The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of KingsFarrar, F. W. (Frederic William)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The First Book of Kings
Farrar, F. W. (Frederic William)
Bible. Kings, 1st -- Commentaries
The word _Chattath_, in the sense of sin offering, occurs in Exod.
xxix., xxx., and many times in Leviticus and Numbers, and six times
in Ezekiel. Otherwise in the Old Testament it is barely mentioned,
except in the post-exilic Books of Chronicles (2 Chron. xxix. 24) and
Ezra (viii. 25).[345] It is not mentioned in any other historic book;
nor in any prophet except Ezekiel. Again, as we have seen, the Day of
Atonement leaves not a trace in any of the earlier historic records
of Scripture, and is found only in the authorities above mentioned.
Through all the rest of Scripture the scape-goat is unmentioned, and
Azazel is ignored. Dr. Kalisch goes so far as to say that "there is
conclusive evidence to prove that the Day of Atonement was instituted
considerably more than a thousand years after the death of Moses and
Aaron.[346] For even in Ezekiel, who wrote B.C. 574, there is no Day
of Atonement on the tenth day of the seventh month, but on the first
and seventh of the first month (Abib, Nisan)." He thinks it utterly
impossible that, had it existed in his time, Ezekiel could have blotted
out the holiest day of the year, and substituted two of his own
arbitrary choice.[347] The rites, moreover, which he describes differ
wholly from those laid down in Leviticus. Even in Nehemiah there is
no notice of the Day of Atonement, though a day was observed on the
twenty-fourth of the month. Hence this learned writer infers that even
in B.C. 440 the Great Day of Atonement was not yet recognised, and that
the pagan element of sending the scape-goat to Azazel, the demon of the
wilderness, proves the late date of the ceremony.
It is interesting to observe how utterly the sacrificial priestly
system, in the abuses which not only became involved in it, but
seemed to be almost inseparable from it, is condemned by the loftier
spiritual intuition which belongs to phases of revelation higher than
the external and the typical.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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