5/18/2023 0 Comments Azazel sigil![]() ![]() When all the doings were done, the goat would probably wander off while the Israelites realized that all they could do with sin is distantiate themselves from it and let God lead it away to wherever he would want it to go. The beauty of the Levitical scapegoat is that the goat itself was completely oblivious to what it was supposed to do. The etymology of the rabbis is most likely false, and their goat-slinging is also a bit over the top, so to speak. The Oxford Companion to the Bible reports that since in the Midrash the scapegoat was supposed to be hurled over a cliff, the rabbis decided that the word azazel meant Precipice. Since Azazel as a personage is so hotly debated, the origin and meaning of the name is immediately unclear as well. □Etymology and meaning of the name Azazel If the second goat is "for" Azazel, Leviticus 16:8 would violate an enormous volley of laws and ordinances, including the First Commandment (Exodus 20:3-6, also see Exodus 22:20, 2 Chronicles 34:25, 1 Corinthians 10:20, and for a similar ritual that certainly doesn't involve a secondary personage, see the law of the scapebird in Leviticus 14:1-7). It's not unusual in the Bible to name spirit-beings (think for instance of the angels Michael and Gabriel) but that Azazel was probably not a recognized demon/angel is argued by Leviticus 16:8, where two lots are cast over two goats one goat is for YHWH and the other is either "to be" the scapegoat or is "for" Azazel. In the Midrash - the ancient homiletic commentary on the Hebrew Scriptures - Azazel is deemed a demon. "In the Ethiopian book of Enoch," says the Oxford Companion to the Bible, "Azazel is a fallen angel". Both appear in the Bible as seemingly ordinary yet rare and highly specialized words, which so appealed to the imagination of the audience that corresponding personages were invented and subsequently written about as if they had existed all along.Īzazel is a word that is commonly translated with our (specially invented) word scapegoat. Whether Azazel is a Biblical name or not is not immediately clear, although Azazel as a phenomenon possibly went through a similar evolution as did Lilith.
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