“Then Aaron shall cast lots for the two goats: one lot for Jehovah and the other lot for Azazel.” (Leviticus 16:8)

There are three states that precede yearly repentance:

1. humility through external truth;

2. a strong desire to replace our love with the Lord’s love;

3. and behavior based on our understanding of the Lord’s Word.

By intentionally seeking these states, we can participate in the repentance, reformation, and regeneration that the Lord is constantly endeavoring to bring to us.

The Lord describes this progression of states in the ritual given to Moses called the Day of Atonement. The story in Chapter 16 of Leviticus is a description of this process: we dress in the simple linens of servitude; we fill the Holy of Holies with incense; and then we paint the altar of burnt offering with the blood of sacrifice. After this the Lord will help us banish the goat that symbolizes the evils from which we are trying to flee. This ritual serves as the most holy and powerful description of repentance in the Old Testament, presages the power of the Divine Human of the Lord, and offers us a model of how we cooperate with the Lord to join Him in His heavenly kingdom.

Because the Israelitish church was a representation of a church, a kind of Divine reenactment of a true church, all of their rituals are symbols and pictures of the spiritual processes that are vital for the church.

The Day of Atonement was the time of the year when the Israelites, in the person of the high priest, cleansed the Tabernacle of all the residual sin of the Children of Israel, much as we might periodically clean out our closet or have a weekend of spring cleaning once a year. Our spiritual life operates the same way – things build up, and a larger examination and cleaning is sometimes in order.

The Day of Atonement is also, in the internal sense, a picture of the subordination of our external selves to our internal selves, a state of self-compulsion described by the Heavenly Doctrines as the greatest state of freedom. We should remember that all of this must be done voluntarily, and that it represents only our part in the process; regeneration is something accomplished by the Lord, and He asks us to participate.

This ritual was the only time of the year the high priest could safely enter the Holy of Holies. He would take off his official high-priest garb of breastplate, crown and ephod and instead wear a simple linen smock with simple linen breeches. He would then choose two goats, one for the Lord, one for evil. He would then mix embers from a burnt offering of a bull with a handful of incense in a firepan. Then, carefully, he would place the smoking firepan past the veil of the Tabernacle into the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. The smoke would fill the chamber and thus protect the high priest from clearly seeing the Ark and therefore being struck dead when he entered the chamber again. He would then go back, collect the blood of the sacrifice, and ritually cleanse the entire Tabernacle with the blood, sprinkling it by hand on the Ark and the interior of the tabernacle. He would then take the remaining blood and paint it on the corner posts or ‘horns’ of the altar of burnt offering, thus finishing the purification. Having cleansed the Tabernacle, the high priest could then transfer the sins of the entire people to the goat chosen for evil. This goat would then be driven into the desert, carrying with it the sins of the Israelites.

We, too, must first put on simple linen, the clothes a servant would wear, symbolizing the simple, external truths of humility we should adopt. We realize that we have no power and need help. We practice the thought that we are not masters of our fate, that we are not the authors of our own happiness, and that left to ourselves we would be incapable of use, thought, or life.

These are not thoughts in which to spend all our time. We normally try to shape our lives to be useful to those around us, but this is when we contemplate how powerless we are as we prepare to approach the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ, in our story from the New Testament, is likewise clothed in simple linen when He teaches the disciples the value of repentance. As He washes Peter’s feet, he is clothed much as a high priest would be on the Day of Atonement.

We ourselves can imagine taking off our normal thoughts and identity like clothing. Take off your bank account and job description, take off your memory and intelligence and worries, take off your hobbies and your disposition and your habits, and put on the thought that you are simply to be obedience to the Lord’s truth.

Once he is clothed in the simple linens, the high priest then mixes holy fire from sacrifice with incense to fill the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle with smoke. This is our second step – we must adopt the state of wanting to replace our loves – our identities – with the Lord’s love.

