Yom Kippur: The Day of Atonement and the Great High Priest

The Torah’s commandment

Leviticus 16: the service of the Day

The Torah introduces the Day of Atonement with a warning. After the death of Aharon’s sons Nadav and Avihu, Hashem tells Moshe that Aharon may not enter the inner sanctuary “at all times”, but only in the way and on the day that Hashem appoints, “for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat” (Leviticus 16:2).

The High Priest lays aside his garments of gold and puts on plain white linen (16:4). He brings a bull as a sin offering for himself and his household, and he takes two goats from the congregation. Lots are cast: “one lot for Hashem, and the other lot for Azazel” (16:8). The goat for Hashem is slaughtered as a sin offering for the people. The High Priest enters behind the veil with a cloud of incense, so that he will not die, and sprinkles the blood of the bull and then of the goat on and before the kapporet (כפורת), the golden cover of the Ark, usually translated “mercy seat” (16:12–15). He then cleanses the holy place, the Tent of Meeting, and the altar “because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel” (16:16–19).

Then comes the second goat:

And Aharon shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited.

The verb kipper (כפר) has been explained as “to cover”, “to wipe clean”, and “to ransom”. Jacob Milgrom argued influentially that in Leviticus its first meaning is “to purge”: the blood of the sin offering cleanses the sanctuary from the defilement that Israel’s sins have caused, so that Hashem’s presence can remain among the people.² Leviticus 16 holds both together: the sanctuary is purged, and the people’s sins are carried away.

Leviticus 23 and Numbers 29: “afflict your souls”

Leviticus 16 ends by turning from the priest to the whole people: “in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all” (16:29). The calendar of the appointed times repeats the command:

Also on the tenth day of this seventh month there shall be a day of atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you; and you shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire unto Hashem.

The penalty for ignoring the day is grave: the soul that is not afflicted “shall be cut off from among his people” (23:29). The day runs “from even unto even” (23:32), which is why it begins at sundown on the ninth of Tishrei. Numbers 29:7–11 adds the festival offerings, besides “the sin offering of atonement”.

What does “afflict your souls” (ve’initem et nafshoteichem, ועניתם את נפשתיכם) mean? The Tanakh itself pairs the phrase with fasting: “I humbled my soul with fasting” (Psalm 35:13); “Wherefore have we fasted… wherefore have we afflicted our soul?” (Isaiah 58:3). The sages read it the same way. The Mishnah lists five afflictions:

On Yom Kippur it is forbidden to eat, to drink, to wash, to anoint oneself, to wear sandals, and to have marital relations.

Eating and drinking are the heart of the fast; the other four are understood as related forms of self-denial.³ “Sandals” was understood to mean leather footwear, which is why many Jews wear canvas or rubber shoes on Yom Kippur.⁴ The same chapter of the Mishnah makes clear that life overrides the fast: a sick person is fed on the advice of experts, and any doubt of danger to life sets aside the commandment.⁵

Yom Kippur in the Second Temple

The witnesses outside the Mishnah

By the late Second Temple period the Day of Atonement was so central that it was simply called “the Fast”. Philo of Alexandria calls it by that name.⁶ Josephus summarizes the sacrifices of the day.⁷ Luke uses the same name when he dates Paul’s sea voyage: “sailing was now dangerous, because the Fast was now already past” (Acts 27:9). Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Habakkuk commentary remembers a “Wicked Priest” who came against the Teacher of Righteousness on the community’s Day of Atonement, a sign that the Qumran sect kept a different calendar from the Temple’s.⁸ The Book of Jubilees ties the day to Yaakov’s grief on hearing that Yosef had been torn apart, and says Israel afflicts itself on the tenth of the seventh month in memory of that sorrow.⁹

The High Priest’s day in the Mishnah

The Mishnah’s tractate Yoma preserves a detailed account of the Temple service. It is the work of sages writing after 70 CE, and scholars debate how much of it reflects actual practice in the last decades of the Temple and how much is idealized memory; but much of it agrees with the earlier sources and it is the fullest picture we have.¹⁰

Seven days before Yom Kippur the High Priest was separated from his home to rehearse the service, and elders adjured him not to change anything (Mishnah Yoma 1:1–5). On the day he immersed five times, changing between his golden garments and the white linen of Leviticus 16 (3:3). He entered the Holy of Holies four times: with the incense, with the blood of the bull, with the blood of the goat, and at the end of the day to remove the incense pan (5:1–4; 7:4). In the Second Temple there was no Ark; he set the incense down on a stone the Mishnah calls even shetiyah, the “foundation stone” (5:2).

