10 Tishrei · September or October
Yom Kippur
יוֹם כִּפּוּר
also called The Day of Atonement
The one day in the year the high priest entered the innermost room, and the only fast the law commands. The most solemn day on the calendar.
The text, before anyone interprets it
What was commanded
Afflict yourselves, do no work at all, and let atonement be made for you to cleanse you from all your sins. Leviticus 16 sets out the ritual in more detail than almost anything else in the law: the priest's own sin offering first, then two goats, one sacrificed and one sent away into the wilderness carrying the sins of the people.
Where it turns up
The high priest went behind the curtain once a year, and not casually. Later Jewish sources describe the weight of the day and the relief when he came out. The two goats are one act in two halves: sin paid for, and sin carried away, because the text will not let either half stand for the whole.
What is on the table
The two goats
One killed, one released alive into the wilderness after the priest lays hands on its head and confesses over it. Two pictures the text refuses to combine.
The curtain
The barrier the whole day is organised around. Entered once a year, by one man, with blood, and not otherwise.
Afflicting the soul
Understood as fasting, but the phrase is broader and means something closer to taking your own condition seriously for a day.
The sealing
In Jewish tradition the verdict opened at Yom Teruah is sealed at the close of this day, which is why the greeting is about a good sealing rather than a good year.
In the New Testament
Hebrews takes this day as its central image and spends chapters on it: a high priest who does not need to offer for his own sin, who enters not a copy but the reality, and who does it once rather than annually. The Gospels report that the curtain of the temple tore at the crucifixion, top to bottom.
Not in the Bible, and worth knowing anyway
What tradition added
Much of what makes these days beautiful comes from outside Scripture, and some New Testament scenes are far harder to read without it. It is set out here with its source named, which is the only honest way to hold it: interesting, often very old, and not binding on anyone.
That a scarlet cord tied to the scapegoat turned white when the sacrifice was accepted, and that it stopped turning white forty years before the temple fell.
Where it comes from · Talmud, Yoma 39b. Christians sometimes cite it because forty years before AD 70 lands near the crucifixion. It is a striking passage and it is a late source describing its own past, which is exactly the kind of claim to hold loosely.
The Kol Nidre prayer that opens the evening.
Where it comes from · Medieval, and controversial among Jews themselves when it was introduced.
Was, is, and is to come
The same appointment, three depths
An appointment on a calendar is not crossed off once. It comes round. Christians of every tradition read these events at more than one depth, whether they call it already and not yet, type and antitype, or near and far fulfilment.
It happened
One man, one day, one entry behind the curtain, with blood, and two goats that between them said what one could not.
It is happening
A day still kept as the most solemn of the year, and the image Hebrews uses to say the entry has already been made once and does not need repeating.
It is still coming
A judgment in which the books are opened, and the removal of sin as far as the east is from the west made permanent rather than annual.
How Christians have read it
A reading, not a statement of the text
In the autumn framework this is the day of judgment and cleansing, the courtroom before the banquet. The scapegoat sent into the wilderness is read alongside the promise that our transgressions are removed as far as the east is from the west.
How it is kept now
The holiest day of the Jewish year, kept by many who keep nothing else. Not on the Christian calendar, though the ideas are everywhere in Christian theology, largely through Hebrews. Messianic congregations keep it as a day of fasting and reflection, with the atonement understood as already accomplished rather than annually renewed, which is the difference that matters.
If you want to keep it
Fast if your health allows, and use the day for the specific work of repentance rather than a general mood. Jewish practice is exact about this and Christians could learn from it: the day does not cover wrongs done to another person until you have actually gone to that person.
Should Christians keep the feasts? Every view at its strongest →