We are not accustomed to imagining the Lord as dangerous. As a God of love He wishes for us our eternal happiness with Him in heaven. Normally there is nothing scary or risky about us being with the Divine – all that we are is from Him already. Every now and then, however, having achieved a state of humility, we can imagine, if obscurely, what it would be like to want what the Lord wants. This can be a frightening mental process, demanding more than simply identifying how we might love the neighbor or find peace in following His commandments. The high priest reaching past the veil into the Holy of Holies is us reaching for the true notion that there is nothing lovable about ourselves that is not the Lord’s – and we should, ideally, love this notion.

We only rarely approach the celestial state represented by the Holy of Holies. Angels of the celestial heaven not only recognize that they are nothing, but also can sense – can feel – the influx from the Lord into their affections. They desire to lose their proprium, their sense of self, yet retain it to obey the Lord. They know that all they are apart from the Lord is their evils, which are essentially imaginary and insane. Who on earth can adopt, even for an hour, the desire to lose their own goals, desires and delights? Who among us is comfortable faced with the undeniable truth that we are, considered by ourselves, nothing but evil, and that evil isn’t real?

The Lord does not wish for us to see this reality without protection; the smoke of incense is our protection. By the time the high priest has left and come back with the blood, the Holy of Holies is full of sweet smoke. The Heavenly Doctrines explain that the infinite conjoins to the finite, the eternal with the temporal, through appearances. For example, we perceive the Divine as something far off like the sun, and like the sun we value the appearance of distance between ourselves and the Divine even if we know that distance isn’t real; the Divine is with us here and now.

Filling the Holy of Holies with the smoke of incense is to approach the celestial state through what the Heavenly Doctrines call ‘the acceptable perceptions of worship’. These are our prayers, the adoration of the Lord we can summon, ideas and goals the Lord can work with despite being obscure. From our perception of reality, clouded as it is with the appearance or ‘smoke’ of our own real-ness, we can worship and adore the Lord and ask to be transformed into heavenly loves without immediately experiencing what that transformation would feel like. This is like dimly perceiving the Ark of the Covenant in that curtained room through the sweet-smelling smoke of the incense. We perceive it is there, but are protected from the full implications of what we are perceiving.

We ourselves can spend some time picturing our day, re-evaluating how we live our life, and see it, dimly, through the eyes of heaven: What would your schedule look like if was planned by an angel? What should excite you or bring you peace? What if you cared only for the Lord’s truth? A fearless attempt to see this may make us uncomfortable.

We should not linger long in the Holy of Holies. The high priest comes out and uses the holy blood to next cleanse the Tabernacle, ending with the altar upon which the sacrifice was originally made. He then paints the blood on its horns, the most external part of the altar which is itself the most external item within the whole Tabernacle site.

Blood corresponds to the Divine Human, the power of the Lord Jesus Christ to change who we are. Blood symbolizes the basic but profound realization that all truth comes from good, that all wisdom is merely the shape of love, and that the Ten Commandments are the shape of the love the Lord Jesus Christ has for us.

This is the same blood offered by the Lord during Easter Week. He says to His disciples in Luke: “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.” It was a new covenant because He was giving to humanity the new idea of a human God. The Israelites could not have a concept of the Divine as a person, but the Day of Atonement reveals how we approach Jesus Christ for help.

The priest physically walking from the Holy of Holies to the altar of burnt offering symbolizes the descent of our thought from the contemplation of heavenly life to an examination of our earthly behaviors. He moves, geographically, from the Ten Commandments as they are in themselves to the rest of his duties and life.

Putting blood on the horns of the altar is the third state preceding repentance – we reconsider our life in its most external facets: our physical behavior in our daily lives. This is also why the Lord on earth washed merely the feet, the lowest parts, of His disciples, not their heads and hands – it is about external matters. This step could look like us reading His Word, thinking over our day, comparing it to the testimony of the Ten Commandments, and seeing how our life would be cleaner, brighter, happier if it were more like the Ten Commandments.