Three times he confessed: for himself and his household, for the priests, and for all Israel. Each confession began: “Please, Hashem, I have sinned, I have done wrong, I have transgressed before You”, and ended with Leviticus 16:30, “for on this day He will atone for you”.¹¹ In those confessions he pronounced the four-letter Name of God, the Name that is otherwise never spoken; the Jerusalem Talmud counts ten such utterances in the course of the day.¹² (Hence we say Hashem, “the Name”.) The Mishnah describes the scene in the Temple court:

And the priests and the people standing in the courtyard, when they heard the glorious and awesome Name come out of the mouth of the High Priest, would kneel and bow and fall on their faces, and say: Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.

When the High Priest came out of the sanctuary safely at the end of the day, he made a feast for his friends (7:4). Ben Sira, about 180 BCE, describes the High Priest Shimon coming out “from the house of the veil” like the morning star; whether the scene is Yom Kippur is debated, but the synagogue took it into its Yom Kippur liturgy.¹³

The two goats and Azazel

The two goats were to be alike in appearance, size, and value, and the lots were drawn from an urn (Mishnah Yoma 6:1; 4:1). A strip of crimson wool was tied to the head of the goat to be sent away (4:2). An appointed man led it into the wilderness, where, the Mishnah says, he pushed it backward off a cliff (6:6).

What is Azazel (עזאזל)? The word appears only in Leviticus 16, and readers have never agreed.¹⁴

• A place. The Talmud explains Azazel as a hard, steep cliff, and Rashi follows this.
• “The goat that goes away.” Reading the word as ez ozel, the Septuagint and the Vulgate took it as a description of the goat; hence Tyndale’s English “scapegoat”.
• A being of the wilderness. In 1 Enoch a fallen angel, Asael, is bound in the desert, and many modern scholars think Azazel named a wilderness demon. Ramban explained the goat as a “portion” sent, by Hashem’s command and not as an offering, to the forces of desolation.
• A teaching symbol. Rambam taught that the rite was a powerful image to move the heart to repentance.¹⁵

Whatever the name means, the Torah is careful on one point. The goat for Azazel is not sacrificed; it is not slaughtered at all. A few verses later the Torah forbids sacrificing to the “goat-demons” (se’irim) of the field (Leviticus 17:7). Only one goat is offered, and it is offered to Hashem.

The crimson thread

The crimson wool tied to the goat gave rise to a tradition. Rabbi Yishmael, in the Mishnah, says there was also a crimson strip tied to the door of the sanctuary, and when the goat reached the wilderness it turned white, as it is written, “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18).¹⁶

The Babylonian Talmud adds two related teachings. During the forty years that Shimon HaTzaddik (Simeon the Righteous) served, the lot “for Hashem” always came up in the High Priest’s right hand and the crimson strip always turned white; after him, sometimes it did and sometimes it did not. Then comes this baraita:

Our Rabbis taught: During the last forty years before the destruction of the Temple the lot did not come up in the right hand, the crimson strip did not turn white, the westernmost lamp did not burn, and the doors of the Sanctuary opened by themselves.

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai then rebukes the Sanctuary, saying he knows it will be destroyed, citing Zechariah 11:1. A similar tradition appears in the Jerusalem Talmud.¹⁷

Read precisely, the baraita does not mention the Messiah; it presents the signs as omens of the destruction in 70 CE. “Forty years” is also a round number in rabbinic speech. Messianic readers have long noted that a period of about forty years before 70 CE brings us close to the years of Yeshua’s death and resurrection, and they see in the tradition a hint that the atonement of the Temple had found its fulfilment elsewhere. That is a reading, not the Talmud’s claim, and should be offered humbly. The Talmud’s own lesson is a sobering one for every generation: the outward forms of the service can continue while the inner reality has departed.

From the Temple to the synagogue

After 70 CE there was no High Priest, no goat, no sprinkled blood. The sages taught that Yom Kippur itself, with repentance, still atones. The Mishnah closes tractate Yoma with two teachings that shaped every Yom Kippur since:

For transgressions between a person and God, Yom Kippur atones. For transgressions between a person and his fellow, Yom Kippur does not atone until he has appeased his fellow.

Rabbi Akiva then exclaims: “Happy are you, Israel! Before whom are you purified, and who purifies you? Your Father in heaven”, and he reads Jeremiah 17:13, mikveh Yisrael Hashem, “the hope (or the immersion pool) of Israel is Hashem”.¹⁸ For Rambam, repentance means leaving the sin, regretting it, confessing it, and resolving not to return; wrongs against others also require restitution.¹⁹

Yeshua taught the same priority: “leave there your gift before the altar… first be reconciled to your brother” (Matthew 5:24). So Jews traditionally ask one another’s forgiveness before Yom Kippur.²⁰

The liturgy of the Day

Yom Kippur is the only day of the year with five prayer services: Maariv (with Kol Nidre), Shacharit, Mussaf, Minchah, and Neilah.

