Sin-bearing and sacrifice
Leviticus 10:17 (NIV) says, “Why didn’t you eat the sin offering in the sanctuary area? It is most holy; it was given to you to take away the guilt
of the community by making atonement for them before the Lord.” Numbers
18:1 (NIV) says, “The Lord said to Aaron, ‘You, your sons and your
father’s family are to bear the responsibility for offenses against the sanctuary, and you and your sons alone are to bear the responsibility
for offenses against the priesthood.” The RSV and numerous other
versions give “bear iniquity” for the italicized phrases in both
passages. In Hebrew it’s the same phrase.
The two passages are helpful because they offer insight on the matter
of “bearing iniquity”. If a person is said to “bear his iniquity” it
means he takes the consequences of his own sins on his own shoulders and
deals with it however is appropriate. That makes sense. But Leviticus
10:17 and Numbers 18:1 show us that it’s possible for someone (in these
cases a priest) to bear the iniquity of someone else. How does that
work?
Well, in the texts above Aaron and his sons are given the
responsibility to bear the sins of the people, whether it’s sin in
general or sins against the tabernacle itself. There is nothing to
suggest that the sins of the people are transferred to the priests so
that the priests become guilty. No, to bear their iniquity means to make
atonement for them. The NIV makes that clear by adding the word “by”
which explains how the priests “take away” the guilt of the people. The
priests “bear the iniquity” of the transgressor by doing for him what
he cannot do for himself, “by making atonement for them.”
Every time we read of a priest making atonement for someone, that priest is “bearing sin” for the transgressor. But it has nothing to do with the transference of guilt.
The whole process beginning with the sinner coming with his sacrifice,
giving it to the priest who handles the sacrifice on behalf of the
sinner in offering it to God—that whole process is “making atonement”.
It isn’t a question of transferring sin at all. The sin isn’t
transferred it is forgiven because it is atoned. The person who atones
for the sinner is the priest (Leviticus 10:17 and everywhere else). The
place of atonement is the altar (or the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur)
and the atoning sacrifice is the offering itself.
The thrust of this short piece is to make the point that “bearing
iniquity” is something the priest does for the sinner that he can’t do
for himself. And that there is nothing in his “bearing their sin” that
involves the transference of the sinner’s sin to the priest. The priest
doesn’t become the sinner. He doesn’t even pretend that he’s the sinner.
Nor does the priest become sinful as he makes atonement.
We have the priest, the sinner and the sacrifice. The sacrifice is
always spotless (or atonement can’t be made). The priest is the sinner’s
representative who does for the sinner what the sinner can’t do for
himself. (This is the way in which the priest bears the sinner’s sin.)
The sinner is always the sinner but he becomes a forgiven sinner when
the priest on the sinner’s behalf bears his sin to the place of
sacrifice (compare 1 Peter 2:24).
But is it not true that the sacrifice bears the sinner’s sin? No doubt, but whether or not that is true this
is true: the priest is expressly said to bear the sinner’s sin. All
that the priests did on Israel’s behalf is brought to focus on the Day
of Atonement (see Leviticus 16) when the High Priest, fully garbed as
Israel’s representative, enters the Holy of Holies with the twelve
stones on his breastplate representing the twelve tribes of Israel.
There he goes, doing for them what they can’t do for themselves, bearing
their iniquity and making atonement.