isa 4:3; Ps 69:29[28];
139:16.
27. See the ancient Mesopotamian Code of Ur-Namma (or Ur-Nammu) 10 and
11 and Code of Hammurabi 2 and 132, where a person charged with sorcery or
adultery is subjected to an ordeal, through which he is vindicated or condemned ac-
cording to whether or not he drowns in the river. Notice that in Code of Hammurabi
2 and 132 the divine determinative is used with the word for the (Euphrates) river,
indicating that it functions as a kind of divine judge. H. C. Brichto argues that in the
Israelite trial of the suspected adulteress (Num 5:1131), although Yhwh functions as
judge and jury due to lack of evidence available to a human court, this is not a trial
by ordeal in which the accused is presumed guilty unless proved innocent. Rather,
the suspected adulteress is innocent unless proved guilty, and the ritual invokes Yhwh
to indicate his verdict through a sign that coincides with punishment or lack thereof
(The Case of the oa and a Reconsideration of Biblical Law, HUCA 46 [1975]
6466).
Chapter 17 362
7. Nanshe is assisted by other deities, such as Hendursaga and Nisaba.
Yhwh has no other deity to assist him.
28
Even if Azazel is a supernatural be-
ing such as a demon, he must be Yhwhs enemy rather than his assistant,
because Yhwh has the Israelites send him an unfriendly shipment of their
toxic moral waste (Lev 16:8, 10, 2122).
The Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring
Partially preserved Akkadian tablets prescribe the rituals of the Babylonian
New Year (Akitu) Festival of Spring, which was to take place during the rst
11 or 12 days of the month of Nisannu. The text relevant to Nisannu 25 was
published in cuneiform, transliteration, and French translation by F. Thureau-
Dangin.
29
An English translation of this text by A. Sachs is readily available
in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, edited by J. B.
Pritchard.
30
In his 1976 dissertation, G. agirgan presents the text dealing with
Nisannu 25, plus fragmentary evidence for the other days of the festival, in
transliteration and English translation, followed by discussion.
31
In The Cultic
Calendars of the Ancient Near East, M. Cohen has included translation and
discussion of extant texts relevant to at least part of each festival day.
32
J. Bid-
mead includes translation of some portions, along with reconstruction of ritual
events and their social function.
33
My own translation of the text relevant to
day 5 is included in my dissertation along with detailed analysis of the rituals
as activity systems.
34
The tablets recording days 25 are late, dating to the Seleucid period, and
evidence for the other days of the festival as it was performed in Babylon also
dates to the rst millennium b.c. (especially Neo-Babylonian). However, the
ritual procedures are rooted in much earlier Mesopotamian practice, with
the oldest references to -ki-ti festivals in other cities dating back to the third
millennium.
35
28. In Ezek 9, the scribe of Yhwh, who participates in the judgment of Judah, is a
man clothed in linen (vv. 2, 3, 11), apparently an angelic being.
29. F. Thureau-Dangin, Rituels Accadiens (Paris: Leroux, 1921) 12754.
30. ANET 33134.
31. G. agirgan, The Babylonian Festivals (Ph.D. diss., University of Birming-
ham, 1976) 149, 20333.
32. M. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East (Bethesda, Mary-
land: CDL, 1993) 43751.
33. J. Bidmead, The Akitu Festival: Religious Continuity and Royal Legitimation in
Mesopotamia (Gorgias Dissertations 2, Near Eastern Studies 2; Piscataway, New Jer-
sey: Gorgias, 2004).
cataway, New Jersey: Gorgias, 2004) 199243, 31923.
35. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars, 401; cf. 40618.
On the 4th day of the Akitu festival, actual celebration of the New Year be-
gan with observation of the star Pegasus by a priest, who blessed the temple
three times.
36
In his morning prayers, the ofciating priest, anticipating the conrmation
of the king in his ofce, honours Marduk and his spouse Zarpanitu as the
gods who give the holy sceptre to the king and who decree his destiny. On
this day the populace was free from duty. Unlike other days, the temple was
open for the general public, allowing private citizens to address their sup-
plications directly to Marduk. In the evening, when the worshippers have
departed and the gods have nished their meal, the sesgallu, the ofciating
priest, recites Enuma elish from its beginning to its end.
37
The people are free from duty on this day and on some subsequent days of
the festival,
38
just as the Israelites do not work (but by requirement rather
than by choice) on the Day of Atonement. However, whereas the Babylonian
festival day gave the public special access to Marduk, the Day of Atonement
gave only the high priest special access to Yhwh. In fact, while the high
priest was there, even ordinary priests were denied access to the outer sanc-
tum (Lev 16:17).
Already on Nisannu 4 of the Babylonian festival we have found interesting
parallels and contrasts with the Israelite Day of Atonement. The bulk of our
discussion will focus on the next day, Nisannu 5, when preparation is made
for the climactic events of subsequent festival days. On this day special rituals
purify the sacred precincts of Marduk/Bel, the city god of Babylon, and of
Nab, Marduks son, and reafrm the kings royal status before Marduk.
There are similarities between the Babylonian ceremonies
of Nisannu 5 and the Israelite Day of Atonement
Like the Israelite Day of Atonement ceremonies, the Babylonian rituals of
Nisannu 5 involve cleansing temple precincts and divine judgment at a yearly
time of renewal, when the religious and social order is reafrmed.
39
Like the
Israelite rituals, the Babylonian rites are of three types with regard to the ritual
36. Van der Toorn, Form and Function, 2.
37. Ibid., 3.
38. Ibid.
39. Cf. ibid., 13; idem, The Babylonian New Year Festival: New Insights from
the Cuneiform Texts and Their Bearing on Old Testament Study, in Congress Vol-
ume: Leuven, 1989 (ed. J. A. Emerton; VTSup 43; Leiden: Brill, 1991) 339; cf. 343
44. Regarding the Day of Atonement and the Babylonian Akitu festival as yearly times
of renewal, see Porter, Leviticus, 12425; cf. S. Landersdorfer, Studien zum biblischen
Vershnungstag (ATA 10; Mnster: Aschendorff, 1924) 4454.
Chapter 17 364
calendar: regular, festival, and special.
40
Regular rituals include personal pu-
rication of the high priest with water preparatory to his ofciation, prayers,
and morning and afternoon meal ceremonies to be performed daily for
Marduk and his spouse, Zarpanitu/Belet.
41
With regard to the ritual proce-
dure in Babylon, Nabs afternoon meal on Nisannu 5 can be regarded as
a festival offering. While Nab was undoubtedly provided with meals at his
home temple in Borsippa during the rest of the year, he was fed in Babylon
while visiting there on festival days, including the afternoon of Nisannu 5, just
after his arrival.
42
Rituals special to Nisannu 5 include purication of the Es-
agila temple complex of Marduk and the Ezida cella of Nab, the reconr-
mation of the king before Marduk, and a burnt offering of honey, ghee, and
oil placed in a pit, while a white bull stands in front of the pit.
43
Milgrom has pointed out several similarities between the 5th day of the
Akitu festival and the Day of Atonement:
On both occasions, (1) the temple is purged by rites that demand that the
high priest rise before dawn (m. Yoma 1:7), bathe and dress in linen, em-
ploy a censer, and perform a sprinkling rite on the sanctuary; (2) the im-
purity is eliminated by means of slaughtered animals; (3) the participants
are rendered impure; and (4) the king/high priest submits to a ritual of
confession and penitence.
44
Cleansing the Israelite sanctuary involves three stages, dealing with its
three parts: inner sanctum, outer sanctum, and outer altar. Purifying the
Babylonian temple precincts is also a three-stage process: cleansing of the
great Esagila temple complex as a whole (lines 34045), which includes
40. R. Gane, Schedules for Deities: Macrostructure of Israelite, Babylonian, and
Hittite Sancta Purication Days, AUSS 36 (1998) 23136, 23944.
41. Contents of prayers vary from day to day. Regarding meal ceremonies, see
Daily Sacrices to the Gods of the City of Uruk (trans. A. Sachs), ANET 34345;
A. L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1964) 18889.
42. Just as the festival offerings of the Israelite Day of Atonement supplement the
regular burnt offering to Yhwh (Num 29:811), the afternoon meal of Nab comes
just after the regular afternoon meal of Marduk and is closely linked to it, as shown by
the fact that following Marduks meal, his table is brought to Nab (lines 4056).
Whereas the morning meal of Marduk is only briey mentioned (lines 33839), the af-
ternoon table ceremony of this god is presented in detail (lines 385403), perhaps be-
cause the ritual is modied according to the special festival context.
43. While the offering burns, the king recites a speech addressed to the bull, which
apparently represents a heavenly deity.
44. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 1068; cf. Weinfeld, Social and Cultic Institutions,
11213.
the sanctuary of Marduk and his consort, and then two purications of the
smaller Ezida, the guest cella of Nab (lines 345b365, 36684).
Cleansing the Esagila is accomplished by sprinkling water, sounding a
copper bell, and carrying around a censer and torch inside the temple.
45
Pu-
rication of the Ezida is more elaborate, including not only sprinkling holy
water and carrying a censer and torch but also smearing the doors with cedar
oil and wiping the cella with the decapitated carcass of a ram.
46
As is well
known, the Akkadian verb here is kuppuru (D stem), to wipe off, to clean ob-
jects, to rub, to purify magically,
47
which is the cognate of Hebrew oa
(piel), the verb used in Lev 16:16, 18, 20, and 33 for the purging of the Israel-
ite sanctuary on the Day of Atonement. Notice that the so-called kuppuru
rite is not an independent ritual but a subsystem of activities that belongs to
a ritual.
48
The functionaries who slaughter the ram and perform the wiping dispose
of its head and body by throwing them in the river. After this they must re-
main outside Babylon for the remainder of the festival. So it is clear that con-
tact with the purgation animal renders them ritually impure, just as Israelites
who dispose of the purication-offering bull and goat carcasses and lead Aza-
zels goat into the wilderness become impure (Lev 16:26, 28).
The fact that the purgation of the cella of Nab is more elaborate than that
of the rest of the temple is understandable in view of the fact that, whereas
Marduks quarters are his permanent residence, Nab has not stayed in his
cella since his last visit. As a result of this vacancy, there is a greater possibility
that demonic impurities have entered to lurk here.
D. Wright comments on wiping the Ezida with the rams carcass:
45. Whereas incense is used in the Israelite sanctuary on the Day of Atonement to
protect the high priest (Lev 16:1213), the Babylonian incense functions as a purga-
tive element. Sound, odor, and light produced by bells, censers, and torches can affect
large spaces, but undoubtedly only a small fraction of the Esagilas vast surface area is
dampened by sprinkling. So it is clear that the sprinkling puries pars pro toto.
46. Without support, agirgan speculates that this purication is not performed
physically, but in a symbolic sense by moving the sheeps body inside the temple
(The Babylonian Festivals, 210).
47. CAD K 17879; cf. B. Landsberger, The Date Palm and Its By-Products accord-
ing to the Cuneiform Sources (ed. E. Weidner; AfOBei 17; Graz: pub. by the editors,
1967) 3132.
48. S. Hills shows that it is quite common for kuppuru activity to serve as a subor-
dinate element within Mesopotamian rituals (A Semantic and Conceptual Study of
the Root KPR in the Hebrew Old Testament with Special Reference to the Accadian
Kuppuru [Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1954] 127, 15862).
Chapter 17 366
This rite is simply for the transfer and disposal of evils affecting Nabus
cella; it contains no motif of substitution as often appears in Hittite and
other Mesopotamian rituals. The carcass of the ram is used to wipe away
evils present in the room (line 354). It thereby becomes saturated with im-
purity and must be disposed of properly by casting it into the river (line
359). Because the rite only manifests the ideas of transfer and disposal, it is
conceptually similar to the scapegoat rite.
Another notable similarity between the two rites is the pollution incurred
by the ofciants. . . .
49
This transfer and disposal is one of three different modes of purication
used on the Ezida:
1. Purgatives, including water, cedar oil, incense, and torch light, are ap-
plied to the Ezida in order to remove impurity from it.
50
Water and cedar oil
are applied directly, but incense and torch light create a perceptible effect
emanating from a source, without direct application.
