Leviticus 16:29

"And it shall be a statute forever unto you: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, ye shall afflict your souls, and shall do no manner of work, the home-born, or the stranger that sojourneth among you: for on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins shall ye be clean before Jehovah. It is a sabbath of solemn rest unto you, and ye shall afflict your souls; it is a statute forever. And the priest, who shall be anointed and who shall be consecrated to be priest in his father's stead, shall make the atonement, and shall put on the linen garments, even the holy garments: and he shall make atonement for the holy sanctuary; and he shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar; and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make atonement for the children of Israel because of all their sins once in the year. And he did as Jehovah commanded Moses."

"Afflict your souls ..." "This means observe a fast, as indicated by Psalms 35:13 and Isaiah 58:3,5. This was the only fast enjoined in the Mosaic law.[26] The Jews understood the command to "afflict your souls" as a command to abstain from "food, drink, bathing, perfuming, sandals, and intercourse."[27]

What has all this to do with people today? We are expected to respond to the Great Atonement provided for ourselves in the Great Antitype, of whom these ancient symbols were eloquent witnesses. As the author of Hebrews put it:

"Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water ... let us provoke one another to love and good works, not neglecting the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as ye see the day drawing nigh" (Leviticus 10:22-25).

REGARDING AZAZEL

This word is found nowhere else in the Bible, and it certainly does not belong here. Its injection into the sacred text is contrary to the whole text in which we find it and is totally unjustified. Enough of this kind of sinful tampering with the Holy Scriptures will send millions of people back to the King James Bible. No believer can accept the notion (carried with this word) that God Almighty through Moses commanded that a demon or the Devil himself split the sin-offering of the children of Israel, taking an equal share of it! "A demon of this kind could not possibly be placed in contrast with Jehovah as in Leviticus 16:8."[28] It should also be observed that in the most significant passage (Leviticus 16:20ff) the word "Azazel" is not found at all, and it most surely would have appeared in those verses if it had actually occurred in Leviticus 16:8 and Leviticus 16:9. Those verses (Leviticus 16:8,9) should have been rendered after this manner:

"Aaron shall cast lots over both goats, and the one lot (i.e., for the one goat) for Jehovah, and one lot for the goat that is to go far away."[29]

The ASV and many subsequent versions and translations of the disputed word here as a proper name are without any doubt whatever incorrect, false, misleading and detrimental to understanding the passage. None of the great versions of past centuries conformed to this ridiculous recent fad. The LXX, the Douay, the KJV, etc., all reject it. Even the ingenious "interpretations" based upon understanding Azazel as the proper name of the Devil or of a demon are so forced and imaginative that practically all of the current crop of interpreters avoid them altogether and go (by implication) for Devil worship as being a legitimate part of the Scriptures.

As a final note, we have a parallel type of error to the rendition that gave us Reed Sea instead of Red Sea. (See the note on that subject at the end of Exodus 13 in my commentary on Exodus.)