Scripture Daily

Context No. 769 of 4322 · Leviticus

Context · Reflection

Leviticus 16:23-28: in context

23“Aaron shall come into the Tent of Meeting, and shall take off the linen garments which he put on when he went into the Holy Place, and shall leave them there. 24Then he shall bathe himself in water in a holy place, put on his garments, and come out and offer his burnt offering and the burnt offering of the people, and make atonement for himself and for the people. 25The fat of the sin offering he shall burn on the altar. 26“He who lets the goat go as the scapegoat shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp. 27The bull for the sin offering, and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the Holy Place, shall be carried outside the camp; and they shall burn their skins, their flesh, and their dung with fire. 28He who burns them shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward he shall come into the camp.

This is the tail end of the Day of Atonement, the one day a year the high priest entered the Most Holy Place to make atonement for the whole nation. The dramatic parts are over; what remains is the cleanup, and it is not glamorous. Aaron takes off the special linen garments and leaves them in the tent, bathes, and puts his ordinary vestments back on. And then the passage follows two men doing the unclean work. The one who led the scapegoat out into the wilderness has to wash his clothes and bathe before he can come back into the camp. And the carcasses of the bull and goat whose blood had made the atonement are carried outside the camp and burned, and the man who burns them, too, must wash before returning.

That phrase, outside the camp, keeps repeating, and the New Testament heard something in it. The sin-bearing was finished not in the bright center of the sanctuary but out beyond the edge of the community, in the place of ash and reproach, and the ones who handled it were marked by it. The letter to the Hebrews takes this exact ritual and says that Jesus, too, suffered outside the gate of the city to make his people holy, and then turns it into an invitation: let us go out to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach he bore. The holiest work of the year happened in the place no one wanted to stand.

The atonement was completed outside the camp, in the place of reproach, and Hebrews says that is where Christ went and where we are called. Am I willing to go outside the camp to him, or do I only want the clean, central, respectable place?

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