Kol Nidre

The evening begins before sundown. The ark is opened, Torah scrolls are taken out, and the cantor chants Kol Nidre, “All vows”, three times, each time louder. It is not a prayer but a legal formula in Aramaic, annulling vows and oaths that a person makes to God and then fails to keep.²¹

Its history is complicated. The formula is already known in the Geonic period (eighth to tenth centuries), and several of the Geonim of Babylonia opposed it: Natronai Gaon reported that the academies did not recite it, and Amram Gaon called it “a foolish custom”. They feared that people would treat vows lightly. In twelfth-century France, Rabbi Meir ben Shmuel, Rashi’s son-in-law, changed the wording from “from the last Yom Kippur to this one” to “from this Yom Kippur to the next”; his son Rabbeinu Tam championed this formula, which Ashkenazim adopted, while many Sephardi rites kept the older wording.²² Every authority agrees that Kol Nidre applies only to personal vows to God; it never releases anyone from a promise or an oath made to another person.

A beloved tradition connects Kol Nidre with the anusim, the Jews of Spain and Portugal forced to convert in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who gathered secretly on Yom Kippur to renounce the vows forced on them. Kol Nidre is older than those persecutions, so it was not composed for them; but it may well have been recited with them in mind, and the tradition expresses what the prayer has meant to Jews forced to live a double life. Before Kol Nidre many congregations announce, in the words of a medieval formula, that “we permit prayer with the transgressors”, welcoming everyone, however far they have strayed, into the congregation.²³

Vidui: the confession

At every service of the day the congregation recites the Vidui (וידוי), the confession. The short form, Ashamnu, “We have trespassed”, runs through the Hebrew alphabet; the long form, Al Chet, “For the sin which we have sinned before You”, lists sins of speech, thought, business, and the heart. Both are in the plural. The whole community confesses together. The Talmud records that the essential words of confession are simply aval anachnu chatanu, “but we have sinned”.²⁴ The confession rests on the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy (Exodus 34:6–7), which are recited again and again throughout the day: “Hashem, Hashem, God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.”

The Avodah in Mussaf

In the Mussaf service the congregation recounts the Temple service in a long poem called the Avodah, “the Service”. The earliest Avodah poems, by Yose ben Yose and other poets of late-antique Israel, begin with creation and trace the priesthood to Aharon; the Ashkenazi rite uses Amitz Koach by Meshullam ben Kalonymus.²⁵ When the reader reaches the High Priest’s confessions and the words “the priests and the people standing in the courtyard”, the congregation in many communities kneels and bows to the floor, the only time in the year besides Rosh Hashanah that Jews prostrate themselves in prayer. The Avodah ends with Mareh Kohen, “How glorious was the High Priest”, and with lament for the lost Temple and prayer for its restoration.

Unetaneh Tokef and the books

Mussaf on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur includes Unetaneh Tokef, the poem that pictures all creation passing before God “as a shepherd examines his flock”, and declares: “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on the Fast of Yom Kippur it is sealed.” A medieval legend ascribes it to Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, who composed it as he died a martyr; but versions of the poem have been found in the Cairo Genizah, and scholars now think it is considerably older, from the Land of Israel.²⁶ The idea of books of judgment opened on the New Year and sealed on the Day of Atonement comes from the Talmud, which speaks of three books: for the wholly righteous, the wholly wicked, and those in between, whose judgment hangs until Yom Kippur.²⁷ (See Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat Shuva.)

Neilah: the closing of the gates

As the sun goes down, the fifth service begins: Neilah (נעילה), “locking”. The sages debated whether the name refers to the closing of the Temple gates at evening or the closing of the gates of heaven.²⁸ Throughout the service the word “inscribe us” in the prayers becomes “seal us”. The service ends with the declarations of the faith of Israel: Shema Yisrael once, “Blessed be the Name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever” three times, and “Hashem, He is God” seven times, the cry of the people on Mount Carmel in the days of Eliyahu (1 Kings 18:39). Then a single long blast of the shofar, and the words L’shanah haba’ah biYerushalayim, “Next year in Jerusalem”. In many Sephardi communities Neilah opens with the hymn El Nora Alilah, “God, awesome in deeds”, by Moshe ibn Ezra.

The readings: the High Priest, the true fast, and Jonah

The Talmud sets the readings of the day.²⁹ (See the readings for Yom Kippur.)