51
2. The rams carcass serves as a vehicle for the transfer of ritual impurity
from the temple. Once the carcass laden with impurity is away from the
temple, it is discarded in the river. Although both the Babylonian ram and
the Israelite goat for Azazel function as vehicles, they relate to the evils they
bear in different ways. Unlike Azazels goat that is banished live to the wilder-
ness, the ram is slain, its carcass functions as a sponge that absorbs evil by
direct contact (i.e., by wiping: line 354), it is used to rid sacred precincts of
impurities, and it does not bear the moral faults of the people.
52
To be fairly
precise, dynamics of the Babylonian activities with the ram are: transfer by
absorption of ritual impurity from what is puried into absorbent material by
contact and conveyance of the contaminated absorbent material away from
what is puried, followed by disposal of the contaminated material. It is sig-
nicant that the head of the ram, although not wiped on the Ezida, is clearly
contaminated, as shown by the fact that the slaughterer must dispose of it in
49. D. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in
Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature (SBLDS; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987) 64. On
similarity to the ritual of Azazels goat, which is not killed, cf. R. de Vaux, Ancient
Israel: Its Life and Institutions (trans. John McHugh; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans /
Livonia, Michigan: Dove, 1961) 508.
50. These are similar to the agents used for purifying the Esagila, except that cedar
oil is used and there is no ringing of a copper bell.
51. In the context of Hittite ritual, Wright refers to purgatives that are applied di-
rectly to the patient as detergents (The Disposal of Impurity, 3436).
52. Cf. R. de Vaux, Les Sacrices de lAncien Testament (CahRB 1; Paris: Gabalda,
1964) 96; D. J. McCarthy, The Symbolism of Blood and Sacrice, JBL 88 (1969)
169; A. Noordtzij, Leviticus (trans. R. Togtman; BSC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan,
1982) 16869 n. 17.
the river and then stay in the open country (see above). Thus the animal is
treated as a unit of absorbent material: direct contamination of a part is re-
garded as contaminating the whole (pars pro toto). Compare the special Is-
raelite purication offerings, in which the bull and goat carcasses are impure
even though only the blood of the two animals is directly applied to sacred
areas and objects. Azazels live goat receives evil from the cultic representa-
tive of Israel, the high priest, when he places both hands on its head and con-
fesses (Lev 16:21), but the fact that spoken confession is necessary for the
transfer to take place indicates that there is more to it than simply absorption.
3. Incantations remove impurity by exorcising demons (see further below).
As Wright perceives, since the complex of slain purication offerings re-
moves evils by absorption and disposal, it is this rather than the ritual of Aza-
zels goat that most closely parallels the Babylonian kuppuru activity.
53
We
can summarize some similarities between use of the Babylonian ram and that
of the slain Israelite animals:
1. Ritual activities purge a sacred dwelling.
2. Animals function as sponges to absorb evil nonmaterial entities that
are not represented by any material symbols.
3. Animal sponges are disposed of away from the sacred precinctsthe
Israelite animals by incineration and the Babylonian ram by throwing
its head and body into the river.
4. Animals are regarded as units.
After the purication of the temple (line 366), a second purication of the
Ezida involves setting up a kind of canopy called the golden heaven and re-
citing a loud cry, an incantation to exorcise demons from the temple.
54
The
incantation states that the gods purify the precincts (line 374). This seems to
imply that after one level of exorcism has exhausted its power during the ear-
lier stage of purication, the gods complete the task by dealing with any
great evil demon (line 382) that remains to haunt the premises. So the goal
of the human activity is to promote divine purication activity.
53. D. P. Wright, Day of Atonement, ABD 2:74. Here Wright states that dispos-
al of the Babylonian rams carcass and head in the river removes the impurity that
has been collected in the carcass of the ram. Cf. Milgrom, who points out the par-
allel between burning the purication offering carcasses and elimination of the
kuppuru carcass (Leviticus 116, 1069).
54. Although the golden heaven is not described, it must be some kind of canopy
(CAD M/1 136) with a considerable surface area and made at least partly of gold.
Chapter 17 368
Later on Nisannu 5, the king puries himself by washing his hands with
water (line 413) and is brought before (the image of ) Marduk/Bel in the Esa-
gila temple.
55
A remarkable series of activities ensues:
(41517) When he (i.e., the king) reaches [the presence of B]el, the high
priest goes out and takes the scepter, the loop, and the mace [from
the king]; he takes his royal crown.
(418) He brings them in [before Be]l;
(419) he places them [on] a chair. He goes out and strikes the cheek of
the king.
(420) He places . . . behind him. He brings him into the presence of Bel:
(421) He pulls . . . (him by) the ears; he makes him kneel down to the
ground.
(422) . . . The king says the following once:
(423) I did [not s]in, lord of the countries. I was not negligent toward
you.
56
(424) [I did not des]troy Babylon; I did not command its overthrow.
(425) [I did not.] . . . Esagil, I did not forget its rituals.
(426) [I did not s]trike the cheek of the privileged citizens
(427) . . . nor did I bring about their humiliation.
(428) [I] . . . for Babylon; I did not destroy its walls.
(About ve lines are missing. What follows belongs to a speech
addressed to the king by the high priest).
(434) Do not fear . . .
(435) which Bel has spoken . . .
(436) Bel [will listen to] your prayer . . .
(437) He will magnify your lordship . . .
(438) He will exalt your kingship . . .
(339) On the day of the essesu-festival, do . . .
(440) In (the festival of ) the Opening of the Gate, cleanse [your]
hands . . .
57
(441) day and night . . .
55. See Exod 30:1921, requiring Israelite priests to ritually purify themselves by
washing their hands and feet before approaching Yhwh in the Sacred Tent or begin-
ning to ofciate at his altar. In light of the Babylonian kings later speech to Marduk
(lines 42228), it appears that washing his hands may at least partly signify his moral
purity. His readiness to stand before the god depends on the rightness/innocence of
what he has done, as represented by the purity of his hands (cf. Ps 24:4; Matt 27:24).
56. Literally, toward your divine nature.
57. Compare Ps 24, esp. vv. 34, 7.
(442) [Bel], whose city is Babylon . . .
(443) whose temple is Esagil . . .
(444) whose privileged citizens are the people of Babylon . . .
(445) Bel will bless you . . . forever.
(446) He will destroy your enemy, defeat your adversary.
(447) When he (the high priest) has spoken, the king [regains] his usual
dignity.
58
(448) He (the high priest) takes out the scepter, loop, mace and crown
and [hands them over] to the king.
(449) He strikes the cheek of the king. When [he strikes] his cheek,
(450) if his tears ow, Bel is favorable;
(451) if his tears do not ow, Bel is angry:
(452) the enemy will rise up and bring about his downfall.
59
The experience of the king could be regarded as a yearly rite of passage.
60
This is not the initial enthronement of the king, but a cyclical reafrmation
of his status as the divinely mandated ruler of Babylon.
61
He passes into a
temporary liminal state of humility in which his royal status is neutralized,
giving up his royal insignia and receiving harsh treatment from the high
priest, after which he returns to his royal state, with his insignia restored. The
nal blow on the cheek by the high priest serves as an omen of the gods atti-
tude, but it also seems to convey the idea that, although the king is reinstated,
he should remember that he owes his kingship to the god. J. H. Eaton takes
the omen of the kings tears as a reminder that the benecial effects of the
rites were not taken to be automatic. The pleasure of the god could not be
taken for granted or coerced.
62
58. Literally, heaviness of nose.
59. Translation by R. Gane, Ritual Dynamic Structure, 23840.
60. Van der Toorn, The Babylonian New Year Festival, 333; J. Milgrom, The
Priestly Consecration (Leviticus 8): A Rite of Passage, in Bits of Honey: Essays for
Samson H. Levey (ed. S. Chyet and D. Ellenson; SFSHJ 74; Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1993) 5761, esp. 5960.
61. Van der Toorn, Form and Function, 13. On cyclical renewal ceremonies as
rites of passage, see A. van Genneps classic, The Rites of Passage (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1960) 17881. Milgrom has pointed out parallels between the
Babylonian ceremony and humiliation of the senior chief of the Ndembu at his ini-
tial installation, as described by V. Turner (Milgrom, The Priestly Consecration,
5860); cf. V. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Al-
dine, 1969) 100106.
62. J. Eaton, Kingship and the Psalms (2nd ed.; Shefeld: JSOT Press, 1986) 94.
Chapter 17 370
The kings reconrmation before Marduk involves a kind of judgment ac-
cording to divine cultic and ethical standards. Such accountability for loyalty
to the deity somewhat parallels the concern for loyalty on the Israelite Day of
Atonement. In Babylon it is the king who goes before the deity for judgment,
just as the Israelite high priest represents his people before Yhwh, also
through a rite of passage that involves entering and exiting the Holy of Ho-
lies, into which no mannot even a Mosesmay enter.
63
There are differences between the Babylonian ceremonies
of Nisannu 5 and the Israelite Day of Atonement
Differences between the Israelite Day of Atonement and Babylonian cere-
monies on the 5th day of the Akitu Festival of Spring include the following:
64
1. The Day of Atonement takes place in the seventh month (Tishri), in the
autumn. The Babylonian festival, on the other hand, is in Nissanu, the rst
month in the spring. However, at Babylon, as elsewhere in Mesopotamia,
there was another such festival in Tashritu (= Tishri), the seventh month.
65
M. Cohen explains each of the two New Year festivals as marking the be-
ginning of a six-month equinox year that was common throughout the an-
cient Near East, including Israel, where there were major festivals in the rst
and seventh months.
66
Although the Israelite feasts of Passover and Unleav-
ened Bread in the rst month (Exod 12; Lev 23:58; Num 28:1625) lacked
the solemnity of the 1st and 10th days of the seventh month, Ezekiel envi-
sioned a purication of the temple on the 1st and 7th days of the rst month
(45:1820, but see LXXrst month and seventh month).
2. The Babylonian festival lasts several days, but the Day of Atonement
stands alone. Nevertheless, the Day of Atonement may be regarded as the cli-
max of the awesome 10 days that begin with the blowing of trumpets on the
1st day of the seventh month (Lev 23:2325).
67
63. Milgrom, The Priestly Consecration, 60.
64. Cf. Weinfeld, Social and Cultic Institutions, 113.
65. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars, 45153; van der Toorn, Form and Function, 1.
66. Cohen, The Cultic Calendars, 400401. For the idea of multiple New Years,
see m. Ros Has. 1:1.
Dyer, 186772) 2:175; Landersdorfer, Studien, 3, 4454; Milgrom, Leviticus 116,
1069; cf. Lev 23:78, 3536, 39; and Num 28:18, 25; 29:12, 35, where the rst and
last days of multi-day festivals carry greater signicance than intervening days
(Wright, Day of Atonement, 75).
3. The Babylonian day includes not only purication of the sacred pre-
cincts but also a special reconrmation of the king to prepare for his role on
subsequent ritual days. Day of Atonement ceremonies, on the other hand, do
not involve a human king.
68
Van der Toorn points out that in Mesopotamia
the Nissanu festival, at the opening of the civil year, entails political signi-
cance that is lacking in the Tashritu festival:
The Assyrian Astrolabe B calls Nisan the pleasant beginning of Anu and
Enlil, traditionally the ruling gods of the pantheon, and says that in this
month the king is lifted up, the king is established. Tashritu, according to
this text, is the time of the offerings of the holy year, when shrines are pu-
ried, people and prince are cleansed.
69
If this characterization applies to the Tashritu Akitu festival in Babylon, its re-
ligious emphasis on the cleansing of shrines and people would have made it
a closer parallel with the Israelite Day of Atonement, on which the sanctuary
and people were puried. Nevertheless, it appears that in Tashritu the Meso-
potamian king/prince would have performed a special role, albeit more muted
than in Nisannu, for which there was no analogy in the Israelite ritual system.
4. Whereas plurality of deities and sacred locations was a factor in the
multiplication of Babylonian ritual activities, such plurality did not affect
the Israelite Day of Atonement due to the monotheistic nature of the nor-
mative Israelite cult. Yhwh fullled all divine roles that were divided among
other deities in other ancient Near Eastern religions. He alone was the
King and Judge of the world.
