The Cliff-Hanging Symbolism of the Scapegoat

That highest of holy days, Yom Kippur, is nowadays focused on fasting, prayer, and spiritual introspection. But in ancient times it was actually about a goat sent down to fallen angels. Or offered to a Satanic demon. It’s a debate.

In the Bible’s description of the central ritual of Israel’s first commemoration of the festival, God instructs Moses’ brother Aaron, the high priest, to take two goats to the entrance of the Tabernacle, that ancient sanctuary in the wilderness. There he should “cast lots upon the two goats – one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for Azazel.”

The first animal is brought as a sacrifice to God on the altar. How to give the second goat to whatever Azazel is, on the other hand, has vexed commentators for millennia.

The Talmud understood the word to refer to a precipitous, craggy mountain, “azzaz” and “el” connoting something strong and mighty. The original scapegoat was, per this theory, to be pushed off a cliff – symbolically cleansing the Israelites of their guilt. (The biblical text, unlike the rabbis, leaves unspecified whether the goat was actually killed.)

The ancient sage Rabbi Yishmael added an esoteric element. Azazel was a portmanteau of Uzza and Azael, two fallen angels, who, in Genesis’ sixth chapter, slept with the “daughters of men,” and whose sinfulness brought about the flood survived by Noah. The sacrificing of the goat in this way was a pointed means of gaining repentance for sins of a sexual nature, like those of these primordial beings. 

According to Rabbi Eliezer in the midrashic collection Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer, Azazel is actually a nickname for Satan. So as not to have that nefarious devilish accuser attempt to interfere with the effectiveness of our repentance, we send him the goat as grift. 

The medievalist Rashbam, parting with the rabbinic reading, posited that the goat wasn’t killed at all. Rather he was sent to graze with other wild goats, izzim. This, he notes, is similar to the ritual of a bird being sent back into the wild as a means of cleansing someone stricken with leprosy.

To the Rashbam’s contemporary, the more mystically included Nahmanides, the offering was a means of placating the heavenly forces that power our enemies, be they pagans, or the polemical disputants Nahmanides personally knew well, Christians. As he put it, “we should let loose a goat in the wilderness, to that ‘prince’ [power] which rules over wastelands, and this [goat] is fitting for it because he is its master, and destruction and waste emanate from that power, which in turn is the cause of the stars of the sword, wars, quarrels, wounds, plagues, division and destruction. In short, it is the spirit of the sphere of Mars, and its portion among the nations is Esau [Rome/Christianity], the people that inherited the sword and the wars, and among animals [its portion consists of] the se’irim (demons) and the goats.”

For the 19th-century German Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, who had a penchant for wordplay, Azazel represented mankind’s headstrong obstinate inclination, az, which would expire and disappear azal. Thus Azazel “represents sensuality practiced as a matter of principle; and God has denied it any place in the destiny of man.”

While these mystical interpretations might not resolve the mysterious nature of the biblical instructions, their underlying symbolism still resonates. Amidst the personal and communal introspection on Yom Kippur, now, as back then, we take stock of our misdeeds and seek to rid ourselves of them. We pray for a favorable inscription in the Book of Life, hoping that the stain of our sins is forgiven and that our accusers, be they in the divine court or on Earth, not get the better of us. 

Ever the rationalist, Maimonides cautioned against overthinking Azazel. As he put it in the “Guide to the Perplexed,” “There is no doubt that sins cannot be carried like a burden, and taken off the shoulder of one being to be laid on that of another being. But these ceremonies are of a symbolic character, and serve to impress men with a certain idea, and to induce them to repent; as if to say, we have freed ourselves of our previous deeds, have cast them behind our backs, and removed them from us as far as possible.” In other words, it’s a metaphor.

As we now sit in our sukkah in the shadow of Yom Kippur, we consider the sacred scapegoat’s ultimate lesson — that where it was headed is less important than where we go on our own spiritual journeys.

As we now sit in our sukkah in the shadow of Yom Kippur, we consider the sacred scapegoat’s ultimate lesson – that where it was headed is less important than where we go on our own spiritual journeys.

Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern is Senior Adviser to the Provost of Yeshiva University and Deputy Director of Y.U.’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought. His books include “The Promise of Liberty: A Passover Haggada,” which examines the Exodus story’s impact on the United States, “Esther in America,” “Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land: The Hebrew Bible in the United States.”