Acharei Mot - Leviticus 16:1-18:30

A Quick Recap

Six chapters ago, the sons of Aaron brought a fire offering to the appointed place for YHVH, and He cast forth a special fire to consume them. Moses consoled his brother and then warned the other relatives not to move, lest YHVH do the same to them.

All of that took place in just seven verses, and the text then went on for a long lime concerning the do's and don'ts of priesthood, including how to diagnose a couple of versions of a supernatural disease, taz'arat.

And now, verse 16:1 comes to tell us that it takes place right after 10:7, hence the name "After the death of [Nadav and Avihu]".

In other words, it is as though an unrelated chunk of text dropped right into the middle of a story where the sons are killed, and now YHVH is telling Moses what to tell Aaron in order to avoid the same fate, emphasizing that you cannot come to YHVH when you feel like it, but only at the appointed times (the ones that He has defined).

And that appears to be why they died. Not because they brought the wrong kind of offering, but because they had not been called yet to bring it. The text here tells us that they were killed for drawing near, meaning, at the wrong time. The Targum changes that to "when they brought a strange fire" to indicate that they brought the wrong offering, and, at the very least, to avoid the view that they were killed as offerings themselves, as at least one midrash suggests.

Who the hell is Azazel?

I use "hell" purposefully.

In His instructions to Aaron (via Moses), YHVH talks about the Yom Kippur ritual with the sending of the two goats.

Lots will be chosen for these two identical goats. One will be "for YHVH" (the Targum changes it to "For the name of YHVH"), and on the other "for Azazel" (the Targumist leaves this unchanged).

There is no universal agreement as to whom or what Azazel is. The three typical interpretations are that it is a type of goat, the name of a mountain, or a supernatural entity. We find that the "for YHVH" goat it sacrificed as a guilt offering (16:15), but sending the other goat to Azazel, well, Scripture is silent and if you are a true monotheist, the very notion is a bit perplexing.

According to Tractate Yoma (67b), the name may contain the word "strength", but that requires a bit of tweaking to get to that position, swapping the ayain for an aleph to make עזאז into אזאז. Of course the first two letters עז are "goat", and hence the view that perhaps it is speaking of a goat of great strength, which might bring to mind something like a satyr, especially since verse 17:7 uses another word for goat as a euphemism for a goat-like God (most translations render this God as a "demon").

As I already noted, some see "Azazel" as the name of a place, a destination toward where the goat will be driven. Of course, being paired with one that has "for/towards YHVH" anthropomorphizes  YHVH a bit more than people are comfortable with.

Others consider that this is a contraction of two (or maybe one) angelic names to bribe them to not bother the Hebrews while they are trying to atone. Although that ends up equally having it be a bribe to a demon for the same purpose. In the Talmud (Yoma, as noted above), the Sages considered that the angels Uza and Uzazel were created to entice humans to be sexually active! Of course, there are no names of angels anywhere in the Torah, and these are later creations that the Jews borrowed from other cultures.

Rashi, commenting on Yoma 67b, using this view of Uza, saw this sacrifice as one to atone for sexual sins.

The Ramban, equating the prohibition to sacrificing to the goat demon in 17:7, to the action permitted in 16:8, wrote that Azazel is an exception to the rule. God not only "gave the Jews permission to bribe Samael" [sic] but commanded them to do so in chapter 16.

Ibn Ezra is uncomfortable with all of these ideas and just proclaims that we have no idea what "for/to Azazel" means, and all of these ideas are simply speculation.

Finally

In his Guid of the Perplexed (3:46), the Rambam wrote that this form of sacrifice was to remind the people of their ancestors' transgression, when they worshiped the golden calf. Goats were used for guilt offerings because the masses generally thought of goats as demons, and "most of the transgressions and sins of the Israelites were sacrifices to demons" in goat form. 

This was contrary to the non-rational view of the Ramban who wrote that the "for/to Azazel" goat used in the Yom Kippur service was sent as a bribe to the demon to divert him from his usual damaging behavior and to secure his aid in obtaining a favorable decision from God for the forthcoming year.

So like the Ibn Ezra, all we can say is, "I don't know, and those who claim that they do are just making it all up."

But it's still fun to ponder the possibilities!