Unlike the previous, potentially profound state, this third state is lower, more pedestrian. From the light of the Word, we should decide on a change to something detectable to the senses. This is the state of power where we see something both changeable and manageable; we can live life differently in some small way to be closer to the Lord. The blood is painted on the horns, the truth descends into action.

When we progress through these steps in order, we prepare ourselves to banish the goat of Azazel. This is the second of two goats – the first goat was sacrificed earlier as the goat for the Lord. This second goat represents the faith of repentance. The high priest would place his hands on the goat for Azazel and pronounce all the sins of Israel upon it. Since the goat now, ritually speaking, contained within it the rest of the residual sins of Israel, it was driven off.

The name Azazel is confusing, but is from the Hebrew word ‘azal’, meaning ‘go away’ or even vastation. It seems to depict a place separated from the Lord, a place of evil spirits. By sending away the goat for ‘Azazel’, the Children of Israel acknowledged that sin and evil were not intrinsically theirs.

We must do the same thing. The Lord in His Second Coming has made clear to us that neither good nor evil ‘belong’ to us, and the closer we come to believing and living as if this is true, the happier and more at peace we will become. We are not the source of good or evil, none of our thoughts or affections come from ourselves, and nothing makes these things ‘us’ unless we let them. We read in "Divine Providence":

To believe and think, as is the truth, that all goodness and truth originate from the Lord, and all evil and falsity from hell, seems to be an impossibility, when in fact it is something truly human and thus angelic. This is impossible for people who do not acknowledge the Lord's Divinity, and that evils are sins, but it is possible for people who do. Insofar as they refrain from evils as sins, they simply reflect on the evils in themselves and cast them away from themselves back to hell from where they came. (Divine Providence 320)

This truth can clean our lives. Just as the high priest lays his hands on the goat for Azazel, we direct our own borrowed power to driving evil out of our life. Please notice that they do not kill the goat – they remove it from camp. It is not our job to kill evil, neither can we. Instead, we flee from evil, we shun it, we remove ourselves from it. This might mean changing behaviors that are not evil in themselves but that we now perceive to feed evil: we watch what we say at the Tuesday meeting or spend less time away from home on Saturday. Prepared with humility, freshly aware of the celestial state the Lord wishes for us, and armed with a perception of what we should change in our bodily lives in the light of the Word, we change.

And that is how we undergo yearly examination and repentance, something the Heavenly Doctrines encourage us to do. The Day of Atonement does not describe the daily repentance with which we are familiar but a yearly repentance, a more thorough cleaning. It is a process, as we have said, wholly managed and performed by the Lord, but He asks that we participate.

The process described is universal; the Atonement ritual describes individual repentance, spiritual vastation, how a church undergoes investigation and correction, it even describes how we can clean our worship of our own proprium and worldly concerns. The process of approaching the Divine is eternal.

This ritual is also the closest the Children of Israel came to their God. As the Easter season starts and our thoughts turn to the last events of the Lord’s life on earth, we should give some thought as to how we will approach Him. Perhaps this is a time for us to approach Him in a state of repentance: We start in simple linen, a state of humility before our God. We then approach carefully with incense, our mind perceiving what it can of celestial life. We then return to our life, painting our behavior with the blood of Divine Truth. Finally, we can be prepared to drive evil from our life and draw closer to our living God.

“Jehovah, I cry unto you: make haste unto me; give ear unto my voice, when I cry unto you. Let my prayer be set forth before you as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” (Psalm 142:1-2)

Other references: John 13:3-10, Arcana Coelestia 10208.

