The book of Leviticus is at the center of the foundational document of Jesus’s Bible—the Torah, or the five books of Moses, also called the Pentateuch. Some have likened the Torah to a literary Temple. If so, then the book of Leviticus is regarded as the Holy of Holies, where the rule and presence of God are central. From a theological perspective, it may be the most important book of the Torah, for the two most crucial themes in the biblical narrative are found here: atonement for sin and the holiness of God. In fact, at the center of this book, chapter 16, in almost the exact center of the Torah is a chapter that brings these two themes together in dramatic fashion. It is a day that becomes the holiest day in the Israelite calendar: Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. Falling on the tenth day of the seventh month—two weighted symbolic numbers indicating perfection—it was the only day that required fasting in the nation, and thus it was a day of national penitence.
The Story of Humanity: How God Saves a Doomed World
To appreciate the importance of this day, it is helpful to consider the biblical metanarrative. After the fall of humanity at the beginning of history, God set out to save his broken image bearers. But, there was one huge problem that had to be overcome: God is holy and his creatures are sinful, and thus they could not co-exist without some remedy. Either God’s presence would kill them or he would have to leave them—unless a solution was to be found.[1] This is shown powerfully by the fact that our first parents, Adam and Eve, were exiled from Eden, the place of the divine presence par excellence, and could not return because of powerful angelic warriors called Cherubim. They were stationed at the entrance to paradise, and their presence signaled instant death to anyone sinful seeking to gain access. And yet this access was what was necessary for humanity to fulfill their raison d’être and destiny—to live in the presence of God and reflect his nature. Thus, in a very real sense, humanity could not live with God and yet could not live without him. So God, being rich in mercy, sought to implement a plan in which he could bring human beings safely back to the Garden. In that place, there could be uninterrupted harmony again between God and humanity, among human beings themselves, and between humanity and the earth.
1. Gary Edward Schnittjer, The Torah Story: An Apprenticeship on the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 294.
Beginning his plan to save the world, God called out two individuals, a man and his wife, Abram and Sarai. He cut a covenant with them, symbolizing his commitment to them. These two bore a miracle child (Gen. 21:1–2), and their descendants eventually grew into many people that became enslaved in Egypt, where they suffered intolerably under a cruel, oppressive regime (Exod. 1:8–14). But God never forgot his covenant. He delivered them from this oppression in a miraculous exodus. His intent, narrated in the latter half of the story of the book of Exodus, was to live with his people and rule them, bringing them back to the Garden, so that they might be a light for the entire world. There at Mount Sinai, his people were formed into a nation with a national covenant, and there they experienced a wake-up call about their God. His fiery presence descended in a cloud on the top of Sinai, and there from a cloud, he thundered Ten Words, the heart of this covenant, which shook the people to their core. In terror, they petitioned Moses to be their mediator, intensely aware of their own sin and unholiness before a Holy God.[2] Much of the rest of the book of Exodus is about the building of a tabernacle so that God could now live with his people and rule them.[3] The tabernacle itself becomes a microcosm of the world, with a tripartite structure—the outer courtyard representing the earth, the larger part of the tent representing heaven, and the innermost division representing the holy of holies. It represented the throne room where the divine King sat on his invisible throne above the ark of the covenant, upon which were placed representations of fiery angels—Cherubim—and in which were tablets that contained the Ten Words of the Covenant. Thus, by the end of Exodus, the fiery theophany of God’s presence descends from the mountaintop into the tabernacle or tent and lives with his people as they gather with their tents around it, showing the centrality of God’s presence for life. Later, when Israel is on the move in the book of Numbers, the tent is packed up and the people follow the divine fire and smoke wherever it will lead. So, whether at rest or at travel, the divine presence is crucial.
