Warnings Regarding Sacrifices and Meat (17:1–16)

Goat idols (17:7). “Male goats” (literally) as the recipients of sacrifices must represent supernatural beings, such as goat demons or satyrs, who inhabit desolate places (see comment on 16:10). J. Milgrom has stated that 17:7, where sacrifice to goat demons is banned, stands in “blatant contradiction” to chapter 16, which mandates dispatch of a male goat to Azazel.171 But there is no real contradiction because Azazel’s goat is neither a sacrifice nor an object of sacrifice. Rather, it is simply a ritual “vehicle” for sending evil back to its source, just as Mesopotamian elimination rites had the goal of driving demons from human habitations back to their places of origin, such as the underworld, which could be represented by the desert.172 Similarly, Hittite elimination rituals returned evils to enemy lands or desolate mountain areas; “the detergent materials are burned, dumped in the open country, or thrown into the river or seas. As in Mesopotamia, these places are connected with the underworld.”173

Given the connections between goats, uninhabited country, demons, and the underworld, we can better understand why Leviticus 17 would emphasize proper use of blood on the Lord’s altar. In pagan religion, speaking of appeasing netherworld deities, “the beverage which these denizens of the underworld craved more than honey, beer, and wine was the blood of sacrificial animals” (see comment on 1:5).174 So an important reason for obeying Yahweh’s ritual rules was to avoid worship of underworld gods, who were really demons (cf. Deut. 32:17; Ps. 106:37; 1 Cor. 10:20).

Two-dog palette from about 3000 B.C. represents chaos.

Werner Forman Archive/The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford