Commentaria in Leviticum
HE SHALL OFFER A CALF FOR SIN. This calf the High Priest offered for his own sins and those of his family, committed during the whole year knowingly or unknowingly, as is clear from verse 6; for for the sins of the people he offered not a calf but a goat, as is clear from verse 7.
Allegorically, Christ offered the calf, that is, himself, for his own sins, that is, ours, which he took upon himself to expiate; he prayed for himself and his house, that is, for the Apostles and all believers, John 17:9. He offered also the goat, that is, the penance of his people. So Rudolph.
4. HE SHALL BE VESTED WITH A LINEN TUNIC, WITH LINEN BREECHES, etc.—that is, drawers, covering both thighs.
Note: on this feast of Expiation the High Priest did not use the precious vestments proper to himself and to pontiffs, such as the tiara, the tunic of hyacinth, the ephod, the rational and the girdle, but only those common to the lesser priests: because he was begging pardon for the sins both of himself and of the people, and this feast was not one of joy but of mourning, penance and affliction: hence, when the expiation was finished and he was about to offer the holocausts, only then did he take the pontifical vestments. We see the like today on Good Friday, of which this feast was a type; for the Church is stripped; the priest, and even the bishop, is clothed only in the albs of deacons when he performs the office of the Passion: which done, to complete the sacrifice of the Mass he puts on his own more precious vestments, namely sacerdotal or pontifical.
5. AND HE SHALL RECEIVE FROM THE WHOLE MULTITUDE OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL TWO KIDS OF THE GOATS FOR SIN.—This is the victim for the sins of the whole people, committed during the whole year knowingly or unknowingly.
You will say: in Hebrews 9:7 the High Priest is said to have offered these only for his own and the people’s ignorance; therefore not for sins committed knowingly.
I answer: ignorance there, as often elsewhere, signifies every sin; for as the Wise Man says, Proverbs 14:22, and Aristotle, Ethics book 3: “Every sinner is ignorant, because imprudent.”
6. FOR HIS HOUSE—for the whole family of all the priests and Levites: for these are not contained under the name of the people, but belong to the High Priest’s house.
8. (Casting lots upon both goats together) ONE FOR THE LORD, AND THE OTHER FOR THE EMISSARY GOAT: THAT WHOSE LOT FELL TO THE LORD, HE SHALL OFFER FOR SIN.—Upon the people’s goats such a lot is here commanded to be cast that the High Priest take two, for example, tablets, write on one the name of God, on the other the name of the emissary goat, then mix them or hide them in an urn or in his bosom, and draw out one from it, and put it on one goat, and the other on the other; the goat on which the tablet of God was placed is to be immolated to God for the sin of the people; the other, on which fell the tablet of the emissary goat, is to be let go free (1).
Hence the Jews fable that God on this day of expiation sits to distribute lots to every man, and to appoint and ordain whatever shall befall each throughout the year. Hence some of them pour the blood of a bird or beast over the heads of those whom they love, that God may be propitious to them, if on that day he judge and decree their lot. Abulensis relates and refutes this. For it savours of pagan superstition; for the Gentiles had days lucky and unlucky, fasti and nefasti: the latter they avoided, the former they sought. So Lucullus, about to engage Tigranes on the day before the nones of October, which was an unlucky day because on that day the Cimbri had destroyed the forces of Caepio, when someone said that the Romans abhorred and dreaded that day, said: “Let us therefore fight vigorously today, that we may make this day also, from unlucky and sad, lucky and joyful for the Romans.” So it was done; for, losing only five Romans, he slew more than a hundred thousand of the enemy: witness Plutarch in his Lucullus.
Allegorically, the goat for sin signifies Christ suffering and dying on the cross; the emissary goat signifies the divinity of Christ, which could not suffer in his Passion, and remained free: so Theodoret, Hesychius, and Cyril, book 9 Against Julian, before the middle; or, as Procopius says, the emissary signifies the soul and spirit of Christ, which escaped free from death, and on the third day rose again in a glorified body. Secondly, the goat for sin signifies Christ immolated; the emissary signifies the human race, which by the death of Christ has been freed and set at liberty from death: so Cyril in the same place. Thirdly, more distinctly and more aptly to tropology, Origen and Bede here, and St. Jerome (or whoever is the author: for he seems to have been unskilled in Greek and Hebrew, and consequently not to be Jerome) on Mark chapter 15, understand by the goat for sin Christ adjudged to death; by the emissary, Barabbas (whence Rupert also takes these two goats to be Christ, and Antichrist prefigured by Barabbas), who was let go free as it were into the wilderness, bearing with him the sins of the people crying out and saying: “Crucify him, crucify him.”
