The Scapegoat
Among the strangest and most memorable of the ceremonies commanded for the Hebrews was that of “the scapegoat.” Once every year, “as an everlasting statute,” were they commanded to assemble so as to offer a sacrifice of atonement for all their sins.
Two he-goats were brought before the high priest and, selecting one by lot, he slew it upon the altar; then the other was brought forth, and the high priest’s direction was that he “shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness.”
The mystic tragedy of the fate of this poor goat thus driven forth alone into the wilderness weighed down with all the sins of a nation has always attracted both poets and painters. Holman Hunt’s picture stands out as perhaps the most celebrated conception of the lonely burden-bearer.
Comments