Ezekiel 16:8

A covenant] a marriage covenant, probably with reference to the covenant at Sinai.

For the scapegoat] RV 'for Aaazel.' This word does not occur elsewhere in OT. The parallel, for the Lord, suggests that it should be taken as a proper name, and left untranslated. The word scapegoat in AV is not a translation, but indicates merely the use to which this goat is to be put. Azazel is understood to be the name of one of those malignant demons with which the superstition of the Israelites peopled the wilderness and all waste places (see Isaiah 13:21; Isaiah 34:14, cp. Matthew 12:43; Mark 1:13). The sending of the sin-laden goat to him (Leviticus 16:21) signified the complete removal of the sins of the people and the handing them over, as it were, to the evil spirit to whom they belonged: cp. the ceremony connected with the cleansing of lepers (Leviticus 14:6). This rite may have been intended, at all events it would serve, to counteract any disposition to honour and worship such evil spirits (cp. Leviticus 17:7).

12-14. The high priest next enters the Holy of Holies with incense and the blood of his sin offering, which he sprinkles once on the mercy seat and seven times in the space before it, thus making atonement for himself and his house.

15-19. He then goes out into the court and sacrifices the goat on which the lot fell 'for Jehovah,' and brings its blood as before into the Holy of Holies to make atonement for the sanctuary and its parts, and cleanse them from the sins. which mingle even with the best service that man can offer to God.

20-22. He now takes the goat destined 'for Azazel,' and laying his hands on its head confesses over it the sins of the people, after which a man standing in readiness leads the goat away into the wilderness and releases it. In the time of the Second Temple the goat was destroyed by being precipitated from a rock 12 m. from Jerusalem.

23-28. He finally bathes and resumes his distinctive vestments and offers the two burnt offerings for himself and the people, in token of entire reconsecration to the service of God. At the same time he burns the fat of the two sin offerings, the flesh of which is taken outside the camp and there consumed. In later times the high priest at this point read in the hearing of the people prescribed portions of the Law, viz. Leviticus 23:26; Numbers 29:7, concluding with a series of benedictions.