The Goat for Azazel—Why Was It Really Pushed Off a Cliff?

As part of the ritual to purge the Tabernacle of impurity, Aaron is to place two male goats before God and use lots to designate one as a sin offering to God and one to be released into the wilderness for Azazel:^[1]

‏^{ויקרא טז:ט} וְהִקְרִיב אַהֲרֹן אֶת הַשָּׂעִיר אֲשֶׁר עָלָה עָלָיו הַגּוֹרָל לַי־הוָה וְעָשָׂהוּ חַטָּאת. ^טז:י וְהַשָּׂעִיר אֲשֶׁר עָלָה עָלָיו הַגּוֹרָל לַעֲזָאזֵל יָעֳמַד חַי לִפְנֵי יְ־הוָה לְכַפֵּר עָלָיו לְשַׁלַּח אֹתוֹ לַעֲזָאזֵל הַמִּדְבָּרָה.

^{Lev 16:9} Aaron shall bring forward the goat designated by lot for YHWH, which he is to offer as a sin offering; ^16:10 while the goat designated by lot for Azazel shall be left standing alive before YHWH, to make expiation with it and to release it into the wilderness for Azazel.^[2]

Before the second goat is sent off, the sins of the Israelites are ritually placed upon its head:

‏^{ויקרא טז:כב} וְנָשָׂא הַשָּׂעִיר עָלָיו אֶת כָּל עֲוֹנֹתָם אֶל אֶרֶץ גְּזֵרָה וְשִׁלַּח אֶת הַשָּׂעִיר בַּמִּדְבָּר.

^{Lev 16:22} Thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness.

The biblical text offers no further details about this goat. What precisely does the Torah intend to happen to this goat in the wilderness?^[3]

The Goat Was Pushed Off a Cliff

The Yom Kippur Musaf (additional morning service) liturgy depicts the goat for Azazel being “sent off” to its death, i.e. killed, but not in the same way that sacrificial animals are killed:

שִׁגְּרוֹ בְּיַד אִישׁ עִתִּי לְמִדְבַּר עָז.

He [the high priest] sent it in the charge of an appointed man to the mighty wilderness,

שֶׁמֶץ כִּתְמֵי זוּ שְׂאֵת לִגְזֵרָה

To carry the stain of that congregation to a desolate land.

שֵׁן סֶלַע הֲדָפוֹ וְגֻלְגַּל וְיָרַד

He pushed it from the edge of the cliff and it rolled down and fell

שֻׁבְּרוּ עֲצָמָיו כְּנֶפֶץ כְּלִי יוֹצֵר^[4]

And its bones were broken like the shattering of a potter’s vessel.^[5]

This liturgical poem (piyyut) is based on several classical rabbinic texts. The Mishnah records that the appointed man (איש עתי)^[6] who took the goat away to the wilderness was accompanied most of the way there, but not on his final steps, when he would push the goat off the top of a cliff:^[7]

^{משנה יומא ו:ו} דְחָפוֹ לַאֲחוֹרָיו וְהוּא מִתְגַּלְגֵּל וְיוֹרֵד. וְלֹא הָיָה מַגִּיעַ לַחֲצִי הָהָר, עַד שֶׁנַּעֲשָׂה אֵבָרִים אֵבָרִים.

^{m. Yoma 6:6} He pushed the goat backward, and it would roll down. Before it got halfway down the mountain, it was torn limb from limb.^[8]

The tannaitic midrash on Leviticus, Sifra (ca. 3^rd C.E.), explicitly rejects the possibility that the goat might survive the ritual:

^{ספרא, אחרי מות, פרק ב:ו} ״יָעֳמַד חַי לִפְנֵי יי״ — מַה תַּלְמוּד? לְפִי שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר ״לְשַׁלַּח אֹתוֹ״, שִׁלּוּחוֹ לַמִּיתָה. יָכֹל שִׁלּוּחוֹ לַחַיִּים?

^{Sifra, Acharei Mot 2:6} “[The goat] shall be made to stand alive before God”: What does this teach us? Since the verse says, “to send it away,” [we now know that this means] to send it away to die. [For] could it mean to send it away to continue living?

תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר ״יָעֳמַד חַי לִפְנֵי יי לְכַפֵּר עָלָיו״. הֲכֵיצַד? עֲמִידָתוֹ חַי לִפְנֵי הַשֵּׁם, יְמִיתֶנּוּ בַצּוֹק.

That is why the verse says, “[the goat] shall be left standing alive before God.” In what way [is this done]? While it is standing [in the Temple] before God, it is alive; [but the appointed man] kills it at the cliff.^[9]

In other words, the text specifically states that the goat is alive at the Temple, but it does not state that the goat is alive in the wilderness, implying that the animal is intended to die there.