In the morning the Torah reading is Leviticus 16, with the maftir from Numbers 29:7–11. The haftarah is Isaiah 57:14–58:14. Hashem, “the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity”, dwells “with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit” (57:15). Then the prophet cuts through empty ritual:

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke?

The synagogue reads this while the people are fasting. The prophet does not abolish the fast; he joins it to justice and mercy.

At Minchah the reading is Leviticus 18 (some congregations read Leviticus 19), and the haftarah is the whole book of Jonah, with Micah 7:18–20 added in Ashkenazi practice. Jonah teaches that repentance is open even to Nineveh, Israel’s enemy, and that a prophet cannot run from God. The book ends with Hashem’s mercy for the great city “and also much cattle” (Jonah 4:11). Yeshua himself pointed to “the sign of the prophet Jonah” and the repentance of Nineveh (Matthew 12:39–41).

Customs of the Day

• The meal before the fast. The Talmud teaches that one who eats and drinks on the ninth of Tishrei is credited as if he had fasted on both the ninth and the tenth.³⁰ The final meal, the seudah mafseket, is eaten before sundown.
• Asking forgiveness, giving charity, immersing in a mikveh, blessing the children, and lighting candles on the eve of the day.
• White clothing. Many wear white, and many men wear a kittel, a plain white robe. The Rema gives two reasons: white recalls the angels, who neither eat nor drink, and the burial shroud, which humbles the heart.³¹
• The tallit at night. Kol Nidre is the only evening of the year when the prayer shawl is worn.
• Memorial prayers. Ashkenazim recite Yizkor for departed parents and relatives; Sephardim recite Hashkavah prayers.
• One day only. Unlike other festivals, Yom Kippur is kept for one day outside Israel too, since a two-day fast would endanger health.
• Breaking the fast after Havdalah, and, as an old custom, driving the first stake of the Sukkah, going straight “from strength to strength”.

Yeshua, the High Priest, and the Day of Atonement

The Gospels do not describe Yeshua on a Day of Atonement, but they place him and his followers inside a Jewish world where “the Fast” governed the calendar (Acts 27:9). The Brit Hadashah does not set Yom Kippur aside; it reads it as the key to understanding what Hashem has done in Messiah.

Hebrews 9–10 in its Jewish setting

The Letter to the Hebrews is the most extended Jewish commentary on Leviticus 16 in the Brit Hadashah. Its picture comes from the Torah’s own description of the Mishkan as a copy of a heavenly pattern (Exodus 25:40; Hebrews 8:5).

But into the second went the High Priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people.

Hebrews then says that Messiah has entered “not into the holy places made with hands… but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (9:24). He enters with his own blood, “once” (9:12). The letter can say that “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (10:4), echoing the Psalms and the Prophets, who knew that Hashem does not delight in offerings without a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 40:6–8, quoted in Hebrews 10:5–7; Psalm 51:16–17). It does not say the Torah’s sacrifices were meaningless; it says they sanctified “to the purifying of the flesh” (9:13), and that they pointed beyond themselves.

Three points keep this reading faithful to the Jewish setting and to the Torah:

1. Hashem is the one who acts. Messiah “glorified not himself to be made a High Priest; but he that said unto him, You are my Son, today have I begotten you” (Hebrews 5:5). The Father appoints, the Son obeys. Yeshua is the High Priest who approaches God for us; he is not the God whom the High Priest approaches.
2. The covenant writes the Torah on the heart. The centre of Hebrews’ argument is Jeremiah’s new covenant: “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts” (Hebrews 8:10, quoting Jeremiah 31:33). The new covenant is not a covenant without Torah, but Torah written within.
3. Hebrews speaks of the priesthood and the sanctuary, not of abolishing Israel’s appointed times. Yom Kippur remains “a statute for ever” (Leviticus 16:29), and Messianic Jews keep it with all Israel.

Romans 3:25: the hilasterion and the kapporet

Paul writes that God set forth Yeshua “to be a propitiation through faith in his blood” (Romans 3:25). The Greek word is hilasterion. In the Septuagint of Leviticus 16 it is the regular word for the kapporet, the cover of the Ark where the blood was sprinkled, and Hebrews 9:5 uses it the same way.³² Many scholars think Paul presents Yeshua as the place where Hashem meets His people and atones for sin, as at the kapporet on Yom Kippur. And it is God who “set forth” Yeshua: atonement comes from the Father’s own mercy.

