Day 33 -- Leviticus 15-17

We don’t need to linger long over the laws regarding bodily discharges in chapter 15 except to note that blood and semen are treated together here because they are both regarded as life-generating fluids. The regulations about their handling are so strict not because they are considered somehow “dirty,” but rather because they considered so powerful and mysterious—so dangerous--that they could not be disposed of without the greatest care.
The concern of this chapter is that the people of Israel should be kept “separate from their uncleanness”—those powerful bodily fluids--so that when they come to worship “they may not die in their uncleanness by defiling my tabernacle that is in their midst” (Exodus 15:31). The awful holiness of the LORD must be preserved at all cost from contact with those “toxic” fluids, not for God’s sake but for the sake of his people, who might otherwise be consumed by it.
The attitude toward blood is discussed further in chapter 17 in the regulations forbidding eating blood. “The life of the flesh is in the blood,” the LORD says in verse 11. It is therefore set apart as holy, and it can be used for no other purpose but “for making atonement for your lives on the altar.” Otherwise blood is to be poured out and covered with earth (17:13). Blood is a gift from God—his holiest gift—and its sole and only use is to give life—all other uses are strictly forbidden.
To me, at least, the regulations surrounding the yearly Day of Atonement found in Chapter 16 are very interesting in a Christian context. On that day two goats were set aside for a sin offering for the people. The holy lots were cast to decide which goat would be sacrificed to the LORD directly and which would be “for Azazel” (16:8). Azazel was a desert demon—an evil spirit that dwelt in the wilderness. We might think of him as the devil or Satan. The high priest would lay his hands on the head of the live goat and “confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions” (16:21) Then the goat—the “scapegoat”—thus ritually loaded, would be “sent away into the wilderness to Azazel” (16:10) to die. By the death of the scapegoat all the sins of Israel were completely atoned and the people were made “clean before the LORD” (16:30).
Early Christians saw the scapegoat as a powerful symbol of Jesus Christ, who was also driven out of Jerusalem to die, bearing the sins not just of Israel, but of all of humankind, so that a final and complete atonement might be made for the transgressions and “uncleanness” of all who have faith in him. In ancient Israel the scapegoat was followed into the desert, and news of its death there was greeted with general rejoicing. So we rejoice in the good news that Jesus Christ, by his Cross has made us at one with God once and for all and freed us from the fear of the death we so richly deserved.