Goat
The goat was one of the most common animals of the biblical world. Hardy and able to graze on rocky, dry hillsides, goats were kept together with sheep in the mixed flocks of the patriarchs and of Israel, and they provided milk, meat, hair and skins. The law made the goat one of the principal sacrificial animals, and on the Day of Atonement two male goats stood at the center of Israel's most solemn rite.
Goats appear at key moments of the biblical story: the young goats Rebekah prepared and the goatskins Jacob wore to deceive Isaac (Genesis 27:9-16), the sin offerings of leaders and common people (Leviticus 4:23-28), the goat for the LORD and the goat for Azazel (Leviticus 16), the male goat of Daniel's vision (Daniel 8) and Jesus' picture of the Son of Man separating the sheep from the goats (Matthew 25:32-33).
1. Etymology and meaning
The general Hebrew word is ez (עֵז), “goat, she-goat”, often in the plural izzim. The male goat is called sa'ir (שָׂעִיר), literally “hairy one”, the usual term for the goat of the sin offering (Leviticus 4:23, se'ir izzim) and for the goats of Leviticus 16. Other words for the male are attud (עַתּוּד), which can also mean a leader (Isaiah 14:9; Zechariah 10:3), tayish (תַּיִשׁ) (Proverbs 30:31) and tsaphir (צָפִיר), used in Daniel 8:5. A kid is a gedi (גְּדִי), as in the “two good young goats” of Genesis 27:9. The wild goat or ibex is ya'el (יָעֵל) (Psalm 104:18; Job 39:1).
The name Azazel (עֲזָאזֵל) in Leviticus 16:8, 10, 26 is disputed. Proposals include “the goat that goes away” (from ez and azal, “to go away”), which lies behind the English “scapegoat” coined by William Tyndale; a rugged, remote place in the wilderness; the name of a wilderness spirit opposed to the LORD; or an abstract noun meaning “complete removal”. No view is certain.
In the Greek New Testament the kid or young goat is eriphos (ἔριφος) and its diminutive eriphion (Matthew 25:32-33; Luke 15:29), and the male goat of sacrifice is tragos (τράγος) (Hebrews 9:12-13, 19; 10:4).
2. Historical context and biblical use
Goats in daily life
Flocks usually mixed sheep and goats; Laban's flock included speckled and spotted goats (Genesis 30:32-35), and Nabal owned a thousand goats (1 Samuel 25:2). Goats' milk was a staple: “There will be enough goats' milk for your food” (Proverbs 27:27). Goat hair was spun by skilled women (Exodus 35:26) and woven into the curtains that formed the tent over the tabernacle (Exodus 26:7). Skins served as garments for the poor and persecuted (Hebrews 11:37). A young goat was a ready meal for a guest (Judges 6:19; 13:15, 19), a gift (1 Samuel 16:20) or a pledge (Genesis 38:17). The law forbade boiling a young goat in its mother's milk (Exodus 23:19; 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21).
Goats in sacrifice
Goats could be burnt offerings (Leviticus 1:10) and peace offerings (Leviticus 3:12). The Passover animal could be taken “from the sheep or from the goats” (Exodus 12:5). The goat was above all the animal of the sin offering: a leader who sinned unintentionally brought a male goat (Leviticus 4:23), a common person a female goat (Leviticus 4:28). Each tribal leader offered a male goat for a sin offering at the dedication of the altar (Numbers 7:16).
The Day of Atonement
On the tenth day of the seventh month the high priest took two male goats from the congregation and cast lots over them, “one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel” (Leviticus 16:5, 7-8). The first was slaughtered as a sin offering, and its blood was brought behind the veil and sprinkled on and before the mercy seat (Leviticus 16:15-16). Over the second, living goat Aaron laid both hands and confessed all the iniquities of Israel, putting them on its head; then it was led into the wilderness: “The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area” (Leviticus 16:20-22). The two goats show two sides of one atonement: sin covered by the blood of a substitute, and sin carried away out of sight.
Goats and idolatry
The word se'irim is also used for goat idols or demons of the wilderness. Israel was commanded to stop sacrificing “to goat demons” (Leviticus 17:7), and Jeroboam appointed priests for them (2 Chronicles 11:15).
