What is Yom Kippur? Yom Kippur (Hebrew: יוֹם כִּפּוּר, Yowm-Ki-Poor) is the Day of Atonement—the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people. It is typically celebrated with a 25-hour time of fasting and prayer and completes the annual period of the High Holy Days. The original stipulations for this day are covered in Leviticus 16. Fun fact: we actually get the term “scapegoat” from this chapter! If you’re a Christian, it’s easy to toss aside Jewish holidays as irrelevant to us since most (but not all) Christians don’t observe them. However, Yom Kippur is significant to Christians in the parallels to Jesus and the reflections of the Gospel. The first parallel is in the broader relation between the Day of Atonement and the death of Christ and the ability to enter into the Holy of Holies (where God’s presence dwelt in the Tabernacle). Hebrews 9:12 states that Jesus, our perfect, High Priest, entered into the Holy of Holies by His blood. The imperfect priests before could only enter the Most Holy place once a year on Yom Kippur in order to make atonement for the Jews’/Israelites’ sins. Jesus, however, by His death and resurrection, made atonement for all people and now resides in the presence of God forever (Hebrews 9:24). With the death of Christ, Matthew 27:51 tells of the temple curtain being torn from top to bottom. This is significant because it’s opening God’s presence to everyone—not just the High Priest. Just like the Israelites were able to draw near to God and be cleansed from the Day of Atonement, we are cleansed once and for all by the blood of Jesus and are able to be in a close relationship with the Godhead because of it (Hebrews 10:19-23) (Wolf, 213). The repetition of the Day of Atonement every year shows that it was not the ultimate solution to the problem of sin (Jamieson). It was a foretelling of the sacrifice of Jesus which covers all sin eternally. Another way in which the Day of Atonement is a reflection of the Gospel is in the two goats. Of course, Jesus is symbolic of the goat held for the sin offering (Leviticus 16:9) because He is the ultimate sin offering (Szymkowiak). Some will say He is also represented in the second goat, the scapegoat, because He was given over to the Gentiles and murdered outside the Jerusalem walls; He was sent outside of the camp like the scapegoat of Yom Kippur (Sproul, 165). However, the popular opinion is that Satan is representative of the scapegoat. The term itself in Hebrew is Azazel (עֲזָאזֵל) and some versions leave it untranslated because of a belief that Azazel is the name of a demon which inhabits the wilderness. Satan is seen to be the scapegoat because of the words in Revelation 20:1-3, which detail the fate of Satan and his demons when Jesus comes back—He will be cast into the pit, sent away from the nations. “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.” More specific parallels are in the high priest of Israel performing the rituals alone (Leviticus 16:17), just as Jesus bore the wrath of God by Himself (Mark 14:50). As aforementioned, Jesus is the perfect, High Priest—sinless. The original high priest could not be completely without sin, for he was human and had to give a bull as a sin offering for himself and his family (Leviticus 16:6). Jesus was without the need for forgiveness (Hebrews 4:15) and therefore was the unblemished fulfilment of the ritual. Yom Kippur as well as other times of animal sacrifice were all precursors to the perfect, final sacrifice of the Lamb of God—Jesus (Szymkowiak). He fulfilled the ritual and made it unnecessary going forward. Of course, this is just a brief overview, and I encourage you to study the text yourself and allow the Holy Spirit to grow your knowledge. The point is, these holidays are important for Christians to know about, not only because they are culturally rich and interesting, but because they usually have a parallel to a fulfillment in Jesus. Bibliography Jamieson, Bobby. “After Calvary: How the Day of Atonement Highlights Jesus’s Heavenly Offering.” The Gospel Coalition. April 12, 2020. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/day-atonement-jesus-offering/. Sproul, R.C., ed. The Reformation Study Bible: Condensed Edition. Sanford, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2017. Szymkowiak, Vince. “What Does the Day of Atonement Have to Do with Jesus Christ?” Beyond Today. September 22, 2015. https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/what-does-the-day-of-atonement-have-to-do-with-jesus-christ. Wolf, Herbert. An Introduction to the Old Testament: Pentateuch. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 1991.
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