2. Exodus 19–24.
3. Exodus 25–40.
The Book of Leviticus
The book of Leviticus comes after Exodus and is essentially an instruction manual of what it now means to live in God’s presence: how to maintain that relationship despite human sin. It’s one thing to have an abstract theory of God, or a concept of God where He shows up occasionally to speak to special people as in Genesis and the first part of Exodus. But what about now when God moves in to be the next-door neighbour of thousands of people? Things must change. One scholar has rightly written that “Whereas Exodus tells the story of Israel’s deliverance from the sins of others, Leviticus, especially the teaching on sacrifices, tells the story of the instruction for deliverance from the community’s own unholiness. The problem of God’s holiness and Israel’s stubbornness was bidirectional. Either he would not go with them or he would kill them.”[4]
4. Schnittjer, The Torah Story, 294.
Thus, Israel learns in the book of Leviticus, the centre of the Torah, that as they live in God’s presence, their sin has to be dealt with, and thus comes the importance of the word ‘atonement.’ The etymology of the English word helpfully expresses its meaning, for it means “at-one-ment.” Things which are broken are now brought together through a rite. Thus, for example, a tiff between a man and woman is often ended with a gift of flowers or chocolates, a rite of atonement. The Hebrew word deals with the ultimate broken relationship, between God and humans, and the rite of atonement helps restore this relationship and leads to divine forgiveness. With atonement is the ransoming of a life and the cleansing of sinful contamination. The word occurs so many times in the book of Leviticus—more than any other book in the Bible—that it must be a crucial theme. It is associated predominantly with sacrifice. And sacrifice, for the most part, necessitates blood. This book flows with blood, for this is the means which God institutes to remind the Israelites of their sin and its penalty, and how to remove it.[5] Depending on the sacrifice, when Israelites would commit sins, they would bring an animal without blemish to the courtyard of the sanctuary. They would then confess their sin before the priest, place their hand down on the animal, and slit its throat, collecting its blood. The priest would then take the blood and throw it at the base of the altar in the courtyard, representing God, sometimes dab the horns of the altar with the blood, and then take the animal, cut it up, and place it on the altar to be burned. Symbolically, the animal was functioning as a ransom substitute for the sinner. Its lifeblood, which carried the sin, was transferred to the altar, where it was absorbed. The animal died in the place of the sinner—his or her sins had been purged and absorbed by the altar.
5. See in particular Leviticus 17:10–12.
But what about all the unconfessed sins? What about sins done in ignorance, and in myriads of other situations, where the individual did not come forth with a sacrifice? Because “not all unintentional wrongs are discovered and not everyone is diligent about atonement, a certain amount of defilement remains.”[6] What about all the sins that were absorbed symbolically at the altar when the life-blood of the animal poisoned with sin was poured out? Sin so accumulated throughout the year that it was essential to have an annual “spring cleaning” or purgation so that a holy God could continue to live with his people. Thus the Day of Atonement was born—a day given over to the collective elimination of sin. This was the only time in the year that the sanctuary was cleaned from the inside out, and the only time where the high priest could enter into the innermost part of the sanctuary where the ark of the covenant resided, where God was most intensely present.
6. Baruch Schwarz, “Leviticus,” in The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 244.
The Day of Atonement
The Day of Atonement was a day in which the high priest would be dressed in distinguished vestments, representing holiness. He would bring out a bull to sacrifice for his own sin, kill it, take the blood and some burning coals and enter the tabernacle, place the coals and incense on the incense altar in front of the inner sanctum, ensuring there was a smoke screen so that he could not see above the ark of the covenant, protecting himself from God’s holiness. Then he would sprinkle seven drops of bull’s blood on the lid of the ark, sprinkle some more blood in front of it, leave the inner sanctum, and do the same for the incense altar in front of it. He would then exit the tabernacle and dab more blood on the horns of the altar in the outer courtyard. This blood functioned as a spiritual detergent, cleansing the sanctuary from the priest’s sins.
