Appendix D.—On The Term Azazel. THE term Azazel, which is four times used in connection with the ceremony of the day of atonement, and nowhere else, is still a matter of controversy, and its exact and determinate import is not to be pronounced on with certainty. It is not precisely applied to the live-goat as a designation; but this goat is said to be “for Azazel” (לעזאזל).
1. Yet one of the earliest opinions prevalent upon the subject regards it as the name of the goat himself; Symmachus τράγος ἀπερξόμενος, Aquila τρ. ἀπολελυμμένος, Vulg. hircus emissarius; so also Theodoret, Cyrill, Luther, Heine, Vater, and the English translators, scape-goat. When taken in this sense, it is understood to be compounded of az (עז), a goat, and azal (אזל), to send away. The chief objections to it are, that az never occurs as a name for a buck or he-goat (in the plural it is used as a general designation for goats, but in the singular occurs elsewhere only as the name for a she-goat), and that in Leviticus 16:10 and Leviticus 16:26, Azazel is expressly distinguished from the goat, the one being said to be for the other. For these reasons, this view is now almost entirely abandoned. 2. It is the name of a place, either a precipitous mountain, in the wilderness to which the goat was led, and from which he was thrown headlong, or a lonely region where he was left; so Pseudo-Jonathan, Abenezra, Jarchi, Bochart, Deyling, Reland, Carpzov, etc. The chief objection to this view is, that it does not seem to accord with what is said in Leviticus 16:10 : “to let him go for Azazel into the wilderness,” which would then mean, for a desert place into a desert place. 3. It is the name of Satan, or an evil spirit: So the LXX. ἀποπεμπαῖος (which does not mean “the sent away,” the scape-goat, as most of the older interpreters took it, and as we are still rather surprised to see it rendered by Sir J. Brenton in his recent translation of the LXX., but “the turner away,” “the averter.” See Gesen. Thes., Kurtz, Mos. Opfer, p. 270.) So probably Josephus, Antiq., 3:10, 3, and many of the Rabbins. In the strongest and most offensive sense this opinion was espoused by Spencer, Ammon, Rosenmüller, Gesenius, who all concur in holding, that by Azazel is to be understood what was called by the Romans averruncus, a sort of cacodaemon, inhabiting the desert, and to be propitiated by sacrifice, so that the evils he had power to inflict might be averted. The opinion was first modified by Witsius (who is also substantially followed by Meyer, Turretin, Alting, etc.) to indicate Christ’s relation to the devil, to whom He was given up to be tried and vexed, but whom He overcame. And in recent times it has been still further modified by Hengstenberg, who says in his Christology on Genesis 3, “The sending forth of the goat was only a symbolical transaction. By this act the kingdom of darkness and its prince were renounced, and the sins to which he had tempted, and through which he had sought to make the people at large or individuals among them his own, were in a manner sent back to him; and the truth was expressed in symbol, that he to whom God grants forgiveness, is freed from the power of evil.” The opinion has been still further explained and vindicated by the learned author in his Eg. and Books of Moses, where he supposes the action to carry a reference to the practice so prevalent in Egypt, of propitiating, in times especially of famine or trouble, the evil god Typhon, who was regarded as peculiarly delighting in the desert. This reference he holds, however, not in the gross sense of the goat being a sacrifice to the evil spirit; for both goats he considers to have been the Lord’s, and this latter only to have been given up by the Lord to the evil spirit, after the forgiven sins were laid on it, as indicating that that spirit had in such a case no power to injure or destroy. Comp. Zechariah 3:1-5. Ewald, Keil, Vaihinger (in Hertzog’s Encycl.), concur substantially in the same view. 4. Many of the greatest scholars on the Continent—Tholuck first, then Steudel, Winer, Bähr—take the word as the Pealpal-form of azal (אזל), to remove, with the omission of the last letter, and the putting in its place of an unchangeable vowel; so that the meaning comes to be, for a complete removing or dismissal. Kurtz hesitates between this view and that of Hengstenberg, but in the result rather inclines to the latter. Certainly the contrast presented respecting the destinations of the two goats, is best preserved by Hengstenberg’s. But still, to bring Satan into such prominence in a religious rite,—to place him in a sort of juxtaposition with Jehovah, in any form,—has an offensive appearance, and derives no countenance from any other part of the Mosaic religion. And however, on a thoughtful consideration, it might have been found to oppose a tendency to demon-worship, with the less thinking multitude, we suspect it would be found to operate in a contrary direction. Besides, if it may be objected, as it has been, to Tholuck’s view, that it takes a very rare and peculiar way of expressing a quite common idea, so unquestionably to designate, according to the other view, the evil spirit about whom, if really intended, there should have been no room for mistake, by a name never again occurring, appropriated solely for this occasion, is yet more strange and unaccountable. This very circumstance of a word having been coined for the occasion, and entirely appropriated to it, suggests what seems to me the right view. That appears to have been done on two accounts: partly, that no one might suppose a known and real personage to be meant; and partly, that the idea, which the occasion was intended to render peculiarly prominent, might thus be presented in the most palpable form—might become for the time a sort of personified existence. The idea of utter separation or removal is what Hengstenberg, as well as the other eminent scholars who hold the last opinion specified, regard as the radical meaning of the term; and by its form being properly a substantive, he conceives that it denotes Satan as the apostate, or separate one. But there is nothing in the whole transaction to lead us to suppose that such an adversary is brought forward; and when the goat is sent away, it is simply said to be “that he might bear the iniquities of Israel into a land of separation: “the conductor of the goat has fulfilled his commission when he has “let go the goat into the wilderness,” Leviticus 16:22. To have the iniquities conveyed by a symbolical action into that desert and separate region, into a state of oblivion, was manifestly the whole intention and design of the rite. And why might not this condition of utter separateness or oblivion, to render the truth symbolized more distinct and tangible, be represented as a kind of existence, to whom God sent and consigned over the forgiven iniquities of His people? Till these iniquities were atoned for, they were in God’s presence, seen and manifest before Him; but now, having been atoned, He dismisses them by a symbolical bearer to the realms of the ideal prince of separation and oblivion, that they may never more appear among the living.—(Micah 7:19) From the great peculiarity of the service, it is impossible to support this view by anything exactly parallel; but there is certainly something not very unlike, in the personification which so often meets us of Sheol or Hades, as the great devourer and concealer of men.—Comp. especially Psalms 16:10; Psalms 49:14; Isaiah 14; Isaiah 25:8, etc. Still, the difference is only in the mode of explanation, the results arrived at are substantially the same; and it may be well to add that the following are the ideas which Vaihinger (in Hertzog) finds in the transaction: “(1) That the sins must not belong to the congregation of the Lord, which is appointed to holiness, nor be suffered to abide with it; (2) that the horrible wilderness, the abode of impure spirits, is alone the place to which they, as originally foreign to human nature and society, properly belong; (3) that Azazel, the abominable, the sinner from the beginning (John 8:44), is the one from whom they have proceeded, to whom they must again with abhorrence be sent back, after the solemn atonement and absolution of the congregation had been accomplished; (4) that the person who would not accept of the atonement effected, was not set free from them, consequently could be no true member of the congregation, but belonged with his sins to Azazel, and should be cut off from the congregation of the Lord.” Hence, as the author concludes, there is nothing also, on this view, of a sacrifice to the wicked one supposed to be designated by Azazel.