70
5. The Day of Atonement is a climactic event within the Israelite cultic
system, but the 5th day of the Akitu festival prepares for a climax that comes
later in the festival. Nevertheless, the importance of the 5th day should not be
underestimated, particularly if B. Sommer is even partly correct when he ar-
gues that purication of the Esagila signied its destruction and rebuilding,
and these events served as a synecdoche for the annihilation and recreation
of the whole world.
71
68. Some take the fact that all Day of Atonement rituals are performed by the
high priest to be an indication of a postexilic date (e.g., Porter, Leviticus, 125, 133).
Weinfeld, on the other hand, regards the fact that the king plays no role in the Is-
raelite festival texts as an indication of premonarchic background (Social and Cul-
tic Institutions, 12223).
70. De Moor, New Year, 1:29.
71. B. Sommer, The Babylonian Akitu Festival: Rectifying the King or Renewing
the Cosmos? JANES 27 (2000) 91; cf. 8590.
Chapter 17 372
6. Whereas the Israelite sanctuary cleansing constitutes an enactment of
theodicy, the Babylonian purication of temple precincts simply removes im-
purity in order to prepare for the roles of gods participating in the festival.
7. Whereas the Babylonian cleansing of sacred precincts includes sprin-
kling water, in the Day of Atonement rituals it is blood that is sprinkled for
the purication of the sanctuary.
8. There are a number of differences between the Israelite purication-
offering of purgation (coa nxon ; cf. Exod 30:10; Num 29:11) complex
that purges the sanctuary and the Babylonian kuppuru activities that con-
tribute to purication of the Ezida. Whereas the former is a complex con-
sisting of two individual rituals, the kuppuru rite is only a subsystem of an
individual ritual.
72
Moreover, even though it involves slaughter, the kup-
puru is not an offering/sacrice, does not deal with moral faults, is only one
among several means by which an area is puried, occurs while the deity is
not in residence, and involves taking the carcass of an animal into the sacred
precincts, where it is wiped directly on the structure. By contrast, in the spe-
cial Israelite purication offerings, only the blood is applied to the contam-
inated sanctuary in order to purify it.
73
9. Whereas Heb. oa in ritual contexts represents the goal/meaning of ac-
tivity, Akk. kuppuru denotes the physical activity itself: wipe/rub or purify
by wiping.
74
10. Evils removed by purication rituals are not the same.
75
In Babylon
impurity comes from evil spirits, but there is no purication for sins com-
mitted by the Babylonian people. In Israel, on the other hand, impurities
that affect the sanctuary come from human beings, and the impurities are
72. Cf. ibid., 92.
73. Cf. D. J. McCarthy, The Symbolism of Blood and Sacrice, JBL 88 (1969)
169. Wright has found that the Hittite ritual of Ulippi is closer to that of the biblical
Day of Atonement in that it uses blood of a sheep that is smeared on the cultic ob-
jects (statue, utensils) and temple (wall) of a deity in order to purify them when the
temple is initially dedicated to the god. The carcass is then burned up and may not
be eaten (Day of Atonement, 74; cf. H. Kronasser, Die Umsiedelung der schwarzen
Gottheit: Das hethitische Ritual KUB XXIX 4 (des Ulippi) (SAW Phil.-hist. Kl.
241/3; Vienna: Hermann Bhlaus, 1963) 3033, column iv, lines 3541). While the
manner of purgation parallels that of the Day of Atonement, the context of initial
dedication puts the Hittitte rite in closer proximity to Lev 8:1417, where Moses
uses purication-offering blood to purify the outer altar when it is consecrated.
Here, as in Lev 16 and in the Ulippi ritual, the carcass is incinerated (8:17) rather
than eaten.
74. Cf. Wright, The Disposal of Impurity, 29294.
75. For a thorough study of impurities and their removal in the context of Israelite,
Hittite, and Mesopotamian cults, see Wright, The Disposal of Impurity.
spread 6 pts. long
purged from the sanctuary with moral faults that the people have committed
(Lev 16:16).
76
There are no incantations to exorcise demons.
11. The speech of the Babylonian king consists of self-righteous denial of
his own wrongdoing (lines 42228). He admits no need for moral cleansing.
77
Against H. Frankfort, it is not at all clear that by his penance and confession
the king cleansed himself of the taint of past sins and thus became t to of-
ciate in the succeeding rites.
78
Likewise, there is inadequate support in this
context for I. Engnells assertion that through cultic suffering the king atones
for his whole people, whose sin he carries and is responsible for.
79
By con-
trast, the speech of the Israelite high priest over Azazels goat (Lev 16:21) is a
real confession, admitting the moral faults of the entire nation.
80
This crucial
difference calls into question Frankforts characterization of Nisannu 5 as the
Day of Atonement for the Babylonian king.
81
12. Only the Babylonian king, whose relationships with the gods implic-
itly affect the Babylonian people, is judged on the 5th day of the Akitu fes-
tival. But all Israelites are explicitly in view on the Day of Atonement.
Destinies affecting the well-being of the Babylonian people for the coming
year are determined on day 11 of the Akitu festival,
82
but there is no evidence
that their actions are judged in the same way that the kings are taken into ac-
count. Nor is there evidence that the Babylonian king represents his people,
as does the Israelite high priest, in the sense that he performs purgation on
their behalf. Furthermore, whereas the Israelite high priest comes humbly
before Yhwh in the process of purifying his sanctuary, the Babylonian kings
humiliation before Marduk in the Esagila is separate from the kuppuru pur-
gation of Nabs Ezida cella; these events occur in different locations. So
again, in spite of signicant parallels, the 5th day of the Babylonian festival
should not be regarded as a Babylonian Day of Atonement.
83
76. Cf. Y. Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel (trans. and abridg. M. Greenberg; Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1960) 56, 1035; Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 106869.
77. The Babylonian text does not tell us what would happen if the king were guilty,
but the implication is that he would be punished by Marduk.
78. H. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1948) 320.
79. I. Engnell, Studies in Divine Kingship in the Ancient Near East (2nd ed.;
Oxford: Blackwell, 1967) 35.
81. Frankfort, Kingship, 317, 319.
82. S. A. Pallis, The Babylonian Aktu Festival (Historisk-lologiske Meddelelser
12/1; Copenhagen: A. Host, 1926) 18386, 19697; W. G. Lambert, Myth and Ritual
as Conceived by the Babylonians, JSS 13 (1968) 107.
83. Black, The New Year Ceremonies, 54, 56.
Chapter 17 374
13. Objects of purication differ. The Day of Atonement rituals are con-
cerned with purgation of sacred precincts, sancta, and persons. Apart from
some preparatory priestly and royal ablutions, the Babylonian purications of
Nisannu 5 only deal with sacred precincts.
14. Whereas the Israelite high priest performs the sanctuary purication rit-
uals and is apparently immune to delement through the process, the Baby-
lonian high priest cannot even look on the rst phase of the Ezidas purgation
(before the Golden Heaven ritual) without becoming impure (lines 36465).
15. Severity of impurity resulting from ritual participation differs greatly.
Israelite assistants who lead Azazels goat into the wilderness and dispose of
carcasses contract minor impurity that lasts only until they launder their
clothes and bathe, after which they are permitted to reenter the camp (Lev
16:26, 28). Babylonian functionaries who participate in the kuppuru puri-
cation of the Ezida are much more severely affected. They must remain
outside Babylon for the rest of the festivalthat is, until the 12th day of
Nisannu (lines 36163).
Final days of the Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring,
like the Israelite Day of Atonement, involve accountability
for loyalty and determination of destiny
Thus far we have focused on Nissanu 5 of the Babylonian New Year Festi-
val of Spring. Highlights of subsequent festival days are as follows: After arriv-
ing in Babylon on Nissanu 5 and staying overnight in the Urash Gate, the god
Nab goes the next day to Ehursagtila, the temple of the god Ninurta, where
he symbolically slays two rival deities. Then he makes his way to Marduks
Esagila temple complex, where his triumph is celebrated, and he takes up
temporary residence in his Ezida chapel. The climax of the festival begins on
Nissanu 8, when the city gods of the kingdom determine a supreme destiny
for Marduk, whom they hail as their king in the presence of the people at the
courtyard of the Esagila. Then the gods, led by the human king, go in proces-
sion to the akitu-chapel on the outskirts of the city of Babylon, where they
spend several nights before returning to the Esagila in the city on Nisannu
11.
84
Within akitu festivals generally, M. Cohen regards this escorting of the
gods statue into the city from the akitu-house as the essential ceremony, en-
84. Van der Toorn, The Babylonian New Year Festival, 33536; idem, Form and
Function, 34; cf. J. A. Black, The New Year Ceremonies in Ancient Babylon: Tak-
ing Bel by the Hand and a Cultic Picnic, Religion 11 (1981) 4548; Cohen, The Cul-
tic Calendars, 439, 44751.
acting the basic theme of the festival, i.e., the god has just entered his city
and been declared chief god of the city.
85
Two elements of the nal days of the festival are of special signicance to us:
1. On Nisannu 8, just as the gods pay tribute to Marduk, so the servants of
the human king pledge allegiance to him by kissing his feet when the divine
assembly proclaims a happy destiny for him.
86
K. van der Toorn adds:
Epistolary documents show that ofcials from different regions of Babylo-
nia were in the capital at the beginning of the year. To them, the day for
reverencing the god was at the same time an occasion for the blessing of
the king. In keeping with a time-honoured tradition, members of the
temple-personnel and royal servants had to be annually re-appointed; this
took place at the opening of the new year. Depending on their loyalty to the
king and their behaviour in ofce, civil servants could be nominated to a
higher post or be relinquished to an insignicant position. The presence at
the Akitu-festival was sometimes in more than one way a test of allegiance
for dignitaries and vassals, since treaties regulating the royal succession
could be concluded at the same occasion.
87
So accountability for loyalty is an important factor in this yearly festival. Sim-
ilarly, we have found that the Israelites are accountable for their loyalty to
Yhwh, as shown before and during the Day of Atonement. However, on this
occasion all Israelites, not just cultic or civil ofcials, are required to express
homage to their divine king through self-denial (Lev 16:29, 31; 23:2732;
Num 29:7). No human king is involved.
2. At the conclusion of the Babylonian festival, the assembly of gods con-
venes again in the courtyard of the Esagila and proclaims the destinies for
the coming year.
88
Whatever the precise nature of these destinies may be,
undoubtedly they are regarded as affecting the prosperity of the kingdom
and its people.
89
This emphasis on destiny parallels at least to a certain ex-
tent the biblical judgment theme of the Day of Atonement and the rabbinic
idea of judgment at the New Year (m. Ros Has. 1:2; b. Ros Has. 16ab;
y. Ros Has. 1.3).
90
In addition to the usual ceremonies, the Babylonian king could enact
an ofcial cancellation of debts (anduraru) at the New Year and release
85. Ibid., 404; cf. 440.
86. Van der Toorn, Form and Function, 3; cf. 5.
87. Ibid., 5.
88. Ibid., 4.
89. Cf. Frankfort, Kingship, 33133.
90. Cf. ibid., 332.
Chapter 17 376
some prisoners.
91
This is somewhat similar to the liberty (\ ) pro-
claimed on the Day of Atonement at the beginning of the Israelite Jubilee
year (Lev 25:910).
92
Van der Toorn recognizes that in terms of the involvement and merriment
of the people at the multi-day Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring, this
celebration parallels the Israelite harvest festival of Booths that lasts for a week
plus one day in the autumn, beginning on Tishri 15 (Lev 23:3436, 3943),
93
which appropriately follows removal of negative aspects of the relationship
between Yhwh and his people on Tishri 10, the Day of Atonement. But there
are also parallels between the Babylonian festival and the Israelite obser-
vances of Tishri 1 and Tishri 10. On Tishri 1 the Israelites are remembered
before Yhwh, the royal guardian of their destiny, by means of a vn \aI,
remembrance of short blasts (Lev 23:24; cf. Num 10:9; 23:21"o nvn,
short blasts of a king, referring to Yhwh in the war camp of Israel).
