Leviticus 16:6

"And Aaron shall present the bullock of the sin-offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself, and for his house. And he shall take the two goats, and set them before Jehovah at the door of the tent of meeting. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for Jehovah, and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat upon whom the lot fell for Jehovah, and offer him for a sin-offering. But the goat, on which the lot fell for Azazel, shall set alive before Jehovah, to make atonement for him, to send him away for Azazel into the wilderness."

"Aaron shall cast lots ..." Jamieson described this procedure thus:

"The priest placed one of the goats on his right hand, and the other on his left. Two pieces of gold exactly alike, inscribed "for Jehovah" and "for Azazel" were then placed in a bag or covered box, and the priest placed both hands inside and took out both pieces, one in each hand. That in his right hand he placed on the head of the goat on that side, and that in his left hand on the other goat's head. This determined the fate of each."[12]

"Azazel ..." The capitalization of this word making a proper name out of it is ridiculous, such being a work entirely of man, not of God, and it is rejected here categorically as extremely ridiculous. The basis for this corrupt translation comes principally from two arguments:

(1) The Hebrew word for [~`aza'zel] has no article ([~la-`aza'zel]); so, from this, it is alleged by commentators who don't know their grammar that it must refer to a person, but as Meyrick pointed out, theirs "is a grammatical error." "When a noun expresses an office or a function, it does NOT require a definite article in Hebrew any more than it does in French."[13] Meyrick cited half a dozen Biblical references confirming this.

(2) The second argument is somewhat more convincing, but still wrong. "There is, of course, a great likelihood that when two phrases, `for the Lord' and `for something else' are set in contrast with each other that, if the first refers to a person, then so also does the second. But it is an incredibly rash assertion that this is always the case."[14] The instance here is one in which it is impossible for that to be the case. Moses did not write in a strait-jacket, restricted and smothered by all the rules that grammarians observe. And it has been the mark of great men in all ages that the rules never failed to get kicked around somewhat in their writings and lectures. We think of that instance when Sir Winston Churchill was heard to end a sentence with a preposition, upon which a critic pointed out what he considered an error. The incomparable Churchill froze his critic with a stare and replied, "Indeed, indeed! This is bastard English, up with which I will not put!" Those who overheard it, declared that a belly laugh put the critic to shame and left Churchill's "error" uncorrected. The same kind of belly laugh is deserved by the "Azazel" rendition.

Think of the implications of this, if it could be accepted as correct. The critics themselves have spelled it out for us:

"The most popular explanation among commentators is that Azazel is the name of a demon that lived in the wilderness.[15] Azazel was the name of something that was the opposite of God. This means that we should identify him as the chief of the forces of evil, hence, the Devil.[16] He was probably some demon of the desert.[17] 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."[18]

Well, there you have it! This particular example of scholarly "fembu" leads to the acceptance of the most bizarre and preposterous declarations ever advanced by so-called "believers in Christ." Can such men actually accept the proposition that on the great Day of Atonement itself, one of the principal features of it was a sacrifice to the Devil! Men should reject such notions, not with cautious scholarly reserve, but with the same blunt denial that the advocates of this rendition make of the whole Word of God. The Lord specifically forbade the recognition of any evil power (Leviticus 17:7). How can it be thought that God Himself recognized the Devil here by sending him a sacrifice, in fact sharing with him, on a share and share alike basis, the sin-offering of Israel? The discernment of Maclaren in this was correct:

"It is surely sacrificing a great deal to rhetorical propriety to drag in an idea so foreign to the Pentateuch, and so opposed to the plain fact that both goats were one sin-offering (Leviticus 16:5), just in order to get a pedantically correct antithesis.[19]

What then, is the correct rendition for the word here given as Azazel? We are happy to note that Meyrick has not only answered this but justified and defended it with the most thorough discussion of the whole question that may be found anywhere. He rendered the passage: "And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and one lot for a remover of sins."[20] In this rendition is also the apparent reason for the difficulty of putting this thought into language. The words "for the Lord" and "for the remover of sins" do not apply to the Lord and some other person, but to the two goats and the diverse functions each played in the sin offering of Israel. In the Bible, especially in the N.T., there are many examples where grammatical constructions cannot convey the truth at all. For example, Christ is spoken of as THE BEING; THE WAS, and THE COMING! This is the literal rendition of the Greek text of Revelation 1:4.[21] It is not grammatical in either Greek or English. And Moffatt stated, "This is a deliberate violation of grammar to preserve the immutability and absoluteness of the divine name."[22] The same kind of violation of the pedantic rules of rhetoric is discernible in Leviticus 16:8. (See further discussion of the false word Azazel at end of this chapter.)