I’m writing a book about the Day of Atonement. Sounds exciting, I know. 

A few years ago, The Bible Project did a year long walk through the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. 

The word Torah means instruction, and the Torah is said to have been given to us by God through His prophet Moses.

Taken at face value, the Torah suggests that God is trying to teach us something, to give us instruction. But what is He saying, and why?

Well, in that year long exploration of the Torah, I learned that it is riddled with chiasms. The chiasm is a significant teaching aid employed by the bible. The whole Torah is also one large chiasm.

Chiasms allow layers of comparisons to see the similarities and differences between things, but they also sometimes point to something, usually the main point. They point to the Point.

The thing discussed in the very center of the chiasm is the theme the author wants you to think about. And it just so happens that the center of the big Torah chiasm is the Day of Atonement. 

So, the Day of Atonement is the Point. Once I realized that, I began to see these parallels with almost every other story in the Torah. Pairs of goats become pairs of people, usually brothers/sons. One is chosen, one is sent away.

Often times the chosen one also goes away, only to be led back again.

The two “goats” seem to circle around and around each other.  The Exodus is about Israel going out to become a nation, then going in to receive a blessing, and they can’t go straight in, they have to wander in exile until something in them changes, until fear is replaced with faith.

There is a journey that God would like each of us to make. A journey out of our own world, out of our fearful and suspicious way of thinking, into a wilderness were He will re-create us in His image, then and only then can we be the ascending goat that He takes up to the city of blessing. 

We must first be the scapegoat, then we can become the chosen one.

The Bible is full of paradoxes. The wilderness is where the you meet God and find the Garden. The wilderness is about letting God plant Eden in you. “Leave your country, your parents house, they way you think and the assumptions you make, and I will lead you to a place!” He leads us to a place of Faith. “And the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.”