Rashbam: The Goat was Released

As he often does, Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam; c. 1080 – c. 1160) deviates from the standard rabbinic understanding of the text, arguing that the peshat (the plain or contextual meaning) of the biblical text is that the second goat is set free:

^{רשב"ם ויקרא טז:י} לשלח אותו לעזאזל המדברה – לפי פשוטו: לשלח אותו חי אל העזים אשר במדבר, כמו שמצינו בציפרי מצורע: ושלח את הצפור החיה על פני השדה (ויקרא י"ד:ז') – לטהרו מטומאתו. אף כאן, לטהר את ישראל מעונותם משלחו אל המדבר....

^{Rashbam, Lev 16:10} According to the plain meaning of Scripture [this means] “to release it alive to [let it go graze with] the [other] goats in the wilderness.” This is just like what is done with the bird offerings of the “leper,” that purify him from his impurity; [concerning one of the two birds] it is written (Lev 14:7),] “he shall set the live bird free (וְשִׁלַּח) in the open country.” So here also, in order to purify the Israelites from their sins, he sets the goat free in the wilderness (מדבר).^[10]

Rashbam draws an analogy with another purification ritual. To remove the impurity of tzara‘at (traditionally “leprosy”) from an individual, two birds are brought to the priest. The first bird is slaughtered as a sacrifice (Lev 14:4–5), and the second is set free:

^{ויקרא יד:ז} ...וְטִהֲרוֹ וְשִׁלַּח אֶת הַצִּפֹּר הַחַיָּה עַל פְּנֵי הַשָּׂדֶה.

^{Lev 14:7b} Then he shall pronounce him clean, and he shall release the living bird into the open field.

Since the Torah uses the same verb (שִׁלַּח) to describe what is done with the second goat—לְשַׁלַּח אֹתוֹ לַעֲזָאזֵל הַמִּדְבָּרָה, “to release it into the wilderness for Azazel” (16:10)—Rashbam claims that it, too, is released and continues to live. Comparing the two rituals, Everett Fox (Clark University) writes:

The liberation of the live bird, into the open field (the countryside), sounds like a scapegoat ritual, whereby sins or noxious influences are driven into uninhabited space and hence disposed of.^[11]

Josephus and Philo

Evidence from Second Temple literature is unclear regarding whether the goat survived. The description of the ceremony in Josephus (37 – ca. 100 C.E.) does not explicitly state that the second goat was killed:

^{Antiquities of the Jews 3.241} They bring two goats, one of which is sent alive into the wilderness beyond the boundaries (ὑπερόριον) in order to be an aversion and pardon for the sin of all the multitude.^[12]

In his 1885 doctoral dissertation, Flavius Josephus und die Halacha, however, Marcus Olitzki harmonizes Josephus’s position with what we find in the Mishnah.^[13] He argues, with some hesitation, that the Greek word ὑπερόριον could be translated as “beyond the mountain” or “beyond the hill,” a possible reference to the practice of hurling the goat down from a mountain.^[14]

Philo of Alexandria’s (ca. 25 B.C.E. – ca. 50C.E.) allegorical interpretation of the ritual is similarly ambiguous. He compares the fate of the goats to that of the virtuous and the wicked:

^{On Planting, 61} For it is expressly stated that at that time one should allot two goats, one for the Lord and one for dismissal. There is a double reasoning here, one for God, the other for the world of becoming. He who glorifies the Cause [God] will be apportioned to him, but he who glorifies the world of becoming will be exiled and driven away from the most holy places, tumbling into trackless and unhallowed regions full of ravines.^[15]

Philo might be alluding to the rabbinic understanding that the second goat is pushed to its death from the top of a cliff into a ravine. However, Albert C. Geljon and David T. Runia, editors of a recent scholarly edition of Philo, note:

Philo often depicts the road of vice—which is actually a no-road—as bumpy, full of pits and ravines. This way is contrasted with the highway of virtue.^[16]

Jacob Milgrom (1923–2010) interprets Philo as indicating that the goat survives.^[17]

The Goat Arrived!

Milgrom further argues, like Rashbam, that killing the goat was not the original understanding of the text. He notes that the Mishnah requires that the high priest be notified when the second goat arrives in the wilderness so that he can continue the Yom Kippur ritual:

^{משנה יומא ו:ח} אָמְרוּ לוֹ לְכֹהֵן גָּדוֹל, הִגִּיעַ שָׂעִיר לַמִּדְבָּר.

^{m. Yoma 6:8} They said to the High Priest: The goat has reached the wilderness.

Milgrom draws out the implications of this passage:

Note that this mishna...implies that the high priest waited to be informed of the scapegoat’s arrival, not of its slaying. This can only mean that the death of the scapegoat was not an integral part of the original ritual but must have been added later.^[18]

If the second goat was originally to be released alive into the wilderness, why did the rabbis decide that it should be killed? Why change a ceremony of release to a ceremony where an animal atones vicariously for our sins through its death?

Israel Became More Populated

As he often does, Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal; 1800–1865) follows Rashbam’s understanding of the peshat meaning of the text, but, unlike Rashbam, he tries to harmonize that understanding with that of the classical rabbis. According to Shadal, the goat was not killed, but the ritual did intend for it to die:

^{שד"ל ויקרא טז:ח} והנה השעיר היה משתלח לאבדון במדבר שימות ברעב. והנה בזמן שהיתה ארץ ישראל רחבת ידים לישראל להיותם המעט מכל העמים היה אפשר למצוא בתוך ארצם ארץ גזרה ורחבה שיתעה בה השעיר וימות,

^{Shadal, Lev 16:8} The goat was let loose to its doom in the desert, so that it would die of hunger. At a time when the land of Israel had ample room for the Israelites, who were the smallest of nations, it was possible to find within their territory a broad, uninhabited area in which the goat could wander and die.

אבל אחר זמן כשרבתה האומה ונתיישבה הארץ ולא היתה שם ארץ גזרה הוצרכו להתקין שידחף השעיר מעל הצוק, שאם לא כן היה נכנס לעיר נושבת.

But with the passage of time, when the nation increased and the land was more fully settled, so that there was no longer any uninhabited area, they had to legislate that the goat would be pushed off a cliff. Otherwise it might enter a populated city.^[19]

Milgrom tentatively suggests a similar reconstruction:

Could it be that the change [to kill the second goat] was made after a scapegoat was once able to make its way back to civilization still laden with Israel’s sins?^[20]

Yet even after the Jewish population of the land grew, would it really be so difficult to take a goat to a place from which it would not be able to return to civilization? Moreover, Shadal assumes here that מדבר (midbar) means a desert, a place where no food is found,[21] but as Rashbam notes, a מדבר is not necessarily a place where a goat would die of starvation:

^{רשב"ם ויקרא טז:י} [המדבר] והוא מקום מרעה הבהמות, כדכתיב וינהג את הצאן אחר המדבר (שמות ג':א'). ובתלמוד (משנה ביצה ה':ז'): מדבריות בייתות.

^{Rashbam, Lev 16:10} [The word מדבר means] a place where animals graze, as it is written: Moses “led the sheep to the מדבר.” (Ex. 3:1) So also in rabbinic literature [one speaks of two kinds of animals], “מדבריות and בייתיות – ‘midbariyot’ and domesticated.”

The word מדבר is thus best understood as “wilderness,” rather than “desert.”

Perhaps the treatment of the second goat changed for a different reason.

The Goat Was Scavenged by Saracens

The Jerusalem Talmud lists miracles that occurred in the Temple in the days of Shimon ha-Tzaddik, the legendary figure whom tradition dates to the days of Alexander the Great (in the 4^th cent. B.C.E.), and that stopped after Shimon’s death. For example, while he was alive, the fire on the altar in the Temple did not have to be fed all day long: Two pieces of wood were put onto the fire in the morning, and the flames continued to grow stronger all day long. After he died, the Talmud says, the fire had to be fed all day long to keep it from going out.

One of the six changes in this list does not fit the pattern of miraculous events:

^{ירושלמי יומא ו:ג} כָּל יָמִים שֶׁהָיָה שִׁמְעוֹן הַצַּדִּיק [קַייָם] לֹא הָיָה מַגִּיעַ לְמַחֲצִית הָהָר עַד שֶׁנַּעֲשֶׂה אֵיבָרִין אֵיבָרִין. מִשֶּׁמֵּת שִׁמְעוֹן הַצַּדִּיק, הָיָה בוֹרֵחַ לַמִּדְבָּר וְהַסַרָקִיִין אוֹכְלִין אוֹתוֹ.

^{m. Yoma 6:3} For all the years that Shimon ha-Tzaddik was alive, before [the scapegoat that was pushed off the cliff] got halfway down the mountain, it was torn limb from limb. After he died, the goat would run away to the wilderness and Saracens^[22] would come and eat it.

A goat being pushed off a cliff to its death without any problems is hardly a miracle; goats figuring out how to run away only after Shimon’s death sounds unlikely.

The Jerusalem Talmud thus may not be describing a real change that occurred at the time of Shimon’s death, but rather it may be preserving, not entirely accurately, two true memories: (1) that over the years a change took place in how the scapegoat ceremony was performed; and (2) that the change involved the problem of desert-dwellers feasting on the scapegoat.

If the Temple authorities discovered at some point that a tribe of desert dwellers had learned that every September/October a live unblemished goat was released in a far-off location, and they lay in wait to get a free feast of goat meat, these authorities may have decided that feeding desert dwellers was not the purpose of the ceremony. Thus, they legislated that the goat would from then on be “released” to its death from the top of a cliff.^[23]

Perhaps then the change from a ceremony of release to a ceremony of vicarious atonement was not a matter of ideology, but was caused by technical problems.