94
In post-
biblical tradition this day became the autumn New Year (Rosh Hashanah).
95
Tishri 10 is the Day of Atonement, with which we will nd a number of im-
portant connections. So it appears that the multi-day Babylonian festival
serves as the functional equivalent, at least for spring, of all three Israelite au-
tumn festivals.
96
91. Van der Toorn, Form and Function, 5, referring to 2 Kgs 25:2730, which
reports the release of the Judahite King Jehoiachin by the Babylonian King Amel-
Marduk a few days before the New Year. On royal cancellation of debts (anduraru) in
Mesopotamia, cf. CAD A/2 11617.
92. Cf. R. Gane, The Laws of the Seventh and Fiftieth Years, JAGNES 1 (1990)
216.
94. Cf. S. Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israels Worship (trans. D. R. Ap-Thomas; Ox-
ford: Blackwell, 1962) 1:122. J. Milgrom concludes that all three festivals of the sev-
enth monththe ter call on the rst day, the fast day on the tenth, and the
circumambulation of the altar with waving fronds and other vegetation for seven
days, from the fteenth through the twenty-secondas well as the tradition of a water
libation offered during these days combine into a single-minded goal: to beseech
God for adequate and timely rain in the forthcoming agricultural year (Leviticus 23
27 [AB 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2001] 2018; cf. 204346).
95. Van der Toorn cites some evidence for a preexilic autumn New Year (Form
and Function, 7).
96. This would appear to provide additional support for Milgroms argument for
the unity of the Israelite festivals of the seventh month (Leviticus 2327, 204546). He
remarks: My student R. Gane has noticed that the Hittite Telepinu festival, observed
in both the fall and the spring, included all the elements that characterize Israels au-
tumn festivalssolemnity and joy, communal feast and cultic puricationlending
credence to the possibility that all three festivals compose a single unit (p. 2045).
Black maintains that the complex Babylonian New Year ceremonies developed over a
J. Milgrom argues that the Day of Atonement was originally a joyful cele-
bration without a public fast (16:29, 31; 23:2732; Num 29:7) and the som-
ber tone associated with it. His reasons are that the Day of Atonement on
Tishri 10 was probably the climax of a 10-day New Years festival and it was
the beginning of the Jubilee year of liberty (Lev 25:910). Furthermore,
m. Taan. 4:8 describes the Day of Atonement as a happy time, when the
daughters of Jerusalem went out to dance in the vineyards and young men
could choose brides (cf. Judg 21:1923).
97
If Milgrom is right, the early Day
of Atonement had an atmosphere of feasting, rather than fasting, similar to
that which prevailed during much of the Babylonian New Year Festival of
Spring. However, m. Yoma 7:4 shows how celebration could follow solem-
nity on the Day of Atonement, so that the two moods can be complementary
rather than mutually exclusive. This passage describes how the high priest
celebrates with his friends when he emerges safely from the temple. At the
end of tractate Yoma (8:9), R. Aqiba rejoices for another reason: through the
(solemn) events of the great Day, God has puried Israel.
98
Although there could be joy on the Day of Atonement, especially every
50th year at the time of Jubilee release, in the present form of the biblical
text joy in the seventh month climaxes with the pilgrim Festival of Booths
(Sukkot) rather than on the Day of Atonement. As B. Levine points out,
scheduling the Day of Atonement only a few days earlier ensured that the
sanctuary and, hence, the people would be restored to a state of tness in
time for the celebration of the autumn Sukkot festival.
99
The progression of
98. For the idea of God rejoicing on Yom Kippur when he takes away the sins of
Israel, see S. Agnon, Days of Awe (New York: Schocken, 1948) 186, citing Seder
Eliyahu Rabbah I. A much later Jewish story perceptively illustrates a related kind of
Day of Atonement joy: The Baal Shem Tov, may his merit shield us [18th cent.],
once came to a certain city before Rosh ha-Shanah. He asked the inhabitants of the
city, Who is the Reader here during the Days of Awe? They said to him, The rabbi
of the city. The Baal Shem Tov asked, How does he conduct the prayers? They said
to him, He chants all the confessions of Yom Kippur with joyful melodies. The Baal
Shem Tov sent after the rabbi and asked him, Why do you sing the confessions joy-
fully? Said the rabbi to him, Lo, a servant who is cleaning the courtyard of the king,
if he loves the king, is very happy cleaning the refuse from the courtyard, and sings joy-
ful melodies, for he is giving pleasure to the king. Said the Baal Shem Tov, May my
lot be with yours! (ibid., 22021, citing Or Yesharim).
99. B. Levine, Leviticus (JPS Torah Commentary: Philadelphia: Jewish Publica-
tion Society, 1989) 162.
long period as an accretion of several elements from various cults (The New Year
Ceremonies, 4956). On the long history and development of akitu festivals, see Co-
hen, The Cultic Calendars, 400453.
Chapter 17 378
autumn festivals makes good sense: there is a reminder that Yhwh is Israels
sovereign deliverer (Tishri 1), Yhwh as King judges between loyal and dis-
loyal subjects (Tishri 10), and Yhwh celebrates his kingship with his loyal
subjects (Tishri 1521).
100
This logic indicates that a fast is appropriate on
Tishri 10.
Conclusion
We have found that theodicy plays a role in the Nanshe New Year and in
the Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring. However, in these contexts di-
vine judgment is separate from the purication of sacred places, unlike the Is-
raelite Day of Atonement, in which theodicy is enacted through the
cleansing of the sanctuary.
101
While there are signicant differences between the Babylonian New Year
and the Israelite Day of Atonement, there is sufcient similarity to support
Milgroms argument that there is no reason to doubt the antiquity (i.e., preex-
ilic origin) of the Day of Atonement.
102
An early origin for the Day of Atone-
ment is further reinforced by my analysis of parallels between the Day of
Atonement and the Nanshe New Year, which indicates that some basic con-
cepts underlying the ancient Israelite Day of Atonement are attested in the
ancient Near East as early as the end of the third millennium b.c.
103
100. This progression complements rather than contradicts Milgroms view that
the seventh-month festivals contribute to supplication for rain (cf. above). For all
blessings, including the rain that is so crucial to their survival, the Israelites depend on
their divine King and are accountable for loyalty to him.
101. In the ancient Near East, purication of sancta can occur with no apparent
theodicy associated with it, as, for example, in the ceremonies of the 4th day of the
Hittite ninth-year festival of the god Telipinu. On this occasion several idols and a
cult pedestal are taken in procession to a river, in which they are ritually washed, and
then returned to the temple of the god (V. Haas and L. Jakob-Rost, Das Festritual
des Gottes Telipinu in Hanhana und in Kasha: Ein Beitrag zum hethitischen Fest-
kalender, AoF 11 [1984] 43, 46, 55, 58, 6065, 74, 7778; P. Taracha, Zum Fest-
ritual des Gottes Telipinu in Hanhana und in Kasha, AoF 13 [1986] 18083; Gane,
Ritual Dynamic Structure, 26176; idem, Schedules for Deities, 23639).
102. Milgrom, Leviticus 116, 106771. My Schedules for Deities article has
strengthened this argument by demonstrating macrostructural parallels between the
Israelite Day of Atonement, the 5th day of the Babylonian New Year Festival of Spring,
and the 4th day of the Hittite ninth-year festival of Telipinu, which is solidly dated to
the second millennium b.c. Compare the arguments from comparative evidence ad-
duced by M. Weinfeld (Social and Cultic Institutions, 95129).
103. This does not mean, of course, that the Israelites borrowed from the
Nanshe cult.
379
Conclusion:
Cult and Character
Behind the veil of the ancient Israelite cultic system is Yhwhs role as
Israels King and Judge. The sanctuary where he is enthroned stands for his
character, reputation, and authority. Just as a human kings throne is af-
fected by the condition of his subjects, so Yhwhs sanctuary receives
the impact of human imperfection among the surrounding Israelites. Their
mortality is incompatible with his holiness. Their sins are incompatible
with his righteousness.
For Yhwh to continue dwelling among his faulty people, his reputation
must be cleared periodically so that it will not become too seriously com-
promised. This clearing takes place on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16),
when Yhwhs honor is absolved of any perceived taint with regard to the
physical imperfections (n\xoo) of the Israelites because they are puried,
with regard to the wanton/deant sins (cvOo) of the disloyal because they
are condemned, and with regard to the forgiven sins (n\xon) of the loyal
because they have accepted the sacricial remedies that he has provided
and demonstrated their ongoing loyalty and penitence by obediently prac-
ticing self-denial and resting from work on the Day of Atonement. While it
would be pointless to demand absolute perfection from a people unable to
give it, he can require loyalty that includes acceptance of his remedies for
imperfection.
From numerous details of pentateuchal cultic legislation, the present
study has established that expiable sins are removed from their offerers by pu-
rication offerings throughout the year (e.g., Lev 4), and these are included
among the evils purged from the sanctuary in a corporate second phase of oa
on the yearly Day of Atonement (ch. 16). Penetrating a long-standing puzzle,
I have found a reason for this second phase: when Yhwh forgives guilty
people, he incurs judicial responsibility (\v) by creating an imbalance be-
tween justice and kindness that affects his reputation as ruler (cf. 2 Sam 14:9).
Restoration of equilibrium is enacted through ritual purication of the sanc-
tuary, which represents vindication of Yhwhs administrative justice as he
sheds judicial responsibility. As a result, Israelites who show their continuing
loyalty to him receive the secondary benet of moral cleansing/clearing in
Conclusion: Cult and Character 380
the sense that the forgiveness already granted them is conrmed when the
Forgiver is vindicated.
Cultic penitence through sacrices and related practices in Lev 45 and
16 is not yet the repentance found later in Leviticus, which is effective even
in exile apart from animal sacrice (26:4045). Nor is it the fuller repentance
of the prophets, which stresses reformation of behavior in daily life along with
change of attitude.
1
However, by making confession (5:5) and restitution
(5:16, 2324[6:45]) conditions for divine forgiveness in some cases expiable
by purication or reparation offerings and by requiring a demonstration of
penitence through self-denial on the part of those whose expiable sins
(n\xon) have already been forgiven through sacrice (16:2931), Leviticus
points beyond mere freedom from condemnation to moral rehabilitation and
restoration of the whole divine-human shared life experience. The fact that
forgiveness (n"o) is granted by the divine will alone (4:20, 26, 31, 35) closes
the door to hypocritical rituals performed by those who presume upon
Yhwhs clemency while persisting in their sins.
2
While I have found two phases of sacricial oa to remedy expiable
sinsremoval from offerers and then from the sanctuaryby contrast with
J. Milgroms purgation of the sanctuary alone, my conclusions provide fur-
ther support for his profound idea that theodicy is basic to the Israelite sys-
tem of expiatory sacrices. Not only does decontamination of the sacred
dwelling on the Day of Atonement remove evil from the people that would,
if left to accumulate excessively, inevitably cause Yhwh to abandon it and
the people to destruction; I have found that the two-phased sacricial reme-
dies available for nondeant offenses but not for deant wrongs dramatically
proclaim that the character of God is just and good.
Although I have interpreted the Israelite ritual system synchronically as it
appears in the nal form of the biblical text, some historical factors have
come to light. Enactment of theodicy in a cultic context, involving judgment
according to the personal standards of a deity, already appears in the Nanshe
Hymn, which dates to the end of the third millennium b.c. Legal concepts
of clemency and justice with regard to loyal or disloyal persons, which under-
lie the Israelite system of nxon sacrices and inform its technical terminol-
ogy (e.g., \v, culpability), already play a role in narratives of 2 Sam 14 and
1. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 1722 (AB 3A; New York: Doubleday, 2000) 142526.
2. Cf., e.g., Isa 1:1020; m. Yoma 8:9.
Conclusion: Cult and Character 381
1 Kgs 2 concerning David and Solomon, who are notable in the biblical text
for administering justice to their people (2 Sam 8:15; 1 Kgs 10:9; cf. Ps 72).
3
The comparisons just mentioned buttress Milgroms conclusion that the
Day of Atonement rituals could have functioned at an early (i.e., preexilic)
date.
