“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.

9325. There shall not be one miscarrying, or barren, in thy land. That this signifies that goods and truths will proceed in their order in continual progression, is evident from the signification of “not miscarrying, or being barren,” as being the progress of regeneration in its order, consequently that goods and truths will proceed in their order in continual progression (of which below); and from the signification of “in the land,” as being in the church (That “land” in the Word denotes the church, see n. 566, 662, 1066, 1067, 1262, 1413, 1607, 1733, 1850, 2117, 2118, 2571, 2928, 3355, 3368, 3379, 4447, 4535, 5577, 8011, 8732.) The reason why “the land” signifies the church, is that the land of Canaan is meant, where the church was, and where it had been from the most ancient times (n. 3686, 4447, 4454, 4516, 4517, 5136, 6516, 8317); and in the spiritual world when a land is mentioned, no land is perceived, but the quality of the nation therein in respect to religion. Therefore when “land” is mentioned in the Word, and the land of Canaan is meant, the church is perceived. From all this it can be seen what is meant in the prophetical parts of the Word by “a new heaven and a new land,” namely, the church internal and external (n. 1850, 3355, 4535); for there are internal men and external men.

[2] That by “there shall not be one miscarrying, or barren, in the land” is signified that goods and truths proceed in their order in continual progression, is because by all things belonging to birth are meant in the internal sense of the Word such things as belong to spiritual birth, thus to regeneration (n. 2584, 3860, 3905, 3915). The things that belong to spiritual birth or regeneration are the truths of faith and the goods of charity, for by means of these a man is conceived and born anew. That such things are signified by “births,” is plain from many passages in the Word, and openly from the words of the Lord to Nicodemus:

Jesus said to him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Nicodemus said, How can these things be? Jesus answered, Art thou a teacher in Israel, and knowest not these things? (John 3:3-6, 9-10);

“to be born of water and the spirit” denotes through the truths of faith and the good of love (see t he passages cited in n. 9274).

[3] That such things are signified in the Word by “births,” is from the correspondence of marriages on earth with the heavenly marriage, which is the marriage of good and truth (of which correspondence see above, n. 2727-2759). But at the present day scarcely anyone knows, and perhaps scarcely anyone is willing to acknowledge, that love truly conjugial descends from thence, for the reason that earthly and bodily things are before the eyes, and these extinguish and suffocate all thought about such a correspondence. As love truly conjugial is from this source, therefore in the internal sense of the Word “births,” and “generations,” signify the things of the new birth and generation from the Lord. Hence also it is that “father,” “mother,” “sons,” “daughters,” “sons-in-law,” “daughters-in-law,” “grandsons,” and many other relations derived from marriages, signify goods and truths and their derivations, as frequently shown in these explications. From all this it can now be seen that by “there shall not be one miscarrying, or barren, in the land” is signified that goods and truths shall proceed in their order in continual progression.

[4] That “one miscarrying,” and “one barren,” signify what belongs to miscarriage and barrenness in a spiritual sense, namely, perversions of good and truth, and also vastations and denials of good and truth, is evident from the following passages:

Ephraim, when I have seen it even to Tyre, was planted in beauty; but Ephraim shall bring forth his sons to the slayer. Give them, O Jehovah, a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. Because of the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of My house (Hos. 9:13-15);

unless it is known what is signified in the internal sense by “Ephraim,” “Tyre,” “a slayer,” “sons,” “a miscarrying womb,” and “dry breasts,” it cannot in the least be known what these prophetic words involve. That “Ephraim” denotes the intellect of the church, which is an intellect enlightened in respect to the goods and truths of faith derived from the Word, may be seen above (n. 3969, 5354, 6222, 6234, 6238, 6267); and also that “Tyre” denotes the knowledges of truth and good (n. 1201). From this it is plain what is signified by “Ephraim, when I have seen it even to Tyre, was planted in beauty.” That “a slayer” denotes one who deprives of spiritual life, that is, of the life from truth and good, may also be seen above (n. 3607, 6767, 8902); and that “sons” denote the truths of faith (n. 489, 491, 533, 1147, 2623, 2813, 3373, 3704, 4257). From this it is plain what is signified by “Ephraim bringing forth his sons to the slayer.” That “the breasts” denote the affections of good and truth, may also be seen (n. 6432); consequently “breasts that are dry” denote no affections; but in their place evil desires to pervert. From this it is plain what is meant by “a miscarrying womb,” namely, the perversion of good and truth. That all these expressions signify things of spiritual life is evident, for it is declared, “because of the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of My house.” “Out of the house of Jehovah” denotes out of the church and of heaven (n. 2233, 2234, 3720, 5640).

[5] In Malachi:

I will rebuke the devourer for you, that he may not spoil for you the fruit of the land; neither shall the vine in the field miscarry for you. All nations shall proclaim you blessed; and ye shall be a well-pleasing land (Malachi 3:11-12);

by “the vine in the field not miscarrying” is signified that the truths and goods of faith with those who are in the church shall proceed in their order; for “the vine” denotes the truth and good of the spiritual church (n. 1069, 6375, 6376, 9277); and “the field” denotes the church (n. 2971, 3766, 7502, 9139, 9295). “A well-pleasing land” denotes a church that is pleasing to the Lord; for everyone within the church who has been regenerated through truth and good is a church; which shows what is meant by “ye shall be a well-pleasing land.” (That “land” denotes the church, may be seen above.)

