Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16
The Azazel rite, according to Levine (1974: 82), epitomizes the demonic character of the Day of Atonement. The high priest compels the demon Azazel to admit the goat into his domain by entering the adytum to be “invested with its numinous power” and infusing the goat with it by leaning his hands on it. The purpose of the confession is “to trap the sins by exposing them, by calling them by their name, and thus preventing their escape or concealment.” Three comments are in order. First of all, confession would release sins, not entrap them, to judge by the operation of any utterance containing the divine Name, be it a vow, blessing, or curse. Its function, moreover, is judicial and not magical: to reduce the gravity of a non-expiable wanton sin to an inadvertency expiable by sacrifice (see the NoTE on 5:5). Second, instead of fulfilling the magical objective of infusing the scapegoat with the adytum’s sacred power, the hand-leaning rite simply transfers the sins of the people onto the goat, as expressly indicated by the text (v 21). Finally, and more significantly, the requirement of two }Jaffii’t goats for the people reveals how Israel transformed an ancient exorcism. Demonic impurity was exorcised in three ways: curse, destruction, or banishment. The last was often used; instead of evil being annihilated by curse of fire, it was banished to its place of origin (e.g., netherworld, wilderness) or to some other place where its malefic powers could either work in the interests of the sender (e.g., enemy territory) or do no harm at all (e.g., mountains, wilderness). Thus the scapegoat was sent to the wilderness, which was considered to be uninhabited except by the satyr-demon Azazel. The best-known example of this type of temple purgation is the Babylonian New Year festival, when the officiant literally wipes the sanctuary walls with the carcass of a ram and then throws it in the river.
Thus the same animal that purges the temple impurities carries them off (see COMMENTS C and E below).
(p 1042)
sent off to the wilderness (wesillah . . . hammidbiird}. Purgation and elimination rites go together in the ancient world. Exorcism of impurity is not enough; its power must be removed. An attested method is to banish it to its place of origin (e.g., the wilderness of the netherworld; see below) or to some place where its malefic powers could work in the interest of the sender (e.g., enemy territory; see COMMENT E below). Thus the scapegoat was sent off to the wilderness, which was considered inhabited by the satyr-demon Azazel. (see CoMMENT C below). This dispatch of the scapegoat into the wilderness is as integrally tied to the purgation of the sanctuary as the release (also silla~) of the bird into the wilderness is tied to the purification rite of the healed scale diseased person and house (14:4-7, 49-53). The analogy with the purificatory rite for scale disease is instructive in another respect. Just as the former requires two birds, one to provide the blood to asperse the impure me~orit and the other to dispatch the released impurities to an uninhabited place, so the latter requires two goats, one to provide blood for aspersion of the contaminated sanctuary and the other to dispatch Israel’s sins to an uninhabited place. Thus even though the goat, according to the present text, transports Israel’s sins, not its impurities, it still forms an integral part of the ritual, whose original purpose was to transport the released iniquities of the sanctuary but at a later stage was reinterpreted to effect symbolically the elimination of Israel’s sins.
[…]
to the wilderness (hammidbiird). The midbiir is an “infertile land [literally, salty land] without inhabitant” (Jer 17:6), a place “in which there is no man” (Job 38:26; cf. Jer 22:6; 51:43). Thus the purpose of dispatching the goat to the wilderness is to remove it from human habitation (see the NOTE on “inaccessible region,” v 22). ·
a man in waiting (‘fS ‘itti). For the rendering, see the LXX, Tgs., y. Yoma 6:3; b. Ymna 66b. Still, the etymology of this hapax remains unsolved. Perhaps it implies someone who could find his very way in and out of the wilderness so that he, but not the goat, would be able to return (Rashbam). The rabbis admit that this job could be handled by a layman, but the high priests insisted that it be executed by a priest (m. Yoma 6:3).
Thus the goat shall carry upon it (weniisa’ hassiiCZr ‘iiliiyw). This literal meaning of the idiom niisii’ ‘al ‘carry upon’ was met in 10:17 (see also Exod 28:38). The function of the scapegoat was clearly understood in rabbinic times, as the following statements illustrate: “They made a causeway for him (the scapegoat) because of the Babylonians (or Alexandrians, b. Yoma 66b) who pull its hair, shouting to it, ‘Take (our sins) and go forth; take our sins and go forth’ ” (m. Yoma 6:4 ); “Why does the goat tarry here, seeing that the sins of this generation are so many?” (b. Yoma 66b). all their iniquities (kol-‘iiw6n6tiim). See the NoTE on v 21.
an inaccessible region. ‘ere~ gezera, literally, “a cutoff land,” in other words, from which the goat cannot return. Akkadian rituals also speak of an asru parsu, which also means “a cutoff place.” The Versions interpret gezerd as “uninhabitable” (Tg. Onq.), “desolate” (LXX), and “uncultivated” (Pesh.). The verb giizar can mean “cut off [from the living],” that is, to die (e.g., Isa 53:8; Ezek 37:11; Ps 88:6; Lam 3:54). It has been observed that in Akkadian, the terms for wilderness, such as ~eru, also connote the netherworld and that demons who are denizens of the underworld are prone to take residence in the wilderness (Tallquist 1934; Tawil 1980). Thus it is possible that the satyr-demon Azazel is being driven to its natural home in the wilderness/netherworld (but see Wright 1987: 25-30). The rabbis, however, are the bearers of the tradition that the scapegoat was not just banished but also killed by pushing it off a cliff (m. Yoma 6:6). Could it be that the change was made after a scapegoat was once able to make its way back to civilization, still laden with Israel’s sins?