4
This kind of indirect evidence by no means proves that the biblical rit-
ual texts reached their nal form in the preexilic period,
5
but it does lend
some weight to the possibility that they reect reality more closely than schol-
ars have thought.
3. On the biblical characterization of David and Solomon in this regard, see
M. Weinfeld, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (Jerusalem:
Magnes / Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 4554.
4. J. Milgrom, Leviticus 116 (AB 3; New York: Doubleday, 1991) 106771.
5. Cf. J. Blenkinsopp, An Assessment of the Alleged Pre-Exilic Date of the Priestly
Material in the Pentateuch, ZAW 108 (1996) 5056. On the problem of the relation-
ship between the language of the Priestly texts and the cultic reality they represent,
cf. J. Porter, Leviticus (CBC; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) 6, 124;
R. Rendtorff, Two Kinds of P? Some Reections on the Occasion of the Publishing
of Jacob Milgroms Commentary on Leviticus 116, JSOT 60 (1993) 7880; Blenkin-
sopp, An Assessment, 496, 517. P. Budd queries: One point that needs to be kept in
mind in this debate is what precisely we are trying to date. Is it the coming into exist-
ence of P, and if so, are we interested in its present or its earliest recognisable form?
Or are we dating the point at which P, as part of the Torah, became a pervasive inu-
ence in the life of the community? (review of Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 116, JSS
38 [1993] 142).
383
Indexes
Index of Authors
Aartun, K. 28, 32, 34, 222, 247, 255, 260, 262,
313
Agnon, S. Y. 233, 312, 338, 377
Albright, W. F. 325
Anderson, A. 333
Anderson, G. A. 21, 23, 37, 66, 83, 8587,
205206
Anderson, M. 272, 306
Andr, G. 190, 200201, 285, 319
Aqiba (rabbi) 377
Baal, J. van 16, 6061, 259
Baentsch, B. 29, 38, 4142, 70, 72, 127, 166,
186, 261262, 270, 277, 298, 313
Baker, D. 21, 31
Ballenger, A. F. 151, 272
Bamberger, B. J. 249, 315
Barker, M. 237
Barr, J. 13, 37, 51, 66, 195, 270, 327
Baumgarten, A. 167, 186189
Beek, A. van de 329
Bell, C. 3, 1415, 18
Bellefontaine, E. 338340
Benzinger, I. 3233
Bergen, R. 341
Bertholet, A. 33
Bidmead, J. 362
Black, J. A. 373374, 376
Blackman, A. 61
Block, D. I. 328
Bonar, A. A. 63, 177, 181, 221, 239
Bovati, P. 51, 100, 240
Brichto, H. C. 56, 65, 67, 112, 116117, 127
128, 147, 193, 262, 306, 361
Brongers, H. 311, 313
Brueggemann, W. 324325, 330
Buber, M. 324
Budd, P. J. 212, 381
Bchler, A. 5, 39, 52, 63, 65, 106107, 158,
160161, 202, 210, 231, 287, 301
Burnside, J. 272
Bush, G. 38, 181, 250
agirgan, G. 362, 365
Calvin, J. 38, 178, 204, 247, 285
Caplice, R. 320, 357
Carson, W. 322
Cassuto, U. 80, 325
Cazelles, H. 32, 89, 186, 251
Chapman, A. 33, 230
Chavalas, M. 335
Chess, W. 19
Clamer, A. 38, 74, 186, 206, 315
Clements, R. 186
Cohen, H. 317, 320
Cohen, M. 309, 362363, 370, 374, 377
Cover, R. C. 66, 200, 328
Crawford, R. G. 261
Crenshaw, J. 324325, 329, 331
Crsemann, F. xix, 37, 39, 207, 210, 213, 233
Culbertson, P. 272, 306
Davidson, A. B. 206
Davies, D. 11, 203, 248, 332
Delitzsch, F. 38, 41, 6263, 7475, 81, 96,
100, 166, 186, 206, 244, 251, 253, 265, 271,
281, 314
De Vries, S. 347
Dillmann, A. 34, 58, 76, 81, 89, 91, 127, 166,
207, 227, 250, 259, 262, 270,
306
Douglas, M. xix, 3, 10, 16, 186, 192193, 217
Driver, G. R. 8, 248
Driver, S. R. 29, 33, 5152, 60, 112, 132, 166,
194, 200, 219, 249, 261
Eaton, J. H. 324325, 369
Eerdmans, B. D. 33, 76, 226, 314
Ehrlich, A. B. 34, 81, 101, 226, 245
Eleazar (rabbi) 64
Elliger, K. 20, 32, 34, 92, 221, 262, 285, 291
Ellington, J. 55, 66, 82, 167, 220, 253, 285,
313
Elliott, R. H. 206
Engnell, I. 319, 373
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 3
Feinberg, C. L. 38, 247, 253, 259
Finn, A. 27
Fishbane, M. 86
Fokkelman, J. 349
Frankfort, H. 309, 373, 375
Fretheim, T. 332
Friedman, R. E. 100, 274
Frymer-Kensky, T. 153, 199, 294, 297, 328
Fglister, N. 112, 201
Gaebelein, F. E. 345, 348
Gammie, J. 136, 141143
Gane, R. xx, 7, 1415, 1820, 35, 48, 61, 63,
70, 7980, 171, 180, 223, 275, 282283,
309, 325, 362, 364, 369, 376, 378
Garnet, P. 67, 112, 138, 195, 262, 269
Garsiel, M. 346, 350
Geller, S. A. 173, 217, 219220, 233, 249,
259, 317318, 325, 330
Gennep, A. van 12, 59, 196, 309, 369
Gerstenberger, E. 9, 39, 41, 5657, 169, 186,
210, 253, 285
Gese, H. xix, 58
Gigch, J. van 19
Gilders, W. 6, 76, 171, 194
Ginsburg, C. D. 38, 233, 245, 249, 261
Goldman, E. 64, 307308, 314
Gorman, F. H. xxi, 45, 78, 12, 14, 17, 22,
28, 35, 37, 45, 56, 64, 106, 153, 164, 171,
174, 178, 183, 185186, 188190, 199, 201,
219, 245, 253, 255, 262263, 272, 279, 288,
296, 309, 314, 331
Grabbe, L. 7, 22, 25, 52, 198, 247
Gray, G. B. 66, 184, 217, 259, 261, 273, 310
Gray, J. 349
Green, A. 3
Greenberg, M. 211, 247, 328, 337, 345
Grimes, R. L. 34, 14, 16, 49, 9293
Gruenwald, I. 12, 19, 305
Gurney, O. R. 247
Haas, V. 378
Hagan, H. 339, 341
Hallo, W. W. 21, 248
Hanson, K. C. 66, 197, 272
Hanson, P. D. 250
Haran, M. 166
Harrington, H. 153
Harrison, R. K. 210, 294, 297, 313, 327
Hartelius, G. 37
Hartley, J. 187, 217, 286
Hasel, G. F. 40, 178, 224, 231, 251, 262, 276
277, 282
Hausmann, J. 51
Heimpel, W. 356360
Heinisch, P. 26, 32, 166, 237, 250, 253, 261,
279, 316
Hendel, R. 37, 63
Herrmann, J. 205, 233, 270, 277
Heusch, L. de 60
Hills, S. 100, 106, 116, 192, 194, 202, 365
Hoffmann, D. 27, 51, 58, 70, 76, 81, 100, 147,
166167, 203, 253, 262, 267268, 270271,
286287, 291
Hofmann, J. von 9495, 267268, 270271
Hoftijzer, J. 8, 339
Hubert, H. 3, 12, 17, 5960, 252
Ibn Ezra, Abraham (rabbi) 26, 57, 76, 86, 96,
99, 103, 132, 205, 251, 280, 313
Jacob, E. 52, 102, 177, 294
Jacobsen, T. 356357
Jakob-Rost, L. 378
Janowski, B. 32, 45, 49, 57, 84, 88, 9495, 108,
137, 192, 194, 244, 247248, 262, 292
Jastrow, M. 222
Jenson, P. 911, 36, 63, 89, 157, 175, 179, 195,
218219, 227, 235, 251, 260261, 285, 291,
310, 318319
Joanan (rabbi) 307
Jrgens, B. 246, 315
Kaiser, W. C. 46, 5859, 63, 67, 218, 233,
253254, 268, 298, 321, 327
Kalisch, M. M. 39, 59, 81, 166, 203, 258259,
263, 370
Kaufmann, Y. 97, 116, 247, 251, 259, 263,
373
Kearney, P. 325
Keil, C. F. 38, 41, 6263, 7475, 81, 96, 100,
166, 186, 206, 244, 251, 253, 265, 271, 281,
314
Kellogg, S. H. 4041, 246, 251, 253, 315316
Kennedy, A. R. S. 12, 51, 66, 195, 270
Kinghorn, K. 210
Kirk, G. 3, 7
Kirschner, R. 329
Kiuchi, N. 6, 8, 25, 28, 34, 36, 4041, 45, 51,
58, 63, 7475, 79, 8183, 8889, 9293, 95
96, 101, 115116, 131, 136141, 143, 145
148, 155, 157, 167, 175176, 178180, 186,
190, 194, 200201, 203, 225226, 230, 241,
244, 254, 256258, 261262, 270271, 273,
276, 278, 281, 286289, 293295, 300, 330
331, 337
Klawans, J. 232, 274
Kline, M. 319
Knierim, R. 9, 18, 20, 2223, 25, 3637, 56,
62, 64, 66, 101102, 104, 285286, 292,
294295, 297
Knight, G. 40
Knohl, I. 2627, 3435, 86, 156, 203, 226
227, 232, 310
Koch, K. 51, 102104, 204, 245, 259, 267,
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Koch, R. 327
Kornfeld, W. 34, 246, 250251
Korpel, M. 320
Kramer, S. N. 356
Kraus, H.-J. 324325
Kruspedai (rabbi) 307
Kuenen, A. 26, 29, 3133
Kuhrt, A. 355
Kurtz, J. H. 40, 56, 58, 6263, 66, 72, 74, 76,
81, 8991, 9395, 178, 184, 199, 201, 211,
226, 240, 250, 253, 255, 263, 267, 270271,
276, 279
Laato, A. 324
Labuschagne, C. J. 209
Lambert, W. G. 321, 373
Landersdorfer, S. 32, 253, 255, 363, 370
Landsberger, B. 365
Lang, B. 194
Leach, E. 3, 17, 196, 249, 251, 321
Lemche, N. 18
Levine, B. 2122, 35, 50, 52, 58, 76, 81, 84,
89, 9697, 108, 128, 134, 144, 167, 182, 192,
194, 200, 202203, 207208, 210212, 220,
230, 233, 237, 240, 247, 249, 251, 253254,
257, 262263, 268, 292, 300, 310, 331, 336,
342343, 377
Lichtheim, M. 351
Livingston, G. H. 294
Lhr, M. 257
Long, B. O. 346
Loretz, O. 247248
Lyke, L. L. 340
Lyonnet, S. 112
Maass, F. 192193, 213, 234
Maccoby, H. 11, 128, 140, 145147, 149150,
152, 155156, 158160, 182, 198199, 201,
249250, 262, 269
Macholz, C. 51, 338
Malina, B. 5, 14, 16, 337
Marx, A. 28, 195196, 211, 277
Matthes, J. 55, 178, 186
Matthews, V. 335
Mattingly, G. 324
Mattingly, K. 59, 244
Mauss, M. 3, 12, 17, 5960, 252
Mays, J. L. 251, 310, 327
McCarter, P. K. 340
