The high priest having presented unto the Lord the expiatory
sacrifices, by the sprinkling of their blood, the remainder of which,
it is probable, he poured out at the foot of the brazen altar, 1. He is
next to confess the sins of Israel, with both his hands upon the head
of the scape-goat (v. 20, 21); and whenever hands were imposed upon the
head of any sacrifice it was always done with confession, according as
the nature of the sacrifice was; and, this being a sin-offering, it
must be a confession of sin. In the latter and more degenerate ages of
the Jewish church they had a set form of confession prepared for the
high priest, but God here prescribed none; for it might be supposed
that the high priest was so well acquainted with the state of the
people, and had such a tender concern for them, that he needed not any
form. The confession must be as particular as he could make it, not
only of all the iniquities of the children of Israel, but all their
transgressions in all their sins. In one sin there may be many
transgressions, from the several aggravating circumstances of it; and
in our confessions we should take notice of them, and not only say, I
have sinned, but, with Achan, "Thus and thus have I done." By this
confession he must put the sins of Israel upon the head of the goat;
that is, exercising faith upon the divine appointment which constituted
such a translation, he must transfer the punishment incurred from the
sinners to the sacrifice, which would have been but a jest, nay, an
affront to God, if he himself had not ordained it. 2. The goat was then
to be sent away immediately by the hand of a fit person pitched upon
for the purpose, into a wilderness, a land not inhabited; and God
allowed them to make this construction of it, that the sending away of
the goat was the sending away of their sins, by a free and full
remission: He shall bear upon him all their iniquities, v. 22. The
losing of the goat was a sign to them that the sins of Israel should be
sought for, and not found, Jer. l. 20. The later Jews had a custom to
tie one shred of scarlet cloth to the horns of the goat and another to
the gate of the temple, or to the top of the rock where the goat was
lost, and they concluded that if it turned white, as they say it
usually did, the sins of Israel were forgiven, as it is written, Though
your sins have been as scarlet, they shall be as wool: and they add
that for forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans
the scarlet cloth never changed colour at all, which is a fair
confession that, having rejected the substance, the shadow stood them
in no stead. 3. The high priest must then put off his linen garments in
the tabernacle, and leave them there, the Jews say never to be worn
again by himself or any other, for they made new ones every year; and
he must bathe himself in water, put on his rich clothes, and then offer
both his own and the people's burnt-offerings, v. 23, 24. When we have
the comfort of our pardon God must have the glory of it. If we have the
benefit of the sacrifice of atonement, we must not grudge the
sacrifices of acknowledgment. And, it should seem, the burning of the
fat of the sin-offering was deferred till now (v. 25), that it might be
consumed with the burnt-offerings. 4. The flesh of both those
sin-offerings whose blood was taken within the veil was to be all
burnt, not upon the altar, but at a distance without the camp, to
signify both our putting away sin by true repentance, and the spirit of
burning, and God's putting it away by a full remission, so that it
shall never rise up in judgment against us. 5. He that took the
scape-goat into the wilderness, and those that burned the sin-offering,
were to be looked upon as ceremonially unclean, and must not come into
the camp till they had washed their clothes and bathed their flesh in
water, which signified the defiling nature of sin; even the sacrifice
which was but made sin was defiling: also the imperfection of the legal
sacrifices; they were so far from taking away sin that even they left
some stain upon those that touched them. 6. When all this was done, the
high priest went again into the most holy place to fetch his censer,
and so returned to his own house with joy, because he had done his
duty, and died not.