4 min read

The Atonement God Did Not Show Abraham at the Covenant

God showed Abraham every path to atonement at the Covenant of the Pieces. Every path except one small meal offering that opened a door no patriarch knew.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Everything Was Shown Except One Thing
  2. A Tenth of an Ephah of Flour
  3. Why Keep It Back
  4. The Yom Kippur Confession

Everything Was Shown Except One Thing

God and Abraham walked through a vision of every exile and every redemption. At the Covenant of the Pieces (Genesis 15), God passed between the cut carcasses in the darkness and showed Abraham the full map of what his descendants would need to survive: the exiles, the kingdoms that would oppress them, the offerings that could bring atonement when the oppression ended. All of it, laid out in advance, like pressing a map into a child's hands before sending him into unmapped country.

Almost all of it. According to Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon, citing Rabbi Ze'eira in Vayikra Rabbah, there was one path God kept back.

A Tenth of an Ephah of Flour

Not a bull. Not a ram. A small bowl of flour. One-tenth of an ephah, the meal offering of the poorest person who could afford no animal sacrifice, barely registered in the Temple economy. Vayikra Rabbah, the fifth-century midrash on Leviticus, reads this detail against a single word that appears in two places. The word eleh, these, appears in Leviticus 2:8 when describing the meal offering, and again in Genesis 15:10 when describing the Covenant of the Pieces.

Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai argued from this that Abraham was shown the meal offering too: the same word links both moments, and so what God revealed in Genesis must include what that word points to in Leviticus. But Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon read the textual evidence differently. Abraham was not shown the meal offering. That particular door to atonement was withheld.

Why Keep It Back

The question is not answered directly in the midrash, but the shape of the answer is implied. Abraham was shown the great mechanisms of atonement: the sacrifices, the fasts, the structured forms of return that required resources and institutional structures to perform. He was given a comprehensive map of how his descendants would survive their worst moments.

The meal offering is not a great mechanism. It is the offering made by someone who has nothing. A tenth of an ephah of flour costs almost nothing. It requires no animal, no priest performing complex rites over a living creature, no wealth whatsoever. It is the atonement available to the person who has arrived at the bottom of every other resource.

If God withheld it from Abraham's vision, the rabbinic implication is that this offering was being held in reserve for later, for the moment when everything else on the map had failed and there was still a door open for the person who could only bring flour.

The Yom Kippur Confession

Rav Beivai bar Aviya, teaching in the Babylonian tradition, connects all of this to the particular act of confession on the eve of Yom Kippur. Isaiah's call to the wicked to forsake their ways (Isaiah 55:7) is not an abstract instruction. Rav Beivai makes it concrete: I had been standing on a path of evil. Everything that I have done, I will not do anything like it again. May it be Your will, Lord my God, that You pardon all my iniquities, forgive all my transgressions, and atone for all my sins.

That is the living form of what the meal offering represents. Not institutional atonement. Not the great sacrificial machinery of the Temple. The words spoken by a person who has nothing left to offer except the decision to turn.

Yom KippurRepentanceAtonementAbraham
← All myths

From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Vayikra Rabbah 3:3Vayikra Rabbah

The prophet Isaiah offers a powerful message of hope in such moments: "Let the wicked forsake his way and the man of iniquity his thoughts" (Isaiah 55:7). But what does that actually mean? How do we turn away from the wrong path and towards something better?

The ancient rabbis grappled with this very question. Rav Beivai bar Aviya suggests a profound act of confession on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I had been standing on a path of evil. But everything that I have done, I will not do anything like it again. May it be Your will, Lord my God, that You pardon me for all my iniquities, forgive me for all my transgressions, and atone for me all my sins." That, says Rav Beivai, is living out Isaiah's call to forsake our wicked ways. It's about acknowledging our mistakes and resolving to do better.

It's about realigning ourselves, reconnecting with the Divine. Rabbi Yitzḥak uses a beautiful analogy: repentance is like straightening two boards so they can be joined together. If they're crooked, they won't fit. But with care and effort, we can make them align. That's why Isaiah says, "Let him return to the Lord and He will have mercy on him" (Isaiah 55:7) – because the process of confession and repentance straightens us, restoring our ability to connect.

Rabbi Yosei bar Ḥanina takes this a step further. He compares the person who has repented to one of the legs of a bed, helping to hold up the world together with God! That's a powerful image, isn't it? We are not just passive recipients of forgiveness, but active participants in the ongoing work of creation.

Now, where did the idea of atonement come from in the first place? The Rabbis, along with Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai, debated whether Abraham, our patriarch, was shown all the ways to achieve atonement. The Rabbis believed God showed Abraham all the offerings that bring atonement except for the freewill meal offering, which is a tenth of an ephah (a dry measure) of flour. This idea stems from the "Covenant of the Pieces," described in Genesis 15.

However, Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai argued that God showed Abraham even the tenth of an ephah! He draws a parallel between the word "these" used in (Leviticus 2:8), which refers to the tenth of an ephah meal offering, and the word "these" used in (Genesis 15:10), during the Covenant of the Pieces. According to Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai, if "these" refers to the tenth of an ephah in Leviticus, it must also refer to it in Genesis, implying that Abraham was indeed shown this particular offering.

And what's so special about that tenth of an ephah? Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon, citing Rabbi Ze’eira, suggests that God actually added an atonement of his own – something He didn't even show to Abraham! That something, according to this view, is the tenth of an ephah.

So, what does all this mean for us today? It means that the path to repentance, to returning to God, is always open. We have the power to forsake our wicked ways, to confess our wrongdoings, and to realign ourselves with the Divine. And sometimes, perhaps, God even provides an extra measure of grace, an unexpected path to atonement that we didn't even know existed. Perhaps, like that tenth of an ephah, it's the small, seemingly insignificant acts of kindness and selflessness that ultimately bring us closer to redemption.

Full source
1 Enoch 8-101 Enoch

The story goes that the generation before the Great Flood, the one Noah survived, learned their wicked ways from none other than Azazel. He wasn't just teaching people to be naughty. Oh no. According to the legends, he taught men how to forge deadly weapons and women how to. well, how to "arouse the desires of men." The result? Total corruption.

So, what happened to Azazel? God commanded the angel Raphael to bind him hand and foot and cast him into the darkness. Raphael, as the story goes, carved a hole in the desert of Dudael, beyond the Mountains of Darkness, and threw Azazel there, chained upside down. Can you imagine?

Even in that dark pit, chained and humiliated, Azazel didn’t repent. The Emek ha-Melekh tells us that some traditions even have Azazel chained together with Aza (also known as Shemhazai) in this desert. He was consumed by revenge. He used the power of dreams to find an evil sorcerer and command him to come to him.

This is where the story gets really wild. To reach Azazel, the sorcerer had to journey to the Mountains of Darkness. There, he was met by a demon in the shape of a cat, but with the head of a fiery serpent and two tails! What do you do in a situation like that?

Apparently, you carry around the ashes of a white cock. The sorcerer threw these ashes at the cat-like demon, and it then led him to Azazel's prison. There, he lit incense, stepped on Azazel's chain three times, knelt, and worshipped the Watcher. Only then did Azazel begin to speak, revealing the darkest mysteries for fifty days. The result? A sorcerer with unparalleled mastery of evil.

This sorcerer, guided back out by the serpentine cat, then shared Azazel's location with other sorcerers, who sought him out and learned from him. And that, according to this myth, is how the black arts spread throughout the world.

But there's more to Azazel than just a dark teacher. The myth of Azazel also helps us understand some tricky passages in the Torah. Think about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. In Leviticus, we read about sending a scapegoat to Azazel (Leviticus 16:8, 10, 16). The verse says, "But the goat, on which the lot fell for Azazel, shall be set alive before Yahweh, to make expiation with it and to send it off to the wilderness for Azazel." So, who is this Azazel?

Many identify Azazel with Satan himself. In fact, even today, some Israelis tell someone to "Go to Hell!" by saying "Lekh le-Azazel!" Nachmanides, in his commentary on (Leviticus 16:8), even suggests that the scapegoat is sent to "the prince who rules over places of destruction," a demon or Watcher also known as Samael (the angel of death).

So, is the goat sacrificed to God, or to this… other entity? The idea is that the goat is a bribe to Satan, "the Accuser," to keep him silent on Yom Kippur. It's an offering of the people's sins, in goat form.

Of course, offering a goat to Azazel could be seen as idolatry. Nachmanides gets around this by saying that God, not the Jewish people, gives the scapegoat to Azazel as a reward for ceasing his accusations on Yom Kippur. Hyam Maccoby even suggests the scapegoat is a remnant of paganism, a worship of the desert god.

Some sources, like Zohar 2:157b, interpret the references to "Azazel" in Leviticus as referring to a mountain called Azazel, not a Watcher. This mountain was said to be a great and mighty one, and below it are unimaginable depths. Whatever the "real" Azazel is, the Zohar tells us that the Other Side has unshackled power there.

So, what's the takeaway? This myth, like many others, helps us understand some tricky parts of the Bible. It gives a reason for the corruption of the pre-Flood generation, explains the origin of giants, and even gives us an explanation for the star Istahar (linked to Shemhazai’s upside-down hanging). 1 Enoch 8-10 fleshes out the story of Azazel's punishment in the desert Dudael. It is a tradition of stories that help us wrestle with some of the biggest questions about good, evil, and the choices we make.

Full source