Clearly, whether we take it as something like scapegoat or with Azazel as a reference to a demon,

clearly this goat is going to be sent away from the clean realm of life into the unclean realm of the dead.

And by means of heaping the sins of the people onto that goat and then banishing it into

the wilderness, that goat is not supposed to come back into the camp and it's supposed to be

removing, you know, the uncleanness from the camp.

Welcome to episode 39 of Bible Talk, a podcast brought to you by Nine Marks.

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My name is Alex Duk, and with me are my two friends...

Sam Amati and Jim Hamilton.

Well, guys, last week we talked about, you know, the wonderful topics of chewing the cud and cloven feet and leprosy and bodily discharges.

In other words, we covered Leviticus 11 through 15. And we talked about how every law in those

chapters means to underscore God's holiness and for God's people to be set apart. And at the end

of last week's episode, you'll remember Sam gave a spicy little teaser.

He said, this chapter, Leviticus 16, the only chapter we will cover this time, he said, is the pinnacle of the Torah.

Now, Sam is not given to overstatement, at least not about these kinds of things.

So Sam, what did you mean by that?

You've said many times that what we've been reading in

Leviticus, they're not just arbitrary rules, but there's solutions to a problem. So how does

Leviticus resolve that problem? Leviticus 16, I'm sorry. Well, as I've mentioned, yeah, we need to

see Leviticus as a resolution to a problem. You know the end of the book of Exodus. Moses and Aaron are not able to

enter the tabernacle, but then the Lord provides means through sacrifices that they're able to do that.

...