D.D. 05/03/06

Everyone has heard of a scapegoat - that's the person or thing that someone blames because of their own misfortunes. What you may not know, though is the etymology of this term and a truly interesting connectivity between Judiasm and Christianity.

During Yom Kippur in the days when the Jewish temple was still standing, two goats were brought before the Temple in accordance with the custom set out in Leviticus 16. One of these goats was burnt up as a holocaust, a term that means to burn completely not to be confused with the Holocaust (which the Jews refer to as the Shoah), and the other goat was prayed over so that the sins of the people would transfer from them to the goat. By ritual, the goat was then be cast out into the wilderness or pushed over a cliff in order to exile all the people's sins. Thus the term - the scape-goat.

But with Christ, we loaded our sins upon him, and he was also cast out into the wilderness. Instead of a mortal goat, the sacrifice of a beast of atonement that only served God's justice for a short time, Christ was a scapegoat above men - the sacrifice of the divine. It is because of the sacrifice of a immortal offering to God that we can appease God's justice eternally. Infinity equals infinity. Oh how great is Christ's gift to us then - he satisfies all of our sins before justice if we only follow Him.