How Yom Kippur Began, Two Goats, a Lottery, and Azazel

The most solemn day in Jewish life began with a coin toss. Two goats, chosen for their identical appearance. Same height, same weight, same color. They stood before the High Priest in the Temple courtyard on the morning of Yom Kippur. He reached into an urn and drew two lots. One lot said "For God." The other said "For Azazel." Whichever goat the right hand drew became the offering to God. The other was sent into the wilderness.

The lottery was not symbolic. It was binding. The goat chosen for God was slaughtered. The goat chosen for Azazel was loaded with the sins of all Israel and driven off a cliff.

The Two Goats of Parshat Acharei Mot

Parshat Acharei Mot opens in the shadow of a catastrophe. Aaron's two sons, Nadav and Avihu, who had brought an unauthorized offering and been consumed by divine fire (Leviticus 16:1). God's response was to give Moses the laws of the Yom Kippur service, specifying precisely, and I mean precisely, what Aaron could and couldn't do when he entered the Holy of Holies. The context is not accidental. The two men who had been careless with divine fire were dead. Their father was being told: here is how you approach God without dying.

The two goats appear in (Leviticus 16:7-10). They had to be identical. The Mishnah Yoma (compiled c. 200 CE) specifies they must resemble each other in appearance, height, and value, and should ideally be purchased together on the same day. The lots were originally made of box-wood, later replaced with gold by the High Priest Shimon ben Shetach around the 1st century BCE. The High Priest placed both hands into the urn simultaneously and drew.

Who or What Was Azazel?

The word Azazel (עֲזָאזֵל) appears only four times in the Hebrew Bible, all in this passage, and the Torah never explains it. This is deliberate. The rabbis argued about it for centuries.

One school, represented in Midrash Aggadah (including Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, c. 8th century CE), identified Azazel as the name of a rocky cliff in the Judean wilderness, the place where the goat was sent. The name derives from az (strong or rough) and el (of God or of the heights). On this reading, Azazel is geography, not a being.

Another school, preserved in the apocryphal tradition. Specifically in 1 Enoch (. They understood Azazel as a fallen angel, one of the Watchers who descended to earth and taught humanity forbidden arts. The scapegoat was not sent to a place. It was sent back to the lair of Azazel in the wilderness, returning the accumulated sins of Israel to their source.

Legends of the Jews synthesizes both traditions: Azazel dwells in the desert, bound and imprisoned there, and the goat sent on Yom Kippur represents the return of human transgression to the figure who first seduced humanity toward it.

The Red Thread That Turned White

The Mishnah Yoma describes a striking sign. Before the scapegoat was sent into the wilderness, the priests tied a length of crimson wool to its horns, and another piece to the door of the sanctuary. When the goat was pushed off the cliff at a place called Beit Hadudo (twelve miles east of Jerusalem, according to the Talmud), the crimson thread on the sanctuary door would turn white.

This was taken as confirmation that the atonement had been accepted. The source is the verse from Isaiah: "If your sins are like crimson, they will become white as snow" (Isaiah 1:18). For years in Second Temple times, people gathered to watch the thread. The Talmud (Tractate Yoma 39b, c. 500 CE) records that for the last forty years before the Temple's destruction in 70 CE, the thread stopped turning white. The priests knew, and said nothing publicly, that something had changed.

Why a Lottery?

Midrash Rabbah on Leviticus (Vayikra Rabbah, c. 400-500 CE) asks exactly this: why use chance to determine which goat serves which purpose? Both goats are identical. Why not simply designate them?

The answer the midrash gives is about equality before God. On Yom Kippur, no human being decides which offering is more sacred and which is dispatched to the wilderness. The lot decides. This removes human calculation, no goat can be declared more suitable, no offering can be pre-selected based on quality. The hand of heaven chooses, and the priest accepts what the urn gives him.

There is a deeper implication the rabbis don't spell out but which hangs over the whole ritual. Two identical creatures stand in the same place on the same day. One is sacrificed on the altar of the God of Israel. The other is driven off a cliff into desolation. Their fates are nothing alike, and nothing about them explains the difference. Only the lot knows.