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276 THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

Atonement severance of the bond of

life

which unites the soul

Maker. "The soul that siuneth, it shall die," says Ezek. xviii. 20 (compare Deut. xxx. 15-19;

with Ps.

i.

its

ti;

Jer.

ii.

It is the feeling of estrange-

13).

ment from God that prompts the

sinner to offer expiatory sacrifices not only to appease God's anger by a propitiatory gift, but also to place his soul in a different relation to Him. For this reason the blood, which to the ancients was the life- power or soul, forms the essential part of the sacrificial Atonement (see Lev. xvii. 11). This is the interpretation given by all the Jewish commentators, ancient and modern, on the passage compare also Yoma 5<t Zeb.

—



6«,



maa px=" There is no

D"Q

N'^K cept with blood," is

with the identical Apart from shedding of blood there

V. " no remission [of

ix. 22, K.

Atonement exwords in Heb.



sins]."

The

life

of the victim

was

offered, not, as has been said, as a penalty in a juridical sense to avert Heaven's punishment, not to

upon it as upon the scapegoat of the Day of Atonement, and thus to have the animal die in his place, as Ewald thinks (" Alterthumer," p. 68), but as a typical ransom of "life by life"; the blood sprinkled by the priest upon the altar serving as the means of a renewal of man's covenant of life with God (see Trumbull, " The Blood

have maD's

sins laid

Covenant," p. 247). In Mosaic ritualism the atoning blood thus actually meant the bringing about of a reunion with God, the restoration of peace between the soul and its Maker. Therefore, the expiatory sacrifice was accompanied by a confession of the sins for which it was designed to make Atonement (see Lev. v. 5, xvi. 21; Num. v. 7; compare Maimonides, "Yad," Teshubah, i. 1): "no atonement without confession of sin as the act of repentance," or as Philo (" De Victimis, " xi.) says, "not without the sincerity of his repentance, not by words merely, but by works, the conviction of his soul which healed

him from disease and restores him The sacrificial Atonement, based symbolic offering of

life

for

life,

good health." as it was on the assumed a more to

awful or somber character when a

Atonement whole community was

concerned in

the blood-guiltiness to be atoned for. the Whole While, in the time of David, people in People. their terror had recourse to the pagan rite of human sacrifice (II Sam. xxi. 1-9), the Deuteronomic law prescribed in such a case a mild and yet rather uncommon form of expiation of the murder namely, the breaking of the neck of a heifer as a substitute for the unknown murderer (Deut. xxi. 1-9). To the same class belongs the goat in the annual Atonement ritual (Lev. xvi. 7-22). which was to carry away all the sins of the children of Israel into an uninhabited land and was sent out to Azazel in the wilderness, while another goat was killed as usual, and its blood sprinkled to make Atonement for the sanctuary, cleansing it of the uncleanness of all the transgressions of the children of Israel. In the case of the one goat, the doom emanating from unknown and therefore unexpiated sins in the other case of the people was to be averted the wrath of God at the defilement of His sanctuary which often implied the penalty of death (Num. i. 53) was to be pacified. The very idea of God's holiness, which made either the approach to Mt. for





—

—

Sinai, the seat of vi. 7),

276 God

or even the

(Ex. xix.12), the

Ark

mere sight of God

(II

(Isa.

Sam. vi.

5;

bring death, rendered the ritual of the Day of Atonement the necessary culmination of the whole priestly system of expiation of sin. Yet, while the sacrificial rites were the only means of impressing upon the people God's holiness and the dreadful consequence of man's Repent- sinfulness, the idea of the Atonement ance and assumed a far deeper and more spiriAtonetual aspect in the lives and teachings of Neither Hosea, Amos, ment. the Prophets. and Micah, nor Isaiah recognizes the

Judges

xiii. 22),

need of any means of reconciliation with God after estrangement by sin, other than repentance. " Take with 3'ou words, and turn to the Lord say unto him, Take away all iniquity and receive us graciously: so will we render as bullocks the offerings of our lips" (Hosea xiv. 2, Hebr. compare Amos v. 22-24; Isa. i. 13-17, and the well-known passage, Micah vi. " Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, 6-8) Shall I give my firstwith calves of a year old? born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? "). But the prophet Ezekiel a priest and therefore more deeply penetrated with the sense of sin and purity than other prophets is not satisfied with the mere negation of ritualism. Repudiating, like Jeremiah, the idea held by his contempoEzekiel. raries that men undergo punishment on account of their fathers' sins, he lays the greater stress on the fact that the fruit of sin is death, and exhorts the people to cast away their sin and, returning to God, to live (Ezek. xviii.





.

.

.



— —

4-32).

ing "a

For him Atonement is wrought by acquirnew heart and a new spirit" (ib. 31). In

striking contrast with the other prophets, Ezekiel combines the belief in a complicated atoning ritual (as mapped out in Ezek. xl.-xlvi.) with the prophetic hope in the redeeming power of God's spirit which shall cleanse the people from their impurities and endow them with " a new heart and a new spirit

(xxxvi. 26). In no one, however, does the most elaborate ritualism of the Atonement sacrifice appear so closely intertwined with the profoundest spiritual conception of God's atoning powers as in Moses Moses. When the lawgiver himself. tfie worship of the Golden Calf had pro-

voked God's wrath to such a degree that He said to me alone that I may consume them; and I will make of thee a great nation" (Ex. xxxii. 10), the latter, desirous of making an Atonement for their transgression, asked the Lord to forMoses, "Let

.

.

.

give the people's sin, or else to blot Moses' own name out of His book (the book of life) and he

persisted in imploring God's pardon even after

had

said, "

He

Whosoever hath sinned against me, him

my

will I blot out of book," until finally, in answer to Moses' entreatjr the full glory of God, His ,

compassionate mercy, His long-suffering and forgiving love, were revealed and Moses' prayer for the people's pardon was granted (Ex. xxxiv. 1-9;