The intercessor at the right hand

On Yom Kippur Israel waited in the courtyard while the High Priest stood in the presence of God. The Brit Hadashah pictures Yeshua in that role now: “he ever lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25); he is “at the right hand of God”, where he “also makes intercession for us” (Romans 8:34). “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Messiah Yeshua” (1 Timothy 2:5). The mediator is not the One to whom he mediates; our confessions on Yom Kippur are made, as Yeshua taught, to “our Father which art in heaven”.

Repentance and forgiveness

The Brit Hadashah does not replace repentance; Yochanan the Immerser (John the Baptist) and Yeshua both called for it (Matthew 3:2; 4:17). “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9), words that could stand at the head of the Vidui. Yeshua also taught that we are forgiven as we forgive (Matthew 6:12, 14–15).

The two goats: a homiletical reading

Since the earliest centuries, followers of Yeshua have seen him in both goats: the one slain for the people, and the one that carries their sins away. The link has a real textual basis. Leviticus 16:22 says the goat “shall bear (nasa) upon him all their iniquities”, and Isaiah 53:12 says of the Servant that “he bare (nasa) the sin of many”. Yet this remains a homiletical reading, not the plain meaning of Leviticus, and it should be taught as such.

The Day that is coming

“They shall look upon me whom they have pierced”

The Prophets look ahead to a national day of mourning and cleansing:

And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son.

The passage ends: “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (13:1). It reads like a Yom Kippur of the end of days: mourning, family by family (12:12–14), followed by cleansing. The Talmud records a dispute about whom the people mourn: one sage said it is over Mashiach ben Yosef, who is slain; the other, over the evil inclination.³³ Other Jewish commentators, such as Rashi, read the pierced as those slain by the nations. The Gospel of John cites the verse at the cross (John 19:37), and Revelation 1:7 at Messiah’s return. For Messianic Jews the verse joins the two pictures of Mashiach in Jewish tradition: Yeshua came first as the suffering and rejected son of Yosef, and he will be revealed as the son of David, when Israel recognises him.

Paul expresses the same hope: “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Yaakov: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins” (Romans 11:26–27, from Isaiah 59:20–21 and 27:9). The last phrase is Yom Kippur language: Israel is not replaced but forgiven.

The Jubilee shofar

Yom Kippur is also the day of liberty. The Jubilee year was proclaimed with the shofar on the Day of Atonement:

Then shall you cause the shofar of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall you make the shofar sound throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

Isaiah takes up this language: the anointed one is sent “to proclaim liberty to the captives… to proclaim the acceptable year of Hashem” (Isaiah 61:1–2). In the synagogue of Nazareth, Yeshua read this passage and said, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke 4:18–21). He stopped before the next phrase, “and the day of vengeance of our God”. A Dead Sea Scroll known as 11QMelchizedek joins the same themes: the Jubilee of Leviticus 25, the good news of Isaiah 61, a heavenly redeemer figure called Melchizedek, and a final Day of Atonement.³⁴ Jews of Yeshua’s time naturally connected Yom Kippur, the Jubilee, and the redemption; but none of this is a timetable (Mark 13:32).

The books opened and sealed

The prophet Daniel speaks of a judgment when “the books were opened” (Daniel 7:10) and of deliverance for “every one that shall be found written in the book” (12:1). Revelation pictures the dead standing before God when “the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life” (Revelation 20:12). The prayers of Yom Kippur, “seal us in the book of life”, rehearse that final day every year. The hope is not that we escape judgment by being taken out of the world, but that when the dead are raised (Daniel 12:2), we will be found written in the book because Hashem has forgiven us.

Some Messianic teachers suggest that Messiah’s return may be connected with Yom Kippur. That is a homiletical association, not a teaching of Scripture; no one knows the day or the hour. What Hebrews does give is the picture of the people waiting for the High Priest to come out of the Holy of Holies in peace: “unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).

Keeping Yom Kippur

• Prepare in the days before: the month of Elul, Rosh Hashanah and the Ten Days of Repentance are given for this. Ask forgiveness of anyone you have wronged, and forgive those who ask you.
• Eat a good meal before sundown, and plan to spend the day in prayer.
• Keep the afflictions if your health allows: no food or drink, no washing for pleasure, no anointing, no leather shoes, no marital relations. Pregnant and nursing women, the sick, and anyone with a medical condition should ask their doctor and their rabbi; the Torah’s commandments are given so that we live by them (Leviticus 18:5).
• Pray with the congregation if you can, and read Leviticus 16, Isaiah 57–58, Jonah, and Hebrews 9–10 slowly.
• Confess with the Vidui, and make the confession personal: name the sins of your own year before your Father in heaven.
• Act on Isaiah 58: many give to the poor before and after the fast.
• End with joy at Neilah and the shofar, and begin building the Sukkah.

See our calendar for this year’s dates and times.