Commentaria in Leviticum
The tropological reason of this ceremony is given by the Apostle, Hebrews 13:13, namely that this ceremony signified that all of us who desire to approach Christ and the Eucharistic altar ought to go forth “outside the camp” of pomp, pleasures, luxury and the laws of the tabernacle, that is, of this perishable and movable world, that we may bear the reproach of the cross of Christ, namely by imitating and voluntarily embracing the ignominy, poverty, abstinence, humility, contempt, persecutions, torments and martyrdom of Christ: for with these words the Apostle rouses them bravely to bear the persecutions, insults and cruelties of the Jews for the faith of Christ, and to glory in them, as those who go forth with Christ outside the camp of Judaism and of worldly felicity, bearing the reproach of His cross. So “the Apostles went from the presence of the council rejoicing, that they were accounted worthy to suffer reproach for the name of Jesus.” Let us too, then, go forth heaped with reproaches, spit upon, and filled with a thousand insults, bearing our cross with Christ: let us go forth, I say, joyful, confident and courageous, Christ so great a leader going before us, and let us say with Paul: “The world is crucified to me, and I to the world.” So Procopius and Cyril, book 15 On Adoration, and Theodoret, St. Thomas, Anselm and Theophylact on chapter 13 of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
The anagogical reason Paul gives in the same place, verse 14, namely that by this ceremony it was foreshadowed that in this life and world we have not a lasting city, but that we live in it as in camps and tents, that we may know that we are here pilgrims and soldiers, who ought to seek the city to come in heaven, and to fight generously for it against flesh, world and devil, and to strive and press towards it with all our strength. Bede adds: Christ, he says, was offered in heaven for the gift of the Angels and the Blessed, whom He beatifies by the vision of His humanity and divinity; but on earth He was offered for sin, that is, suffered outside the camp of the Angels and the Blessed, of which Jacob said:
“These are the camps of God,” Genesis 32:2.
For although this sacrifice was for the sin of the pontiff, and the victim was therefore burnt outside the camp, yet because this sacrifice was expiatory, holy and clean, a clean place was due to it, and the ashes of the victim, as remains of the sacrifice, had to be laid in a clean place, lest they be trodden by the people or irreverently handled.
Where the ashes are poured out.—Note: The ashes of the victims were first poured out in the court, beside the altar of holocausts, and thence carried to the clean place of which this passage treats, outside the camp, in which this calf slain for the pontiff’s sin is commanded to be burnt.
Tropologically it is signified here that it is not lawful to cast the sins of priests abroad into public, nor into an unclean place, that is, into the conventicles of detractors and into profane and slanderous tongues, but that care must be taken that they be kept silent, and all their remains be consumed by the fire of charity and covered with perpetual silence, that nothing may remain that could be drawn into example. So Ribera, book 4 On the Temple, chapter 7, who applies all the rest tropologically and adapts them one by one.
Verse 13. And if the whole multitude of Israel shall be ignorant.—As if to say: If the whole people of the Jews, or at least a great part of it, shall have sinned through ignorance. This is the second victim for sin, namely of the whole people. Note: The same victim was prescribed for the sin of the people as for the sin of the pontiff, namely a calf. And the rite of immolating both was the same, which I described on verse 11, except that in the sin of the people not the pontiff but the elders of the people laid hands on the victim for the whole people.
Before the Lord, the priest that is anointed shall carry—namely the pontiff; for the sin of the whole people was very grave: hence the pontiff alone expiated it; chiefly because this sacrifice for the sin of the people was a type of the expiation of the guilt of the whole human race, which Christ our Pontiff alone could accomplish.
Verse 18. Of the altar which is before the Lord—namely the altar of incense, which in the Holy stood opposite the mercy-seat, on which God sat.
Which is at the door (near the door) of the tabernacle.
Verse 21. And he shall carry the calf itself out of the camp, and burn it, because it is the sin of the multitude—as if to say: If this victim had been offered for the sin of a prince or of a private person, it would not be burnt outside the camp, but in the usual way on the altar of holocausts. Again, its blood would not be carried into the tabernacle to sprinkle the altar of incense: for these two things were done only in the sin of the pontiff and of the whole people. And this is what the Apostle says, Hebrews 13:11: “For the bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the holies by the high priest for sin are burned without the camp.” See what was said on verse 11.
Verse 22. If a prince shall sin.—This is the third victim for sin, namely of the prince. Here he is called prince (nasi) who was leader, head and first in a family, or tribe, or army; for the Hebrew nasi signifies this, that is, one raised up, who is eminent in dignity among his own, as is plain from Numbers 1:4 and chapter 7, verse 2. The victim was a he-goat.
For the sin of a prince and his victim God here ordained a special law, that princes may know they are men, can err and sin, and say: I am a man, I count nothing human foreign to me; and consequently if they have promised anything ill, they may rescind their word; if they have commanded any evil, they may retract it, and not stubbornly persist in what they once decided, whether right or wrong. So Agesilaus king of the Lacedaemonians, to one who pressed the king’s word, saying: You consented:
“Altogether,” he said, “I consented, if the thing is just; if not, I said it indeed, but did not consent”; and to one who replied: “But kings ought to fulfil what they have nodded their heads to,” he answered: “No more than it is right that those who approach a king should ask and say what is just, considering what the occasion and the king’s dignity allow.” So Cato the Elder used to say: “I would rather gain no thanks for a benefit conferred than not pay the penalty for a fault; and I pardon all who sin, myself alone excepted.” So Agesipolis, son of Cleombrotus, to one who objected that, being king, he had been given as a hostage: “Because,” he said, “it is just and right that we ourselves pay for our own sins.” So Plutarch in the Apophthegms.
Verse 23. He shall offer a sacrifice to the Lord, a he-goat.—In Hebrew, “a he-goat of the she-goats,” that is, a he-goat the son of some she-goat. Here there is a twofold Hebraism: the former, that the plural number is put for the singular, namely “of she-goats” for “of a she-goat”; the latter, that by this phrase the Hebrews signify a young he-goat, still following its mother: for when to any animal a feminine plural genitive is added, then it is signified that that animal is tender and not yet torn from its mother. Hence Alexander of Macedon, because he was young, is called a he-goat of the she-goats, Daniel 8:21. Like are Genesis 38:17, in the Hebrew. Why? The Septuagint for he-goat and she-goat render chimarros and chimarra, that is, the young of goats of the winter, that is, of the winter season: for goats bear twice a year, once in summer, once in winter. By winter, then, and the winter she-goat, penance seems to be signified. So Hesychius and Radulphus. Tropologically, again, the prince, that is, the holy and heroic man, for sin offers a he-goat, that is, undergoes a strong and hard penance; but the soul of the people of the land, that is, the infirm man, who is of the flock or dregs of men, for sin offers a she-goat, that is, a light, mild and as it were womanish penance, which he can bear: so Radulphus.
[Verse 24] . . . but the priest to whom it belongs to immolate), because it is for sin, the priest shall dip his finger in the blood of the victim for sin, touching the horns of the altar—as if to say: If it were not a victim for sin, the priest would not dip the horns of the altar in blood; for that anointing was done only in sacrifices for sin: for the altar represented God, and so the priest dipped it in blood, as if signifying that in this victim he gave Him the blood of the sinner due to God, and so God was appeased.