3. Key passages
Jacob and the goatskins (Genesis 27)
Rebekah told Jacob to bring two good young goats, prepared them as the savory food Isaac loved and put the skins on Jacob's hands and on the smooth part of his neck, so that the blind father would take him for hairy Esau (Genesis 27:9-16). The ruse succeeded: “The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau” (Genesis 27:22). Years later Jacob was himself deceived by his sons with the blood of a goat on Joseph's robe (Genesis 37:31-33). Scripture records the deception without approving it, and shows God carrying out his promise through flawed people.
The goat of the sin offering and the scapegoat (Leviticus 4 and 16)
Leviticus 4 teaches that even unintentional sin requires atonement, and that the offering was adapted to the offerer's position. Leviticus 16 places the goats at the heart of the yearly cleansing of the people and the sanctuary. Nothing in the text presents the second goat as an offering to Azazel; it is presented alive before the LORD (Leviticus 16:10) and sent away bearing the sins of the people.
The male goat of Daniel 8
Daniel saw a ram with two horns overthrown by a male goat coming from the west “without touching the ground”, with a conspicuous horn between its eyes; the great horn was broken and four horns rose in its place (Daniel 8:3-8). The angel explained that the ram was the kings of Media and Persia and the goat “the king of Greece”, the great horn being its first king (Daniel 8:20-22). Interpreters widely identify this king with Alexander the Great and the four horns with the kingdoms that divided his empire. The vision shows that the rise and fall of empires lies under God's rule.
The sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46)
When the Son of Man comes in glory, all nations will be gathered before him, “and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats” (Matthew 25:32). The sheep on the right inherit the kingdom; the goats on the left go into eternal punishment (Matthew 25:33-34, 41, 46). The image draws on the mixed flocks of Palestine. The point is not that goats are bad animals but that the judgment will separate those whose faith showed itself in mercy to the least of Christ's brothers from those whose lives did not (Matthew 25:40, 45; compare Ezekiel 34:17).
4. Theological significance
The goats of sacrifice teach that sin is serious and that forgiveness comes through a substitute provided by God. Yet the prophets and psalmists insist that God does not need the blood of goats (Psalm 50:9-13; Isaiah 1:11), and Hebrews concludes that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4).
Hebrews reads the Day of Atonement in the light of Christ: he entered the holy places once for all “not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12). The bodies of the sin offerings were burned outside the camp, so Jesus suffered outside the gate to sanctify the people through his own blood (Hebrews 13:11-12). The New Testament never explicitly calls Jesus the scapegoat, but many interpreters see in the goat that carried sin away a picture of the Servant on whom the LORD laid the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6, 12) and of the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). In Christ both goats find their fulfillment: sin is atoned for by blood and removed as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).
5. Legacy and canonical references
Goats run from the patriarchal narratives through the law, the historical books, wisdom literature (Proverbs 27:27; Song of Songs 4:1, where the beloved's hair is like a flock of goats leaping down Mount Gilead) and the prophets (Ezekiel 34:17; Daniel 8), to the Gospels and Hebrews. The older brother's complaint that his father never gave him a young goat (Luke 15:29) shows how ordinary the animal was.
The expression “scapegoat” entered many languages through Bible translation and now means someone blamed for others' faults. The biblical rite is almost the reverse of that usage: the goat was not an unjust victim of human blame, but God's appointed means of removing real guilt from a guilty people.
The wild goats of the heights (Psalm 104:18; Job 39:1) and the “Wildgoats' Rocks” near En-gedi (1 Samuel 24:2) remind us that God cares for creatures beyond human reach.
6. Application for today
The goat of the sin offering reminds us that there is no small sin; even what we do unintentionally needs forgiveness. The goat sent into the wilderness tells us what God does with the sins of those who trust in Christ: he carries them away and does not bring them back against us.
Jacob's goatskins warn against trying to obtain God's blessing by our own schemes. The blessing was promised, but deception brought years of fear and exile.
The parable of the sheep and the goats calls us to examine whether our faith is alive in works of mercy toward the hungry, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner. We do not earn salvation by these works, but they reveal to whom we belong.
Finally, Daniel's goat invites us to watch the rise and fall of the powers of this world without fear, since the kingdoms of the earth are temporary and the kingdom of the Son of Man will never pass away.