In my former life as an actor, there was one play whose name many actors refused to say out loud,

because they thought that to do so would bring bad luck. They referred to it as the Scottish play.

But its actual name, turn the volume down now if you're a superstitious actor, is Macbeth.

It is a terrifying play, but not because of the supposed bad luck it brings,

and not because it contains witchcraft and multiple murders, but because it shows that once you are

guilty of something, guilt is seemingly impossible to get rid of. The story is simple enough,

Lady Macbeth wants her husband to take the throne, so together they plot to kill the king.

There's a famous scene where after the murder of the king, Lady Macbeth sleepwalks.

And as she sleepwalks, she rubs her hands together compulsively over and over as if she's trying

to wash them. She sees blood on her hands, and no matter what she does, she cannot get them clean.

Because of course, this isn't literal blood on her hands, it's a symbol of her guilt,

a deep moral uncleanness before God. Blood you can deal with, you can get that off with

soap and water, but not guilt. And she realizes to her horror that nothing she can ever do

will ever get rid of it. It's unreachable by human hand. And she realizes that one day,

when she stands before her creator, there will be a reckoning for what she's done.

Even the thought of that day is so horrific to her that she already feels herself to be in hell.

The question Shakespeare wants us to ask ourselves is this,

how do we get ourselves clean of our sin? Under the old covenant, and you can read about this in

the Vitticus chapter 16, the answer to that question was at least in part the day of atonement.

Known in Hebrew as Yom Kippur, this was the day on which the high priest of Israel

offered a sacrifice of atonement so that the whole of Israel could be made clean of all of its sins.

It was the only time in the year that the high priest could enter the heart of the tabernacle,

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