McCarthy, D. J. 64, 174, 366, 372
McKeating, H. 339340
McLean, B. H. 171, 210, 272
Mdebielle, A. 67, 174, 206, 233, 262, 286,
305, 332
Mendenhall, G. 348
Messel, N. 3233, 45
Meyers, C. 2728, 76
Milgrom, J. 46, 8, 2122, 28, 30, 34, 3738,
4555, 5859, 62, 6466, 6870, 7582, 84,
86, 8889, 91, 93, 9699, 101, 103104,
106109, 112, 114121, 123, 125129, 131
132, 134145, 147160, 162163, 165167,
169173, 175, 177191, 194197, 199203,
205208, 210212, 217, 220, 222223, 225,
230233, 235, 237239, 243244, 246, 248,
250252, 255259, 262263, 268275, 277
280, 282, 286290, 296299, 308, 310311,
313315, 319, 326328, 331, 333, 337, 355,
359, 361, 364, 367, 369370, 373, 376378,
380381
Moor, J. C. de 295, 324, 355, 357,
371
Morris, L. 193, 233
Mowinckel, S. 376
Moyer, J. C. 247
Muffs, Y. 336
Myers, J. 333
Neches, S. 233
Nelson, R. 347, 349
Nielsen, K. 238
Noordtzij, A. 13, 33, 251, 253, 285286, 306,
315, 327, 366
Norlin, J. 19
Noth, M. 20, 2829, 3334, 47, 51, 56, 64,
8889, 235, 237, 250, 262, 279
OConnor, M. 112
Olaffson, G. 51, 99, 104, 233, 263, 334, 337
Oort, H. 3133
Oppenheim, A. L. 61, 210, 364
Orlinsky, H. 289
Pallis, S. A. 373
Patterson, P. 57
Payne, R. xxi, 60, 283
Perdue, L. 349, 351
Pter, R. 57, 244
Pter-Contesse, R. 55, 66, 82, 167, 220, 253,
285, 313
Phillips, A. 208209, 212, 338, 340
Philo of Alexandria 313
Podella, T. 313
Porter, J. 26, 3334, 5758, 160, 167, 186187,
199200, 210, 253, 262, 288289, 327, 358
359, 363, 371, 381
Pritchard, J. B. 362
Rainey, A. F. 2122, 66, 219, 237
Ramban (rabbi) 8586, 206, 261
Rashi (rabbi) 66, 81, 85, 132, 149, 167, 206,
210, 262
Rattray, S. 55
Rendtorff, R. 8, 22, 2728, 31, 36, 38, 4041,
4951, 5455, 65, 67, 76, 84, 128, 192, 199,
203, 223, 232233, 280, 287, 292, 381
Reventlow, H. G. 329
Rigby, P. 252, 327
Ringgren, H. 173, 199, 234
Robinson, G. 264, 292, 295
Rodrguez, A. 9, 3032, 40, 56, 63, 67, 83, 98
100, 103, 114, 128, 145, 149, 154, 173, 176,
178179, 181, 191, 204, 207208, 244245,
251, 253, 258, 261, 263, 276, 285, 293, 325
326, 351
Rogers, J. S. 346, 348, 350351
Rooker, M. F. 29, 66, 207208, 233, 246, 253
Sabourin, L. 112
Sachs, A. 362, 364
Sanders, P. 295
Sasson, J. M. 330
Sauer, A. von R. 102, 297
Saydon, P. 205206
Schenker, A. 6, 9, 28, 3839, 5253, 5657,
64, 6769, 171, 184, 192, 205, 207, 209, 211,
233, 269, 294, 296, 298, 306
Schur, I. 222, 227
Schwartz, B. J. xiii, 12, 3536, 101103, 146,
201, 209, 231, 240, 256257, 262, 272, 288
289, 294, 300, 318320, 337, 339
Scolnic, B. 347348
Seebass, H. 285, 297
Shea, W. H. 217, 233234, 237, 241, 290, 328
Shelton, L. 11
Simon, M. 307
Simon, U. 339
Snaith, N. 2526, 28, 32, 59, 70, 89, 173, 203,
205, 294
Sommer, B. 371
Spiro, A. 205
Staal, F. 48, 10, 19, 48, 283
Stade, B. 3233
Stamm, J. J. 52, 297, 340
Strack, H. L. 76, 250, 285
Strand, K. A. 307
Streane, A. 33, 230
Sumpter, G. 202
Taracha, P. 378
Thompson, J. 333
Thureau-Dangin, F. 362
Toeg, A. 86
Toorn, K. van der 319, 357, 363, 369371,
374376
Treiyer, A. 3032, 40, 107, 177178, 188,
247248, 276, 282, 295, 297
Tunyogi, A. 298
Turner, V. 12, 14, 49, 369
Valeri, V. 16
Vaux, R. de 32, 53, 62, 166, 173, 186, 210,
251252, 260, 366
Vogt, E. 7
Vriezen, T. 5, 32, 88, 185
Walsh, J. 345, 347, 349
Waltke, B. K. 112
Walton, J. 335
Warning, W. 35, 217
Watts, J. 29, 37, 319320
Weng, S. 184
Weinfeld, M. 234, 247, 249, 286, 309, 319,
325, 355, 364, 370371, 378, 381
Wellhausen, J. 2627, 45, 226227
Wenham, G. J. 76, 85, 149, 182, 212, 280, 333
Wenham, J. 321, 332
Wesselius, J. W. 348
White, H. A. 33, 60, 166, 249, 261
Whitelam, K. W. 337, 341
Whitney, B. L. 324, 328
Wilson, B. xx, 12, 1820
Wilson, M. 5, 910, 1415
Wold, D. 145, 201, 208
Wright, D. 3, 10, 1415, 28, 34, 49, 5355, 61,
70, 77, 96, 117, 148, 153154, 164, 166, 170,
172173, 178, 180, 182184, 186187, 190,
192, 194195, 198201, 204, 207, 212, 239,
243248, 251252, 255, 257258, 271272,
277, 282, 287, 291, 296, 310, 316, 365367,
370, 372
Wuthnow, R. 49
Yadin, Y. 233
Yaron, R. 349
Youngblood, R. 285
Zimmerli, W. 101102, 104, 294
Zohar, N. 103, 168172, 174, 177179, 184,
245, 293
387
Index of Scripture
Old Testament
Genesis
1:12:3 325
1:28 199
2:3 315
2:6 73
3 201, 263
3:67 193
4:7 292
4:13 339
8:20 139
9:1 199
9:4 169
9:46 63
9:6 339
15:16 294
16:10 114
18 16
18:20 292
18:25 359
19:13 73
19:15 294, 339
22 333
22:2 139
22:7 139
22:8 139
22:13 139
23:17 79
30:16 222
31:2 73
31:5 73
31:36 294
31:39 170
32 195
32:20 106
32:21 194
33:18 73, 79
37:2328 353
4245 353
45:115 353
50:1521 353
50:17 292, 294, 340
Exodus
10:17 340
12 370
12:2 309
14:2 79
14:8 207, 209, 211
14:9 79
15:18 337
17:11 209
19:46 327
19:1015 327
Exodus (cont.)
19:15 312
20:56 320
20:10 315
20:11 315
21:12 339
21:14 347
21:16 353
21:28 339
22:8 294295
22:27 345
23:68 321
23:21 294
24:58 164
2529 27
25Numbers 10 54
25:8 231
25:16 161
25:17 225
25:21 161, 225
25:22 88, 319, 360
26:3334 28
26:35 80
27:2021 217
27:21 80
28 289
28:38 101, 103, 289, 299,
341
28:41 197
29 45, 132, 140, 142
29:7 45, 197
29:10 53, 79
29:12 45
29:14 97
29:15 53
29:21 45, 73
29:2930 45
29:36 64, 69, 109, 117,
131, 133, 137, 140, 222
29:3637 83, 130, 132,
140141, 238
29:37 137, 186
29:3842 217
29:44 140
30 27
30:110 2627, 226
30:6 74, 80
30:7 219
30:78 217, 308
30:710 328
30:8 74
30:9 227
30:910 227
Exodus (cont.)
30:10 20, 2627, 3031,
34, 46, 64, 7475, 109,
112, 133134, 136137,
140, 142, 181, 190, 218,
221, 226228, 238239,
254, 262, 277, 281, 372
30:1116 193
30:1721 220, 308
30:1921 368
30:20 189
30:2629 186, 238
30:30 197
31:15 315
3233 336
32:11 73
32:2529 331
32:30 213, 292
32:32 292, 334, 361
32:34 292
33:20 237
34:6 316, 320, 343
34:67 335, 343
34:7 100, 104, 263, 285
286, 294, 297, 300, 320,
322, 334335, 343
34:9 263
34:24 73
34:35 73
35:2 315
36:1 289
40:5 80
40:911 238
40:10 140
40:13 197
40:1415 45
40:15 197
40:20 161
40:22 80
40:3438 29
Leviticus
1 20, 30, 221
17 21, 29, 31
116 25, 28, 294
1:19 62
1:3 74, 171
1:4 23, 5354, 5758, 84,
119
1:5 48, 6062, 67, 168,
171, 224
1:89 57, 61
1:9 56
Leviticus (cont.)
1:11 6061, 67, 168, 171
1:1213 61
1:13 48, 225
1:1415 54
1:15 84, 171
2:2 54, 60
2:23 70
2:8 54
2:9 60
2:910 70
2:13 47
3 49, 57
3:2 53, 55, 57, 6062,
168
3:35 8, 63
3:4 48
3:5 61
3:8 53, 55, 57, 6061, 79,
168
3:9 48, 50
3:911 8, 63, 65
3:11 61
3:13 53, 55, 57, 6061, 79,
168
3:1415 47
3:1416 8, 63, 65
3:15 48
3:16 61, 63, 65
3:1617 63
3:17 171
4 xx, 56, 21, 26, 28, 31,
4142, 79, 8186, 91
92, 140, 180, 191192,
212, 228, 239, 270, 273,
279, 281283, 290, 314,
321, 326, 353, 379
45 30, 40, 49, 128, 146,
155, 162, 206, 233, 321,
380
4:121 277
4:135 203
4:15:13 128, 140, 142,
271, 278
4:2 39, 71, 117, 161, 202,
211, 358
4:3 81, 269, 292
4:34 80
4:312 45, 71, 87
4:321 26, 81, 84
4:4 53, 57, 171, 176
4:57 77, 151
4:6 4, 41, 7275, 79, 87,
168, 180, 191, 228, 276,
280281
4:67 45, 64, 7778, 80
81, 275276, 280281
4:7 26, 62, 64, 74, 168,
220, 225, 228, 277, 282
4:89 48, 225
4:810 8
4:10 47, 78
4:1012 41
4:11 41, 279
Leviticus (cont.)
4:1112 5758, 70, 89,
279
4:12 30, 57, 81, 174, 178,
220, 277, 279
4:13 39, 161, 211
4:1314 202, 204, 239
4:1321 45, 71, 8385, 98
4:14 79, 171, 269, 292
4:15 5355, 57, 71, 176,
224
4:1618 77, 151
4:17 4, 7275, 79, 168,
180, 191, 228, 276, 280
281
4:1718 45, 64, 7778,
275276, 280281
4:18 62, 64, 74, 7677,
168, 220, 225, 228, 277
4:19 8, 48, 225
4:20 41, 5152, 56, 67,
8082, 91, 100, 109,
112, 123, 127128, 141,
161, 175, 194, 231, 264,
284, 293, 297, 316, 320,
380
4:2021 233
4:21 70, 89, 279, 297
4:22 21, 51, 106, 128, 161
4:2223 202, 204, 270
4:2226 4547, 84
4:2235 21, 46
4:23 46, 269, 292
4:24 46, 49, 53, 60, 176
4:25 46, 62, 64, 74, 151,
168, 225, 228, 275
4:26 8, 41, 47, 49, 51, 56,
65, 67, 69, 80, 82, 91,
106, 109, 112, 115, 117
118, 127128, 135, 137,
139, 141142, 161, 172,
194, 231, 246, 264, 269,
290, 292293, 299, 316,
331, 380
4:27 21, 161
4:2728 202, 204, 270
4:2731 46
4:2735 84
4:28 21, 269, 276, 292
4:2835 45
4:29 7, 13, 17, 53, 60, 171,
176
4:2931 21
4:30 13, 46, 62, 64, 74,
151, 168, 225, 228, 275
4:3031 7
4:31 8, 17, 21, 23, 41, 47
48, 5051, 56, 65, 67,
82, 91, 109, 112, 117,
127128, 137, 141, 161,
172, 194, 225, 231, 246,
259, 264, 293, 316, 380
4:32 21, 270
4:3235 46
Leviticus (cont.)