Tropologically, the goat for sin is the elect and those to be saved; the emissary goat is the reprobate and damned; the lot is the divine reprobation and predestination, by which God leads the elect by most certain ways to eternal life, of which it is said in Psalm 30: “In thee, O Lord, have I hoped; I said: Thou art my God; my lots are in thy hands,” as if to say: Of which lot of goat I am I do not yet know; yet I know that it is in thy power that my lot should come out for thee, and transfer me to the portion of thy elect. For the goat of God does not remain a goat, but is killed for God; so penitents slay their vices and change their life, and so all the saints and elect are put to death for God all the day long, nay are even slain, as the martyrs, that they may rise pure and glorious: but the other, the emissary, remains a goat, and as a goat is sent into the wilderness, that is, into a land of darkness, where there is no order, but utmost desolation, namely into hell, to be torn there by wild beasts, that is, by demons. So Rudolph and Bede.
Wrongly, therefore, did the Gentiles say that this lot was fate, which imposed necessity on all things and actions of men. “Fate,” says Chrysippus in Gellius, book 6, chapter 2, “is a certain eternal and unalterable series of things, and a chain revolving itself and enfolding itself through eternal orders of consequence, by which it is fitted and joined together.” And Seneca in his Oedipus:
By the fates we are driven; yield to the fates.
No anxious care can change the threads of settled fate; whatever we suffer, race of mortals, whatever we do, comes from on high.
And Solon used to say that “fate brings to mortals evils and goods together.” But Holy Scripture teaches the contrary, namely that good things indeed arise from the grace of God, but with the co-operation of free will; but evils, such as sins, hardening, etc., and consequently reprobation and damnation itself, arise from the evil will of man, which God permits and orders to just punishment.
10. BUT THAT WHOSE LOT WAS TO BE THE EMISSARY GOAT, HE SHALL PRESENT ALIVE BEFORE THE LORD, THAT HE MAY POUR OUT PRAYERS UPON HIM, AND LET HIM GO INTO THE WILDERNESS.—This is the other goat or he-goat, namely the emissary, or the one sent out into the wilderness, that he may carry away with him, as it were, the sins of the people, which the priest imprecated upon him and as it were laid on his head.
Note: for “emissary goat” the Hebrew is Azazel, which, first, the more recent Rabbis, and following them Vatablus and Oleaster, think is the name of a mountain to which this goat was led and from which it was cast down. The Jews add that a red thread or cord tied to the horn of this goat turned white if God forgave the sins of the people; but if not, it remained red. Hence the man leading the goat into the wilderness, when he saw this change of colour in the thread, at once blew the horn; then others, placed in order as far as Jerusalem, likewise sounded the trumpet, that all the people of the land might know that their sins were forgiven. Oleaster relates this tale.
Secondly, R. Abraham thinks Azazel signifies a demon, because he is strong. Hence what we have as “for the emissary goat” is in Hebrew laazazel, which R. Abraham renders “for the strong one,” as if to say: The High Priest shall set this second goat and present it to the Lord, that he may free the people from the strong one, that is, from the devil: so also the Valentinians, in Irenaeus, book 1, chapter 12, hold that Azazel is the name of a demon. Julian the Apostate thought the same, whom Cyril refutes, book 9 Against him. Hence also Cornelius Agrippa, a notable magician, book 2 On Occult Philosophy, asserts that Azazel is the name of one of the demons who preside over the elements, and who bestow their services most on wizards and witches; he is also the king of the south, and called Amaymon, he says from the Cabala of the Hebrews, or rather he talks nonsense. So also Reuchlin, book 3 On the Cabalistic Art, says that Azazel holds very wide sway in the army of Satan.