Azazel

The Yom Kippur ritual included two goats. One was sacrificed to God. What happened to the second one, the so-called scapegoat?

In the Second Temple period, a crimson thread was placed on the horn of the Yom Kippur scapegoat and tied to a stone in the desert before the goat was pushed off the cliff. After the verse “If your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18) was used as a prooftext for this non-biblical practice, the Talmud envisaged a magical ritual in which a second crimson thread would turn white on Yom Kippur to signal God’s acceptance of the people’s repentance.

On Yom Kippur, one goat is sacrificed to YHWH and another is sent to Azazel in the wilderness. Who is Azazel? The 12^th-century commentator Abraham ibn Ezra hints that the answer lies in reaching 33.

As Tamar gives birth to twins, the midwife ties red thread around Zerah’s wrist. The spies instruct Rahab to tie a red cord in her window. What is the significance of the red thread?

Leviticus 16 describes how the scapegoat ritual on Yom Kippur attains atonement for all of Israel’s sins, even acts of rebellion. Numbers 15, however, states that a person who sins unintentionally can bring an offering and be forgiven, but the person who sins intentionally is cut off from the people.

Azazel plays the role of a deity in the biblical ritual of Yom Kippur, and in early interpretation, he played a central role as the initiator of sin and even the devil, or alternatively, as a protective figure. Later tradition obscured his identity, presenting Azazel as the name of a demon, as the scapegoat itself, and even as a place name.

During the Second Temple period, the scapegoat was tied with a crimson thread. While the Torah requires a crimson thread as part of the purification ritual for tzaraʿat (skin disease), it does not mention it by the scapegoat. Nevertheless, parallel practices found in 2^nd millennium B.C.E. Hittite texts of Luwian origin imply that the use of a crimson thread is not a late innovation but an ancient part of the rite.

In the scapegoat ritual of Yom Kippur and the bird ritual of the metzora, sin/impurity is transferred onto an animal and it is sent away. These biblical examples have parallels in Eblaite, Hittite, Ugaritic, and Neo-Assyrian apotropaic rituals.

Reading the Torah portion Acharei Mot, “After the Death,” as an opportunity for infusing life into the biblical text.

Leviticus 16 – ויקרא טז