[6] In Moses:

If ye hearken to My judgments to keep and do them, thou shalt be blessed above every people; there shall not be in thee, nor in thy beast, any male unfruitful, or any female barren. Jehovah will take away from thee all sickness, and all the evil diseases of Egypt (Deuteronomy 7:12, 14-15).

That “there shall not be any male unfruitful, or any female barren” denotes not any without life from truth and good; thus that they shall be spiritually alive. As “barren” had this signification, the women in the ancient churches deemed themselves devoid of life when they were barren; as did Rachel, who thus spoke of herself to Jacob:

Rachel saw that she did not bear to Jacob, and she said to Jacob, Give me sons, and if not, I am dead (Genesis 30:1. 3908).

[7] By “the barren” are also signified those who are not in good because not in truths, and yet long for truths that they may be in good; as is the case with upright nations outside the church; as in Isaiah:

Sing, O barren, that didst not bear; break forth into singing and shout for joy, that didst not bring forth; for more are the sons of her that is desolate than the sons of her that is married (Isaiah 54:1).

Jehovah raiseth up the worn one out of the dust, He exalteth the needy one from the dunghill; to place him with the prince of his people. He maketh her that is barren to keep house, a glad mother of sons (Psalms 113:7-9).

[8] In the prophecy of Hannah after she had borne Samuel:

The full have hired themselves out, and the hungry have ceased; until the barren one hath borne seven, and she that hath many children hath failed (1 Samuel 2:5).

In the above passages by “the barren” are meant the Gentiles who are summoned to the church, and to whom the church is transferred when the old church ceases, that is, when those who before had been of the church are no longer in faith, because in no charity. This church is what is meant by “her that hath many children and hath failed,” and also by “her that is married,” in the passage from Isaiah. But the other church, that is, the new church of the Gentiles, is meant by the “barren one” and “her that is desolate” who shall have many sons, and also by “her that is barren keeping house, a glad mother of sons.” “To bear seven” denotes to be regenerated to the full; for “seven” there does not mean seven, but to the full (see n. 9228). From all this it is evident what is meant by the following words of the Lord:

The days come in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not brought forth, and the breasts that have not given suck (Luke 23:29); where the subject treated of is the consummation of the age, which is the last time of the church.

[9] In the second book of Kings:

The men of Jericho said unto Elisha, Behold the situation of this city is good; but the waters are evil, and the land is barren. Then Elisha said that they should put salt in a new cruse, and should cast the salt therefrom at the outlet of the waters; and the waters were healed, neither came there any more death or barrenness (2 Kings 2:19-21).

No one can know what these words infold within them except from the internal sense; for all the miracles related in the Word infold within them such things as are in the Lord’s kingdom, or in the church (n. 7337, 7465, 8364, 9086); and therefore it is necessary to know what was represented by Elisha, what was signified by the city of Jericho, what by the evil waters and the barren land, what by a new cruse and the salt in it, and also what by the outlet of the waters into which they were to cast the salt. That Elisha represented the Lord as to the Word, see n. 2762; that “waters” signify the truths of faith, n. 28, 2702, 3058, 3424, 4976, 5668, 6346, 7307, 8137, 8138, 8568; thus “evil waters” signify truths without good, and “a barren land” signifies the good of the church consequently not alive; “a new cruse,” that is, a new vessel, signifies knowledges of good and truth (n. 3068, 3079, 3316, 3318); “salt” signifies the longing of truth for good (n. 9207); “the outlet of the waters” signifies the natural of man which receives the knowledges of truth and good, and which is amended by the longing of truth for good.

[10] From all this it is evident that this miracle infolded within it the amendment of the church and of the life by the Lord through the Word, and through the consequent longing of truth for good; which amendment is effected when from such a longing the man’s natural receives truths from the Word. That this took place near the city of Jericho, was because this city was situated not far from the Jordan; and by “the Jordan” is signified that in the man of the church which first receives truths, thus the natural (n. 1585, 4255). That it is man’s natural which first receives truths out of the Word from the Lord, and that it is the last to be regenerated, and that when it has been regenerated, the whole man is regenerated, was signified by the Lord’s words to Peter, when He washed the disciples’ feet:

Jesus said, He that is washed needeth not save to have his feet washed, and is clean every whit (John 13:10);

(that the “feet” denote the things of the natural man, and in general the natural itself, see n. 2162, 3147, 3761, 3986, 4280, 4938-4952, 5327, 5328). (That for a man to be regenerated, the natural or external man must be in correspondence with the spiritual or internal man; thus that he is not regenerate until the natural has been regenerated, see n. 2850, 3167, 3286, 3321, 3470, 3493, 3508, 3509, 3518, 3573, 3576, 3579, 3620, 3623, 3671, 3882, 3969, 4353, 4588, 4612, 4618, 5168, 5326, 5373, 5651, 6299, 6454, 7442, 7443, 8742-8747, 9043, 9046, 9061)