4:33 17, 53, 60, 171, 176
4:34 46, 62, 64, 74, 168,
225, 228, 275
4:35 8, 17, 41, 4748, 50
51, 56, 65, 67, 82, 91,
112, 117, 123, 127128,
137, 141, 161, 172, 225,
231, 246, 264, 269, 293,
316, 380
4:36 50
5 150, 196, 207208, 211
212, 289
5:1 30, 96, 100, 102, 127,
146, 184, 203, 205, 208,
210212, 269, 292294,
299, 320, 339
5:14 204205
5:113 202203, 212
5:23 150, 153, 199, 204,
212
5:24 203, 205, 211212,
292
5:213 153
5:3 289
5:4 66, 224, 289
5:5 58, 203, 206, 211, 244,
264, 269, 380
5:56 205, 210, 212, 220,
293294, 299, 321
5:6 17, 58, 69, 84, 102,
115, 117118, 127, 141
142, 150, 204205, 269,
292, 299
5:67 219
5:610 8
5:613 150, 196
5:710 30, 84, 249
5:713 54, 57, 321
5:8 176
5:9 73, 84
5:10 51, 69, 84, 115, 117
118, 123, 128, 135, 150,
299
5:1112 68
5:1113 8, 17, 60, 67, 252,
260
5:12 17, 176
5:13 68, 123, 127, 150
5:1426 31, 119
5:15 54
5:16 67, 119, 194, 196,
262, 380
5:17 30, 294
5:1719 66
5:18 54, 119, 127, 194,
196
5:2026 86, 203, 205208,
210, 306
5:2123 292
5:2124 205
5:2324 211, 380
5:24 67
5:25 54
Leviticus (cont.)
5:26 119, 194, 196
6 162
6:3 184
6:34 65
6:4 178, 184
6:5 65, 184
6:56 77
6:6 184
6:8 184
6:9 95
6:10 95, 184
6:1011 172
6:11 57, 167, 186
6:1415 77, 191
6:15 45
6:1516 60
6:16 89
6:1723 168
6:18 77, 91, 173, 175
6:1819 77, 188
6:19 8, 46, 48, 57, 70, 91
92, 98, 131
6:20 73, 165168, 172,
175, 184, 186, 197, 276
6:2021 77, 91, 165166,
171, 174, 177, 239
6:2022 188
6:21 57, 155, 167, 172
6:22 8, 46, 48, 5758, 70,
9192, 98
6:23 46, 67, 89, 99, 123,
136137
6:2324 188
6:24 188
6:25 189
6:26 57, 189
6:35 57
7 140
7:17 31, 54
7:2 62, 67, 165, 168, 171
7:5 66
7:6 91
7:67 70
7:7 8, 70, 130, 137, 262
7:710 70
7:8 57, 70
7:910 70
7:1518 167
7:1521 57
7:1536 63, 70
7:18 294
7:20 149, 289, 330
7:2021 147, 173, 179,
198199, 204
7:21 289
7:2627 171
7:3135 70
7:32 95
7:34 70, 95
7:36 95
8 22, 142, 190, 219, 369
89 12, 140
810 29
Leviticus (cont.)
8:6 131
8:10 73
8:1011 238
8:11 9, 64, 73, 130131
8:12 45, 197
8:14 53, 131
8:1417 63, 98, 132, 175,
196, 372
8:15 64, 67, 69, 83, 117,
122, 128, 130133, 137,
140141, 190, 197, 267,
271
8:17 70, 97, 131, 372
8:18 53
8:1821 196
8:2224 164
8:2228 196
8:2324 73
8:30 45, 73, 164, 197
8:33 131
8:3335 132
9 2627, 45, 55, 66, 82
83, 93, 98, 101, 140
9:15 218
9:7 99100, 123, 137138
9:716 30, 66
9:8 63
9:811 46, 93, 98, 132
9:821 22
9:9 45, 151
9:11 8990, 97, 181, 260
9:15 45, 78, 90, 93, 99
9:18 99
9:24 93, 330
10 29, 36, 9293, 227
10:1 27, 227
10:12 29, 92, 217
10:13 149, 207
10:2 330
10:4 73, 79
10:6 81
10:16 93
10:1618 20, 9293, 96
10:1620 40, 90, 99
10:17 8, 70, 9196, 99
101, 103105, 140, 181,
184, 254, 294, 299300,
322, 334336, 341, 343
10:18 99
10:19 92
10:20 92
1115 2930, 36, 286
11:25 166167
11:28 166167
11:3133 172
11:32 155
11:40 166167
11:42 289290
11:46 289290
12 152, 199
1215 140, 155, 162
12:2 114, 182
12:4 147, 149
Leviticus (cont.)
12:46 55, 113
12:5 182
12:6 30, 112, 271
12:68 50, 198, 246
12:7 50, 52, 112115,
117118, 120, 125, 175,
298, 331
12:78 151, 231, 234, 301,
317
12:8 30, 52, 114, 120, 126,
142, 271
1314 152, 199
13:6 167
13:34 167
13:54 167
13:58 167
14 117, 139, 141, 175,
199, 255, 258, 273, 278
14:4 181
14:47 249, 252, 255
14:49 55
14:6 33
14:67 164
14:7 33, 73, 126
14:8 116, 167, 176, 273
14:9 116, 126, 167, 176,
273
14:1020 176
14:1214 164
14:15 198
14:1718 164
14:18 164165
14:19 114118, 123, 128,
142, 165, 176, 198, 271,
289, 298
14:1920 30, 50, 317
14:20 84, 115116, 126,
139, 176, 273, 301
14:22 50, 198, 249
14:25 164
14:2829 164
14:29 164165
14:30 198
14:3031 50, 165, 249
14:31 30, 116, 126, 139,
198, 271
14:3353 147
14:3435 159
14:36 159, 161
14:47 167
14:49 50
14:4953 252, 255
14:51 74, 136, 255
14:52 33
14:53 33, 139, 255
15 117, 145, 152, 199
15:3 289
15:412 55, 116
15:58 166167, 273
15:10 158, 273
15:1011 166
15:12 155
15:13 55, 116, 126, 273
Leviticus (cont.)
15:1415 50
15:15 30, 112, 115119,
123, 151, 271, 273, 298,
317
15:17 155
15:18 199
15:19 182
15:20 182
15:2426 182
15:25 289
15:26 289
15:2627 55
15:28 55, 126
15:2930 50
15:30 30, 112, 116118,
123, 151, 271, 289, 298,
317
15:3031 209
15:31 29, 144145, 147,
154157, 162, 173, 175,
179, 198, 238, 271, 287,
289, 299, 319
15:33 182
16 xx, 6, 13, 20, 22, 2536,
42, 66, 68, 75, 8283, 98,
117, 131, 161162, 179,
191, 217, 219224, 226
228, 230, 232233, 239,
248, 254255, 259, 262,
267269, 273, 277, 279
281, 283, 293, 295298,
309, 315, 326, 328, 353,
356, 359, 361, 372, 379
16:1 29, 36, 227
16:12 217, 250
16:14 32
16:110 33
16:128 3435
16:2 28, 34, 147, 218,
227
16:228 28, 35
16:3 20, 28, 30, 34, 219
16:4 35, 189, 308
16:5 30, 59, 136, 185, 189,
218219, 239, 243, 252
253, 258260, 277
16:6 20, 89, 123, 136137,
223, 230
16:7 249
16:710 249, 308
16:8 23, 59, 243, 247249,
362
16:810 218, 222
16:815 224
16:9 20, 250251, 253
16:910 259
16:10 59, 82, 127, 136, 218,
242243, 247248, 250,
253, 255, 259, 261262,
265, 277, 300
16:11 31, 54, 89, 123, 137,
221, 223224, 230, 242
16:1114 20, 32
Leviticus (cont.)
16:1119 66, 223
16:1124 218
16:1125 218
16:1128 17, 31, 33, 218
16:12 27, 77
16:1213 22, 223, 227, 237,
365
16:1216 77, 218
16:1219 227
16:13 223, 237
16:1314 225
16:14 5, 22, 41, 64, 7375,
78, 230, 235
16:1415 45, 13, 30, 64,
7475, 134, 137, 226,
238, 255, 276, 280281,
308
16:1416 6, 8, 78, 181,
191, 221, 308
16:1419 46, 78, 159, 219,
275
16:1420 67
16:1422 13
16:15 20, 54, 7375, 78,
98, 223, 225, 230, 235,
239
16:1519 29, 41
16:16 4, 13, 17, 2728, 30,
32, 34, 3940, 62, 64, 69,
7578, 83, 98, 104, 106,
116119, 129, 133137,
139140, 154, 157, 159,
172, 174, 178181, 188,
207, 220222, 225228,
230, 234, 238, 240, 255
258, 265, 267268, 271,
274275, 277278, 280
282, 285293, 295297,
300301, 320, 322323,
327, 331, 343344, 361,
365, 373
16:1618 144
16:1619 152
16:17 28, 34, 39, 7677,
123, 134, 137, 226, 230,
363
16:18 2526, 32, 62, 76
77, 119, 122, 128, 137,
140, 222, 224225, 230,
255, 267
16:1819 13, 17, 20, 27, 64,
7778, 88, 98, 129, 132,
141, 181, 191, 218, 221,
228, 237239, 281, 308,
343344
16:1820 138
16:19 4, 6, 8, 32, 64, 73,
88, 140, 230, 238, 254
256, 267, 275, 291
16:20 28, 7677, 119, 122,
133134, 136, 138, 140,
144, 159, 163, 181, 222,
226, 230, 242
Leviticus (cont.)
16:2021 78
16:2022 33, 42, 218219,
242, 252, 325
16:21 8, 30, 39, 54, 5759,
104, 157, 161, 169, 172,
206207, 218, 223224,
234, 237, 240, 243245,
254258, 261, 264, 271,
277278, 285291, 293,
300, 322, 337, 367, 373
16:2122 39, 82, 136, 200,
213, 234, 243, 250, 256
257, 261, 293, 300, 341,
343
16:2128 23
16:22 104, 230, 243, 246,
248, 255, 262, 264, 277,
286, 291, 337
16:23 28, 32, 3435
16:2324 189, 246
16:24 23, 30, 32, 35, 66,
84, 119, 123, 126, 136
137, 186, 189, 219222,
263, 308
16:2425 189
16:25 20, 32, 219221,
223, 230, 237, 239240,
254
16:2528 13
16:26 35, 58, 161, 174,
200, 223, 230, 240, 243,
247249, 279, 365, 374
16:2628 92, 218
16:27 20, 28, 34, 67, 98,
134, 137, 144, 190, 219,
230, 237, 239, 254, 279,
298
16:2728 159, 174, 178,
223
16:28 20, 35, 57, 174, 183,
230, 237, 240, 279, 374
16:29 3032, 35, 98, 127,
224, 275, 306, 310, 312
313, 315, 322, 360, 375,
377
16:2931 162, 278, 310
311, 359, 380
16:2933 33
16:2934 3336, 118, 218,
232, 277, 291
16:30 31, 3940, 82, 98,
118, 120, 123127, 129,
136, 141, 175, 207, 222,
230234, 255, 263, 265,
272, 274275, 277, 284,
291, 293, 296, 301, 306,
310, 317, 322, 343, 357,
361
16:31 3031, 275, 306,
310, 312, 315, 322, 375,
377
16:32 35, 109, 134
16:3233 144
gutters narrowed this page!!!!
Leviticus (cont.)
16:3234 230
16:33 13, 17, 28, 3335,
7677, 98, 119, 122, 127,
134, 136, 140, 159, 163,
181, 222, 230, 267, 272,
278
16:34 26, 35, 3940, 115,
118, 127, 222, 277278,
291, 293, 296
17 65, 154
17:19 49, 251
17:36 65
17:39 171
17:7 251252, 254, 263
17:8 171
17:10 63, 171
17:1012 196
17:11 9, 57, 6263, 65,
169171, 330
17:12 63, 171
17:1314 171
17:14 63
17:15 154
17:16 150, 153154, 156
18:19 199, 289
18:20 233
18:2325 233
18:2430 233
18:2728 233
18:30 233
19 193, 217, 358
19:2 326
19:2022 49, 120
19:22 120, 127, 165, 194,
196, 262
19:31 233
19:3536 358
20:23 145, 201, 210
20:3 3031, 144145, 147
149, 151, 154157, 162,
175, 179180, 208, 233,
267, 270, 272, 274, 296
297, 305, 319, 323, 361
20:18 199, 204
20:26 327
21:14 144, 199
21:8 61
21:11 144, 199
21:17 61
21:21 61
21:22 61
22:3 204, 289
22:37 199
22:5 289
22:9 64
22:16 294
22:1825 46
22:25 61
23 35, 54, 197, 359
23:3 315
23:58 370
23:7 315
23:78 370
Leviticus (cont.)