5044. 'And the governor of the prison-house gave' means the truth governing in a state of temptations. This is clear from the meaning of 'the governor (or the prince)' as the primary and so governing truth, dealt with below; and from the meaning of 'the prison-house' as the laying waste of falsity, and therefore temptation, dealt with above in 5038, 5039, 5043. What the truth governing in a state of temptations is must first be discussed. With all who are undergoing temptations truth from the Lord is flowing in, and this truth rules and governs their thoughts, uplifting them every time they are given to doubt and also to feelings of despair. This truth is what that governing truth is, and it is the kind of truth which they have learned from the Word and from doctrine and which they themselves have confirmed. Other kinds of truth may also be called on at such times, but these do not govern those persons interiorly. Sometimes the truth governing them does not make itself clearly visible in their understanding but lies obscured, yet continues to govern. For the Lord's Divine flows into that governing truth and in so doing keeps the interior parts of the mind within its domain, so that when it comes out into the light the person undergoing temptation receives comfort from it and is uplifted by it.

[2] Not the actual truth but an affection for it is what the Lord uses to govern those undergoing temptations; for the Divine does not flow into anything except that which is regarded with affection. Truth that has been implanted and become rooted in a person interiorly has been implanted and become rooted there through affection. Absolutely nothing grows there without affection. Truth that has been implanted and become rooted through affection sticks in the mind, and it is recollected through an affection for it. Furthermore when that truth is recollected it also manifests the affection attached to it, an affection which in that person is a reciprocal one. This being what goes on in a person who undergoes temptations, no one is therefore allowed to experience any spiritual temptation until he reaches adult years and so has acquired some truth by means of which he may be governed. Without that truth he goes under, in which case his latter state is worse than his former one. From all this one may see what is implied by the truth governing in a state of temptations, meant by 'the governor of the prison-house'.

[3] The reason 'a prince (or a governor)' means a primary truth is that 'a king' in the internal sense means the truth itself, 1672, 1728, 2015, 2069, 3009, 3670, 4575, 4581, 4789, 4966, and consequently because 'princes' are the king's chief subjects the primary features of that truth are meant by them. For this meaning of 'princes', see 1482, 2089; yet because those two paragraphs have not shown that meaning from other places in the Word, let some be introduced here: In Isaiah,

To us a boy is born, to us a son is given, on whose shoulder will be the government ¹ - the prince of peace, increasing government ² and peace [to which] there will be no end. Isaiah 9:6-7.

This refers to the Lord. 'The government upon his shoulder' means all Divine Truth in the heavens originating in Him, for the heavens are distinguished into separate principalities in keeping with the varieties of truth derived from good, which also explains why angels are called principalities. 'Peace' means the state of bliss in the heavens which inmostly affects what is good and true, 3780. This is why the Lord is called 'the prince of peace' and why it speaks of Him 'increasing government and peace to which there will be no end'.

[4] In the same prophet,

The princes of Zoan are foolish, the wise counsellors of Pharaoh. How do you say to Pharaoh, I am a son of the wise, a son of the kings of old? The princes of Zoan have become fools, the princes of Noph deluded, and they have led Egypt astray, the corner-stone of the tribes. Isaiah 19:11, 13.

This refers to Egypt, by which the Church's factual knowledge is meant, 4749, and so natural truth, which is the last and lowest degree of order. For the same reason Egypt is here called 'the corner-stone of the tribes', for by 'the tribes' are meant all aspects of truth in their entirety, 3858, 3862, 3926, 3939, 4060. Here however 'Egypt' is factual knowledge that perverts the truths known to the Church, and so is truths in the lowest degree of order that have been falsified, meant by 'the princes of Zoan and the princes of Noph'. The reason Egypt calls itself 'a son of the kings of old' is that the factual knowledge which existed in that land had its origin in the truths known to the Ancient Church. Actual truths are meant by 'kings', as shown above, and the truths known to the Ancient Church by 'the kings of old'.

[5] In the same prophet,

Asshur does not think what is right and his heart does not consider what is right, for his heart is to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few, for he says, Are not my princes kings? Isaiah 10:7-8.