It was then the community’s turn for sin removal. Two goats would be selected, and one would be taken and killed. The priest would repeat the same procedure of entering the sanctuary and cleansing it. “Thus he shall purge the inner sanctum of the uncleanness and transgression of the Israelites, whatever their sins, and he shall do the same for the sanctuary. . . . and he shall go out to the altar and purge it with the blood . . . and shall cleanse it of the uncleanness of the Israelites” (Lev. 16:16–20). After this, he would go to the other goat and place two hands on it, “confess[ing] over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, transferring them on the head of the goat, and it shall be sent off into the wilderness through an appointed man” (Lev. 16:21–23). This was a powerful graphic description of the cleansing of the tabernacle and the removal of all the sin in the camp which had accumulated over the previous year. This goat functioned as a ritual “garbage truck,” removing the “garbage” of sin and impurity from the Israelite encampment.[7] Each Israelite could breathe easier seeing their sins removed from the camp, and they could be certain of another year of living with a holy God.
7. Roy Gane and R. Dennis Cole, Leviticus and Numbers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2016), LXXIII.
A Better Atonement Through the Cross
The rite was performed every year and continued after the building of a permanent dwelling of the temple. But later it proved to be insufficient. The Israelite sins piled up so much that God even had to leave his temple—it was destroyed with the people exiled, their land having been defiled by their sin.[8] Yet, the prophets never forgot the covenant, and Ezekiel spoke of a new temple that would produce a life-giving river,[9] and fructify a new Garden of Eden, and God would send a Servant High Priest who would sprinkle many with his own blood as a new sacrificial lamb, taking away their sins, and bringing them into the presence of a holy God.[10] Thus, when he was sacrificed, his blood would serve once for all as a means of purifying human hearts so that they could experience His life-giving Spirit as they were born from above. While this Priest was ministering, he said that rivers of water would flow out of anyone who believed in him, just as the Scriptures of Ezekiel had prophesied.[11] Ezekiel’s temple would hence be multiplied many times over. Thus Calvary, the Cross, provided the ultimate Day of Atonement, which cleared the way forever for people to enter the most Holy Place in heaven by the blood of Jesus. As the writer to the Hebrews says, this was the antitype to which the Holy of Holies in Leviticus 16 looked, since even the blood of bulls and goats could not take away sin:
8. Ezekiel 1–3.
9. Ezekiel 47.
10. Isaiah 53.
11. John 7:37–39.
For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26 Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself (Heb. 9:24–26).
No doubt this is why when Christ died, there was a thunderous earthquake. God’s activity on Sinai made people petrified of the divine presence. But this time, the curtain that separated the inner sanctum from the temple proper was torn in two, from top to bottom, granting now perpetual access for every worshipper to the divine presence through the one act of a sinless Savior.[12] The impact of this ultimate Day of Atonement is now extended in history until the final day on which Christ returns. Now, the divine fire of Sinai comes down on believer’s heads, and instead of destroying them, it inspires them to speak the mighty works of God. It now lives within them, burning with zeal and life and making them the light of the world through their good works.[13]
12. Matt 27:51–54, Mk 15:33–38.
13. Acts 2.
Conclusion
What wonderful news to a world lost in sin and guilt! In January 2025, there was a stampede near a river in India and 30 people were killed because 100 million people were going to gather along the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna Rivers during the Maha Kumbh festival to have their sins washed away. Unfortunately, the water of those rivers just doesn’t “cut it.” People in the secular West spend millions of dollars every year on psychological treatments and cures to deal with their guilt, often to no avail. In English literature, we read about Lady Macbeth desperately seeking to wipe the “damn spot” of King Duncan’s blood from her guilty hand, yet in the end she seeks to atone for her sin by committing suicide. A few decades ago, an evangelist stood at a bridge in a town at midnight trying to persuade a young woman from jumping off into the raging waters below and ending her life. She confessed that she was so impure because of her sins and didn’t deserve to live any longer. The frantic minister thought of the Cross, and told the woman, “For what you are about to do, you are 2000 years too late.” At that moment the woman had hope and walked away from the bridge into a new life because Someone had died in her place. Self-atonement is a futile effort. Where shall we turn? The hymn penned by the nineteenth century poet Robert Lowry is more relevant than ever:
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh precious is the flow,
that makes me white as snow!
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
