The Original Scapegoat Wasn't Innocent. It Was Loaded.

Every office has one. Every family reunion has one. Every losing football season in the South has one: the offensive coordinator. Something goes wrong and somebody's got to take the blame, so we find a scapegoat.

Did you know that word was born in the book of Leviticus? Yes, Leviticus, the book where your Read-Through-the-Bible plan goes to die in February. Stick with me, because this one is good.

Two goats and a very important day

Leviticus 16 describes the Day of Atonement, the most solemn day on Israel's calendar. Once a year the high priest went into the Most Holy Place to make atonement for the sins of the whole nation. And the sacrifice came down to two goats.

And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. (Leviticus 16:8)

The first goat was sacrificed as a sin offering, and its blood was carried into the presence of God. The second goat was kept alive for something different. Listen to this:

And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. (Leviticus 16:21)

Can you see it? The priest leans his weight on that goat with both hands and confesses everything: every lie, every idol, every cruelty Israel committed that year. Then somebody leads that goat out of camp and into the wilderness, carrying all of it off to a place it never comes back from.

Where the word came from

Here's the etymology part, which I love. That Hebrew word, Azazel, is a puzzle. Scholars still debate whether it's a place, a name, or a description. The ESV keeps the Hebrew word and adds a footnote saying the meaning is uncertain.

When William Tyndale translated Leviticus into English in 1530, he understood it as the goat that escapes, the one that goes away alive. So he coined a word, scapegoat: the "scape" goat. The King James translators kept it in 1611, and it's been in our language ever since. Tyndale, by the way, was executed in 1536 for the crime of putting the Bible into the language of ordinary people. The man gave his life so you could read Leviticus in English. Think about that next time you skip it.

What we did to the word

Over the centuries, scapegoat drifted. Today it means somebody who gets blamed for what other people did, usually unfairly. The innocent intern takes the fall for the manager's mistake.

But catch the difference. In Leviticus, the goat isn't wrongly accused. The sins put on its head are real. They really happened, the people confessed them out loud, and they really got carried away. The point wasn't that someone got blamed unfairly. The point was that someone carried the guilt so the guilty could go free.

Where the goat points

You know where I'm fixing to go with this, don't you? Isaiah saw it coming hundreds of years before Jesus:

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)

Jesus is both goats. He is the sacrifice whose blood brings us into God's presence, and he carries our sin away. Hebrews says Jesus "suffered outside the gate" (Hebrews 13:12), outside the camp like that goat led into the wilderness. Paul puts it like this:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Jesus is the only truly innocent scapegoat there's ever been. He wasn't blamed by mistake. He chose to carry what was really ours. The nails didn't hold him on that cross; his love for you did.

So what are you still carrying that he already carried out of camp? You can confess it to him today, name it, and lay it on his head. "As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12). That goat isn't coming back.