'Asshur' stands for reasoning about Divine truths which gives rise to falsities, and so stands for perverted reason, 1186. Truths falsified in this way, that is, falsities, which are the product of reasoning and look altogether like truths, are meant when Asshur says 'Are not my princes kings?' As long as a person's mind is fixed on the historical sense of the letter he cannot see or consequently believe that 'Asshur' means reasoning, and that 'princes who are kings' means major falsities which are regarded as supreme truths. Still less can he believe this if he refuses to entertain the idea that there is something holier and more universal within the Divine Word than that which is seen in the literal sense. Yet in the internal sense 'Asshur' is used to mean in the Word nothing else than reason and reasoning, and 'kings' to mean actual truths, 'princes' the primary features of truth. Also, those in heaven have no knowledge as to what or who 'Asshur' may be, besides which angels put away from themselves the idea of a king or a prince; and when they detect this idea residing with man they transfer it to the Lord and then perceive that which goes forth from the Lord and which is the Lord's in heaven, namely His Divine Truth going forth from His Divine Good.

[6] In the same prophet,

Asshur will fall by the sword, not of man (vir), and a sword, not of man (homo), will devour him. Also his rock will pass away by reason of terror, and his princes will be dismayed by the ensign. Isaiah 31:8-9.

This too refers to Egypt, by which the Church's factual knowledge once it has been perverted is meant. Reasoning based on known facts regarding Divine truths which leads to perversion and falsification is meant by 'Asshur', those perverted and falsified truths being 'his princes'. 'The sword by which Asshur will fall' is falsity engaged in conflict with truth and bringing about the devastation of it, 2799, 4499.

In the same prophet,

The strength of Pharaoh will become shame for you, and trust in the shadow of Egypt ignominy, when his princes will be in Zoan. Isaiah 30:3-4.

'Princes in Zoan' stands for truths that have been falsified, and so stands for falsities, as above.

[7] In the same prophet,

The spoon-bill and the duck will possess it, and the owl and the raven will dwell in it; and he will stretch over it the line of emptiness, and the plumb-line of a waste place. Let them call its nobles who are not there a kingdom, and all its princes will be nothing. Isaiah 34:11-12.

'The spoon-bill', 'the duck', 'the owl', 'the raven' stand for varieties of falsity which arise when Divine truths in the Word are rendered valueless. The desolation and laying waste of truth is meant by 'the line of emptiness and the plumb-line of a waste', while the falsities, which are primary truths so far as the people described here are concerned, are meant by 'its princes'. In the same prophet,

I will render the princes of holiness profane, and I will give Jacob to utter destruction and Israel to reproaches. Isaiah 43:28.

'Rendering the princes of holiness profane' refers to holy truths. The annihilation of the truth known to the Church - the internal Church and the external - is meant by 'giving Jacob to utter destruction and Israel to reproaches', 'Jacob' being the external Church and 'Israel' the internal, see 4286.

[8] In Jeremiah,

There will enter through the gates of this city kings and princes seated on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their princes. Jeremiah 17:25.

Anyone who understands the Word at this point according to its historical sense cannot know that anything deeper and holier lies hidden within these words than the idea that kings and princes will enter through the gates of the city in chariots and on horses, from which he gathers that the duration of the kingdom is meant. But one who is aware of what is meant by 'city' in the internal sense, and what is meant by 'kings', 'princes', 'the throne of David', and 'riding in chariots and on horses' sees deeper and holier matters in this description. For 'the city', which is Jerusalem, means the Lord's spiritual kingdom, 2117, 3654; 'kings' Divine Truths, as shown above; 'princes' the primary features of truth; 'the throne of David' the Lord's heaven, 1888; and 'riding in chariots and on horses' the existence in the Church of a spiritual understanding, 2760, 2761, 3217.

[9] In the same prophet,

O sword against the Chaldeans and against the inhabitants of Babel, and against its princes and against its wise men! O sword against the liars! O sword against its horses and against its chariots! Jeremiah 50:35-37.