23:8 315
23:19 252
23:21 315
23:2325 370
23:24 308, 315, 376
23:25 315
23:2632 34, 82, 233, 306,
310312, 356
23:27 31, 224, 311312
23:2728 222
23:2732 30, 275, 359,
375, 377
23:28 31, 33, 315
23:29 312, 359
23:2930 31, 306, 311,
322323, 350, 357, 361
23:30 312, 315
23:31 315
23:32 224, 311312, 315
23:3436 376
23:35 315
23:3536 370
23:36 315
23:39 315, 370
24:19 217
24:3 80
24:4 74
24:59 61
24:7 61
24:8 74
24:9 63
24:10 210
24:1023 207
24:1116 210
24:1323 331
24:14 264265
24:15 264
24:17 339
24:19 350
24:2122 264
24:23 210, 265
25:4 315
25:810 308
25:9 31, 222, 360
25:910 234, 376377
26:1439 233
26:18 292
26:21 292
26:24 292
26:28 292
26:4045 380
Numbers
5 289, 330, 343, 352
5:58 205206
5:67 292
5:68 206208
5:7 58, 206, 211, 244, 269
5:8 31, 137, 222, 262
5:1131 361
5:17 73
5:1724 330
5:19 289, 342
Numbers (cont.)
5:2728 330
5:28 342
6:67 145, 199
6:9 145
6:912 199, 204
6:11 30, 115, 118, 123,
135, 145
6:14 187, 197
6:16 197
7:1 140
7:87 252
7:89 88, 319, 360
8:5 121
8:57 122
8:522 197
8:6 121
8:621 121
8:7 73, 121122, 182
8:8 63, 121, 197
8:911 121122
8:12 30, 53, 120122, 136,
197, 246
8:1315 121122
8:15 122
8:21 120122, 126, 136,
141, 197, 231232, 246,
298
9:1522 29
10:9 376
11:1 330
11:33 330
12:10 199
12:11 292
14 212, 334, 336, 353
14:11 335
14:1112 335
14:1316 335
14:1719 334335
14:18 263, 286, 294, 297,
300, 335
14:1820 336
14:19 263, 334335
14:1924 335
14:20 335336
14:2138 335
14:3233 336
14:34 336, 339
14:37 330
15 26, 8386, 196, 204
206, 208, 212, 226
15:116 219
15:22 8586
15:2224 202
15:2226 8385
15:2229 86, 204205,
212, 292
15:2231 26, 49, 83, 85
86, 206, 211213
15:24 22, 220
15:2425 30
15:2428 196, 219
15:2429 211
15:25 51
Numbers (cont.)
15:26 246
15:27 202, 208
15:2729 84
15:2731 152
15:28 246
15:30 207, 209210, 306
15:3031 86, 175, 201,
204, 206208, 210212,
270, 292, 296298, 305,
323, 329330, 348, 361
15:31 206
15:3236 207, 212, 331
16 212, 330
16:6 27
16:67 330
16:1718 330
16:35 330
17:23 330
17:3 166
17:11 237
17:1213 237
18:1 101, 103, 294, 299
18:17 149
18:911 89
18:23 299
19 36, 154, 159, 166, 171,
184, 259, 275
19:110 153
19:4 61, 7374, 88, 146,
184, 191, 261
19:45 163
19:5 164, 183, 185
19:56 181
19:7 182, 279
19:78 171, 183
19:8 182, 279
19:89 223
19:9 141, 163, 178, 182,
184, 260
19:912 181
19:10 171, 182183, 279
19:1112 154
19:1120 320
19:1122 185
19:13 3031, 88, 144151,
153158, 162, 175, 179
180, 182, 184, 199, 201,
204, 270, 272, 274275,
289, 293, 296, 299, 305,
319, 323, 361
19:14 154
19:1415 153, 158159
19:1418 153
19:16 154
19:17 163, 184
19:18 73
19:19 69, 73, 141, 154
19:20 3031, 88, 144145,
147148, 151, 153158,
162, 175, 179180, 184,
199, 201, 204, 274275,
293, 296, 299, 305, 319,
323, 361
Numbers (cont.)
19:2021 182
20:3 296
23:21 337, 376
25:68 265
25:8 331
25:89 330
25:11 265
25:13 204, 265, 331
25:1415 265
27:18 244245
27:23 244
2829 12, 31, 54, 6263,
66, 83, 130, 197, 217, 221
28:18 217, 219, 308
28:2 61
28:3 221
28:6 221
28:10 221
28:11 221
28:15 45
28:1625 370
28:18 370
28:19 221
28:22 45, 63, 197
28:25 370
28:27 221
28:30 63, 197
29:5 45, 63, 197
29:7 31, 275, 310, 312,
315, 375, 377
29:711 31, 82, 217, 219,
233, 309
29:811 219, 364
29:11 20, 31, 4546, 218,
221, 239, 254, 372
29:12 370
29:35 370
3031 205
30:6 297
30:9 297
30:13 297
30:14 312
31:19 182
31:23 155, 182
32:23 292
33:3 209, 211
35:1621 339
35:2023 205, 210
35:31 344
35:33 31
Deuteronomy
1:1617 321
4:42 205, 210
12:5 319
12:11 319
12:16 6364
12:21 319
12:2325 63
13:6 265
14:2324 319
16:2 319
16:6 319
Deuteronomy (cont.)
16:11 319
17:7 31, 265
17:12 265
19:4 205, 210
19:6 205, 210
19:11 205, 210
19:19 350
21 61, 265
21:19 61, 185, 252,
293
21:36 265
21:4 62
21:7 265
21:8 265
22:1319 342
28:38 96
32:27 209
32:43 31
Joshua
7 208, 211
7:1418 249
7:1921 211
Judges
1:7 350
8:23 337
9:53 350
9:56 350
9:57 350
15:11 350
20:26 313
21:1923 377
1 Samuel
2:11 73
4:4 88, 319, 360
7:6 313
8:7 337
10:2021 249
15:25 340
22:4 73
24 353
25:24 339341
25:28 340
25:39 350
26:19 6768
31:13 313
2 Samuel
1:12 313
1:16 350
3 301, 353
3:21 348
3:28 348
3:29 344, 348
3:39 348
6:2 88, 319, 360
8:15 381
9:11 346
12:140 339
12:13 316
12:1314 353
2 Samuel (cont.)
13:22 339
13:2338 338
13:2829 339
13:38 339
14 322, 338, 344, 353, 380
14:13 338
14:57 338
14:7 339
14:8 338
14:9 300301, 319, 322,
338343, 379
14:10 338
14:11 338, 341
14:1317 341
14:1819 341
14:20 73
14:2123 341
14:24 341
14:26 341
14:31 342
15:24 319, 341
16:513 345
16:78 349
16:1522 341
16:2122 346
17:2729 345
18:915 341
1920 345
19:1 341
19:1724 345
19:18 345
19:1924 345
19:2021 345
19:24 350
19:25 345
19:2531 345
19:2729 345
19:30 345
19:3132 345
19:3240 345
20:810 345
24 332
24:24 321
1 Kings
12 301, 339, 346
1:14 346
1:510 346
1:1819 346
1:2426 346
1:3940 346
1:52 346
2 338, 346, 353, 381
2:5 348
2:56 302
2:59 344
2:12 341
2:30 347
2:3132 302
2:3133 347
2:32 350
2:3638 349
2:44 350
1 Kings (cont.)
2:4445 349
6:22 2728
7:48 27
8:5 114
8:32 322, 350
8:39 359
8:50 297
10:8 73
10:9 381
11:2627 209
12:6 73
12:19 294
2 Kings
1:1 294
2:42 350
3:5 294
3:7 286, 294
5:27 199
8:20 294
8:22 286, 294
9:33 168
15:5 199
16:14 73, 79
18:24 73
19:15 88, 360
25:2730 376
Isaiah
1:2 294
1:1020 380
1:1629 161
2:14 320
4:3 361
13:21 251, 263
34:14 251
36:9 73
37:16 88, 151
38:9 249
43:25 297
43:27 294
47:9 106
53 104
53:412 103
58 314
58:3 312
58:5 312
63:3 168
Jeremiah
2:8 294
4:14 113
7:911 147
7:3031 147
12:1 326
17:1 157158
17:22 315
18:23 193
24:2 114
31 318
31:34 318, 353
33:8 113, 234, 294
51:51 324
Ezekiel
8 328
8:6 328
9 362
911 272
9:2 362
9:3 231, 314, 328, 361
362
9:10 264
9:11 362
10:4 231, 314, 328, 361
10:1819 231, 314, 328,
361
11:21 264
11:2223 231, 314, 328,
361
16:43 264
18:19 103
18:21 213
18:22 297
20:9 319
21:29 286
22:31 264
23:29 156
23:3739 147
36:33 113, 234
40:1 360
43:20 117, 136137
43:22 117
43:23 117
43:24 47
43:26 136137
44:19 189
45:18 117
45:20 137
45:1820 32, 230, 328,
370
45:22 137
Hosea
7:12 352
Joel
1:14 313
2:12 313
2:15 313
Obadiah
1:15 350
Jonah
3:5 313
Micah
5:8 209
7:18 297
Habakkuk
3:1 249
Zechariah
3:13 263
3:15 238
3:35 193
Zechariah (cont.)
5:511 250
Malachi
1:614 321
Psalms
1:6 359
3:1 249
9:8 360
11:4 62, 88
19:13 204
19:14 204
24 368
24:34 368
24:4 368
24:7 368
25:7 297
26:6 342
32:1 297
32:12 285286
32:5 285286, 294
35:13 312313
44:2122 359
47 337
49:89 321
50:913 321
51 234, 353
51:3 297
51:4 112, 234, 291
51:9 234
51:12 234
59:4 286
65:4 213, 297
69:29 361
72 381
73 324325, 330
73:13 342
73:17 324, 328
78:38 213
Psalms (cont.)
79:9 213
80:2 88
82 337, 359
85:11 320, 344
89:14 320
93 337
94:11 359
9699 337
96:1013 337
97:2 319, 337
97:8 337
98:9 337
99:1 88
99:4 337
103:3 202
103:12 253, 262, 297
139:16 361
146:9 359
Job
1:5 84
1:12 73
2:7 73
4:17 343
11:7 16
42:79 327
42:8 84, 137
42:9 73
Proverbs
16:14 106
20:4 114
20:9 291
Proverbs (cont.)
26:27 264
Qoheleth
12:14 361
Lamentations
5:7 103
Esther
4:16 313
Daniel
5:23 313
7:10 361
8:14 342
9:24 213, 285286
10:23 312313
10:12 312313
Ezra
8:21 312313
Nehemiah
3:37 193
9:1 313
13:30 113
1 Chronicles
13:6 88
21:2822:1 333
2 Chronicles
3:1 333
6:23 322, 350
9:23 73
20:3 313
26:1921 199
29:22 48, 55, 220, 225
29:23 53, 55
30:1819 316
33:113 297
33:1213 213, 316
34:3 113
36:14 328
New Testament
Matthew
18:2335 318, 338, 353
22:114 338
26:2629 67
27:24 368
Luke
11:24 251
19:1127 338
John
6:5358 67
Romans
5:12 201
6:23 201
1 Corinthians
11:2326 67
Hebrews
7:2328 59
9:34 27
9:4 27
9:1114 59
Hebrews (cont.)
9:2328 59
10:114 59
10:2631 208
Revelation
18:2 251
20 247
22:1112 352
Old Testament Pseudepigrapha
1 Enoch
9:6 263
10:45 250
10:8 263

Cult and Character Purification Offerings Day of Atonement and Theodicy

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