Blamegoats

““When Aaron finishes making atonement for the Holy of Holies, the Tent of Meeting, and the Altar, he will bring up the live goat, lay both hands on the live goat’s head, and confess all the iniquities of the People of Israel, all their acts of rebellion, all their sins. He will put all the sins on the goat’s head and send it off into the wilderness, led out by a man standing by and ready. The goat will carry all their iniquities to an empty wasteland; the man will let him loose out there in the wilderness.” (Leviticus 16:20–22, The Message)  

 A scapegoat is someone who is singled out for blame. The idea comes from a phrase from an earlier verse in this same chapter:

“After Aaron casts lots for the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other for Azazel,” (Leviticus 16:8, HCSB)  

Azazel is the Hebrew word for a scapegoat. The scapegoat takes all the sin upon itself and takes all of the blame for that sin. For the longest time though, I always thought that the scapegoat should be the goat which “escapes” and therefore the word scapegoat would be someone who escapes blame. Instead, a scapegoat is someone who takes the blame.

There is also a different type of goat called the blamegoat. A blamegoat is defined in the Urban Dictionary as “the individual who is singled out as the source or cause of whatever has gone wrong. The blamegoat is often blamed by the culprit himself…” According to the Bible, sin is a blamegoat. Everyone sins and does wrong.

Sin is our blamegoat. Jesus is our scapegoat.

Jesus is our scapegoat because He took our sin (since sin is what causes us to do wrong) and blame upon Himself and let us escape the consequences of our sin.

He takes the blame. He takes the shame.

Photo by Mikita Karasiou on Unsplash