'Sword' stands for truth engaged in conflict with falsity, and for falsity in conflict with truth and laying it waste, 2799, 4499. 'The Chaldeans' stands for those who profane truths, and 'the inhabitants of Babel' for those who profane good, 1182, 1283, 1295, 1304, 1307, 1308, 1321, 1322, 1326, 1327 (end). 'Princes' stands for falsities, which to such people are primary truths. 'Horses' stands for the Church's possession of understanding, and 'chariots' for its doctrinal teaching, the laying waste of these being meant by 'a sword against its horses and against its chariots'.

[10] In the same prophet,

How in His anger the Lord covers the daughter of Zion with a cloud! The Lord has swallowed up - He has not spared - all the dwelling-places of Jacob. He has destroyed in His wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He has cast them down to the ground; He has profaned the kingdom and her princes. The gates have sunk into the ground; He has broken in pieces her bars; her king and princes are among the nations. Lamentations 1:1, 2, 9.

'The daughter of Zion and Judah' stands for the celestial Church, in this case for that Church when it has been destroyed. 'The kingdom' stands for the truths of doctrine there, 2547, 4691, 'king' for truth itself, and 'princes' for the primary features of this truth.

[11] In the same prophet,

Our skins have been blackened like an oven because of the storms of famine; they have ravished women in Zion, virgins in the cities of Judah. Princes have been hung up by their hands. Lamentations 5:10-12.

'Princes hung up by their hands' stands for the fact that truths have been made profane, for being hung up represented the damnation brought about by profanation. And because being hung up represented that profanation the command was also given that when the people went whoring after Baalpeor and worshipped their gods, the princes were to be hung up before the sun, Numbers 25:1-4, since 'to go whoring after Baalpeor and to worship their gods' was to make worship profane.

In Ezekiel,

The king will mourn, and the prince will be wrapped in stupidity, and the hands of the people of the land will be all atremble; I will deal with them in their way. Ezekiel 7:27.

Here likewise 'the king' stands for truth in general, and 'the prince' for the primary features of it.

[12] In the same prophet,

The prince who is in the midst of them will be carried on the shoulder under darkness and will go forth; they will dig through the wall to lead out through it; he will cover his face, so that with the eye he does not see the earth. Ezekiel 12:12.

Here it is quite evident that 'the prince' does not mean a prince but truth known to the Church. When the words 'will be carried on the shoulder under darkness' are used in reference to it, the meaning is that total power is used to bear away among falsities, 'darkness' meaning falsities. 'Covering the face' means that truth is completely out of sight; 'so that with the eye he does not see the earth' means that nothing of the Church is visible, 'earth' or 'land' meaning the Church, see 661, 1066, 1067, 1262, 1413, 1607, 1733, 1850, 2117, 4535. In Hosea,

The children of Israel will sit many days with no king and no prince, and no sacrifice, and no pillar, and no ephod, and no teraphim. Hosea 3:4.

[13] And in David,

All glorious is the king's daughter within, in her clothing with gold interweavings; in embroidered robes she will be led to the king. Instead of your fathers will be your sons; you will set them as princes in the whole earth. Psalms 45:13-14, 16.

'The king's daughter' means the Lord's spiritual kingdom. It is called His spiritual kingdom by virtue of the Lord's Divine truth, which in this instance is described by means of 'clothing consisting of gold interweavings and of embroidered robes'. 'Sons' are the truths of that kingdom which are derived from the Lord's Divine, which are going to be 'the princes', that is, the primary features of it.

'The prince' who is described - he and his possession in the New Jerusalem and in the new land - in Ezekiel 44:3; 45:7-8, 17; 46:8, 10, 12, 16, 18; 48:21, means, in general, truth that is derived from the Lord's Divine. For 'the New Jerusalem' in these places, 'the New Temple', and 'the new land' are used to mean the Lord's kingdom in heaven and on earth, which kingdom is described here in Ezekiel by means of representatives such as figure elsewhere in the Word.

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