When the goat is set free in the wilderness (wesillah et-hasSii~r bammidbiir). This clause need not be a redundancy of v 21 b if it is taken as the protasis of v 23, and it is so rendered. Support for it is the slight but significant change from hammidbiird ‘to the wilderness’ (v 21) to bammidbiir ‘in the wilderness’ {v 22), in other words, only after the scapegoat actually enters the wilderness can the high priest continue with the ritual. Further support is furnished by the rabbis: “They said to the high priest, ‘the he-goat has reached the wilderness’ ” (m. Yoma 6:8). This statement implies that before the high priest could proceed with his ritual (ibid., 7:1-4), he had to be notified of the scapegoat’s arrival in the wilderness-a literal fulfillment of the biblical prescription once vv 22b, 23 are read as a single statement. Note that this mishna also implies that the high priest waited to be informed of the scapegoat’s arrival in the wilderness and not of its slaying. This can only mean that the death of the scapegoat was not an integral part of the original ritual but must have been added later.
(pages 1044-46)
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300139402/leviticus-1-16
E. Azazel and Elimination Rites in the Ancient Near East
The antiquity and ubiquity of the Azazel rite are immediately apparent. Purgation and elimination rites go together in the ancient world. Exorcism of impurity is not enough (COMMENT C, above); its power must be nullified. This was accomplished in one of three ways: curse, destruction, or banishment. The last mentioned, as the examples below will demonstrate, was used frequently: evil was banished to its place of origin (e.g., netherworld, wilderness) or to some place in which its malefic powers could work to benefit its sender (e.g., to enemy territory) or in which it could do no harm at all (mountains, wilderness).
In the Mesopotamian world, the wilderness (~eru) is one of the symbolic designations of the netherworld. Moreover, burbii (~urbiitu)/namu (namiitu)/ kzdi/tillanu/karmu, which usually denote “ruins/waste/desolation,” can also refer to the netherworld (Tallquist 1934: 17-22). Demons were believed to come out of the netherworld through a hole in the ground (Tawil 1980: 48-50), for example, “As soon as the hero Nergal opened a hole in the netherworld, the ghost of Enbidu came forth from the netherworld, like a breath of wind” (Gilgamesh 12.78-80 [ =82-84]; cf. ANET3 98). Elimination rites are therefore employed to drive the demons from human habitations and back to the wilderness, which is another way of saying that the demons are driven back to their point of origin, the underworld, for instance, “May the spell go out (from the patient) and vanish in the wilderness; may it meet a strong ghost and may they roam the desolated places” (BRM 4.18.22-24, cited by Tawil 1980: 48-50). Thus, in Israel, the goat for Azazel bearing the sins of Israel, though it is bound for the wilderness, is in reality returning evil to its source, the netherworld.
In the Hittite world, evils are returned to enemy lands or to uninhabited mountain regions; the detergent materials are burned, dumped in the open country, or thrown into the river or seas. As in Mesopotamia, these places are connected with the underworld. […]
(p 1071-72)
https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/book/from-priestly-torah-to-pentateuch-9783161511233?no_cache=1
The association of the rite of transfer and elimination of the community’s faults in Lev 16:21–22 underlines that Yahweh needed to dwell not only in a pure, non-defiled sanctuary, but also in the middle of a community morally blameless and upright.
Lastly, the decision by the Priestly writer in Lev 16 to incorporate the rite involving the dismissal of a goat to a demonic entity named Azazel probably betrays a concession to popular beliefs at the time of composition of Lev 16, as is commonly assumed. This phenomenon is quite in line with the general tendency of the Priestly school, which frequently betrays a more liberal stance towards popular practices than the Deuteronomistic school for instance.454
Nevertheless, this explanation alone does not account for the function of this rite in the present text. Instead, the reference to another supernatural being alongside Yahweh, a unique device in P and even in the Torah in general,455 actually serves to highlight the general division upon which the entire system of P in Lev 1–16 is construed. While Yahweh is located inside the sanctuary and is associated with order, culture, and a coherent society, Azazel is associated with the wilderness, a symbol of chaos, anomy and anti-culture.456 The opposition between Yahweh and Azazel in Lev 16 personifies the antinomy between two extreme poles: the sanctuary on one hand, the center of which is formed by the Ark and the kapporet specifically and which is mentioned for the first time in Leviticus in 16:14–15, and the wilderness on the other.457 In the course of the ceremony, all forms of transgressions against the social and moral order devised by the creator God are sent back to Azazel, and therefore transferred outside the boundaries of the community, which is thus also represented as standing on the side of order as opposed to disorder.
In this respect, the entire ceremony of Lev 16 must ultimately be viewed as preserving a central teaching on creation and divine justice.458 The antinomy between the figures of Yahweh and Azazel identifies Yahweh as the creator of a coherent and civilized world whose microcosmic model is the sanctuary. Although this world is continuously threatened by forces of chaos and antistructure that are rebel against the organizing scheme of the creator God, such forces do not properly belong to it.459 Thus, the original elimination rite edited by P is not simply included but simultaneously significantly reinterpreted in the broader narrative context of Gen 1–Lev 16. Israel, as the “priestly nation” in the universe, is called to restore the perfection of the original creation by sending all physical and moral transgressions back where they belong by means of the ceremony of ch. 16. With this, the great ritual concluding the to=ra= on impurities in Lev 11–16 ultimately achieves the literary construction of an ideal community in which something of the divine order devised at the creation of the world may be reflected not only once in a distant, foundational past, as in account of the inauguration of the cult at Mt Sinai in Lev 8–9, but even permanently, namely, every time the grand ceremony of Lev 16 is performed by the high priest. This last aspect becomes even more obvious when one takes into consideration the censer-incense rite in v. 12–13.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1454348?read-now=1&refreqid=excelsior%3Ab10571b049a05bad61463425db72aa4f&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents
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