Troublesome Topic: LEVITICUS 16 AND THE TERM AZAZEL

BOTH GOATS MADE UP THE SIN OFFERING

Notice that it says there are two young goats for a sin offering; both of them together make up the sin offering. All such offerings were offered to YHVH. Because of how this sections starts, we can be confident that sending the one goat into the desert was not a picture of sending it to a demon, or even to the Serpent where sin supposedly came from (which is incorrect because sin started when Eve and then Adam used their freedom of choice to violate a clear directive from God. Satan tempted them, but they made the choice). The Bible never instructs anyone to offer a sacrifice to another god or to a demon; that would legitimize the power of that entity. The purpose of any burnt offering was to show gratitude and commitment to God. One could not show commitment to God and at the same time express dependence on a demon.

REASONS I THINK THE WORD AZAZEL DOES NOT REFER TO A DEMON

The purpose here is to show that the guilt of sin has been removed. Blood was necessary for atonement, but here God used another picture to communicate that atonement frees us from guilt; it sends guilt far away.

Azazel is a compound word which comes from the word “goat” and the word “departure, removal”. 

While one of the ways to refer to a demon was with one of the words for goat (see Le 17:7 which uses a different word for goat but means demon), that does not mean that every mention of a goat must refer to a demon. Not even close. To do so in Leviticus 16:8 creates a problem of timing.

According to DBD, the use of “azazel” as a proper name, which we capitalize as “Azazel,” (Hebrew has no upper or lower-case letters), i.e. the name of an evil spirit that dwelled in the desert, was a late development. Usually that means during the Second Temple era. This means that at the time of its writing, the word azazel was not a proper name and did not refer to a demon. Heiser acknowledges this as well, on page 177, when he points to the sources of the proper name being 1 Enoch and other writings found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. He also states that, in the minds of some scholars, the name Azazel, and its corresponding demon, were associated with Mot, the god of death. Once again, we see that Heiser is consistently going to sources that originate from foreign, pagan religions (such as the connection to Mot), or to Jewish sources that were obviously influenced by other religions (late Jewish writings such as 1 Enoch).

Heiser taught that we should interpret the Old Testamen through the eyes of those who put it together in its the final form, i.e. intertestamental Judaism, i.e. Judaism which had been influenced by other religions. What he ignores is that the Hebrew copyists were very careful to not change anything, even if it was obviously wrong. Instead of changing what the document they were copying said, they would copy it faithfully and add a note in the margin indicating what they thought the correct wording should be. Therefore, those who put the Old Testament together did not change things to their liking. But Heiser’s point is about interpretation – when we see something that might possibly refer to the council of the gods, Heiser assumes it does refer to the council of the gods because many late Jews had come to believe in that stuff. I choose to see it from the perspective of the original writer, be it Moses or David, etc. The fact that later Jewish people believed in a council of gods does not mean that Moses believed in it. However, Heiser also tries to place in the minds of all the people of Israel during all eras, an understanding of the council of gods (page 99 and others). Once again, he causes confusion by saying two things that are opposed to each other.   

According to the Interpretive History section of the Topical Lexicon of Biblehub.com, “Ancient Jewish sources vary: some treat Azazel as the goat itself, others as the wilderness place, and still others as a demonic figure receiving the goat. Scripture, however, offers no hint of sacrifice to a rival power. The emphasis rests on the departure of sin, not on placating evil beings.”

Heiser wrote on page 178, “The High Priest was not sacrificing to Azazel. Rather, Azazel was getting what belong to him: sin.” While it is true that the ritual of sending the goat into the wilderness was not a sacrifice in the true sense of the word, sending sin “back where it came from” or “back where it belongs” does seem to give this demon significant respect. God does not owe Satan anything. While the Serpent was the one who tempted Eve to sin, saying that he was the originator of sin s not fully accurate. Also, taking our sin back to Satan does not seem to fit because sin is an offense to the holy nature of God; sin causes a rift in our relationship with God, Satan has no direct connection to that situation.

What’s more, the scape goat is a picture of Jesus, i.e. a picture of the complete atonement and forgiveness provided by Jesus (See I Peter 2:24, and Hebrews chapters 9 and 10); how can it be that Satan or a demon depicts Jesus?

On Page 176 Dr. Heiser writes, “Since Yahweh is a proper name and the goats are described in the same way, Hebrew parallelism informs us that Azazel is also a proper name.” First of all, Heiser really stretches the definition of parallelism here, but more importantly, how could the second half of the sentence refer to a demon if the tradition which gave a demon that specific name had not yet developed? Also, it was the second lot that was for azazel, not the second goat.

The ritual of sending a goat into the desert is to picture entire removal of sin and its guilt from sacred places into the desert, a picture of death. The same thing could have been accomplished by sending it into the sea (another place of death) but the goat would not go on its own into the sea.

REASONS THE WORD AZAZEL MIGHT REFER TO A DEMON

Letting our sin wander in the desert seems weird too.

Some (but not all) Second-Temple era Jews thought azazel referred to a demon.

Once the use of Azazel as a proper noun referring to a desert-dwelling demon came into vogue, interpreting this verse in that way seemed natural.

MY CONCLUSION ABOUT AZAZEL

As you can see, to interpret this passage as a reference to a demon has several serious problems and the only support for it comes from Jewish writers who were heavily influenced by pagan religions. Therefore, I cannot accept the “Azazel is a demon” interpretation.

While this is not a make-or-break issue, it is emblematic of the habit that Michael Heiser has of using the documents of pagan religions, or those of Jews who had been influenced by pagan religions, to interpret the Bible instead of using the Bible to interpret itself.

The word Azazel is not used elsewhere in the Bible. So how can the Bible interpret itself if the word is only used once? What I mean is that our interpretation of this word cannot violate all related topics that are covered in the Bible. Bringing definitions and usages from other religions does violate various teachings in the Bible, therefore, what comes from other religions cannot be used to define this term even though it is only used once in the Bible. The definition of the word at the time it was penned and the context of the passage must inform us as to its meaning, and this must agree with the rest of Scripture.