The Scapegoat as a Figure of Jesus

1 Understand therefore, children of gladness, that the good Lord showed us everything in advance so that we might know to whom we should in all things render thanks and praise. 2 If the Son of God—being Lord and the future Judge of the living and the dead—suffered so that His wound could give us life, let us believe that the Son of God could not have suffered unless it was for us. 3 Moreover, when He was crucified, He was given vinegar and gall to drink. Listen to how the priests of the temple exposed this. Seeing that Scripture contains a command, ‘Whoever will not observe the fast will surely die,’ the Lord commanded, because He Himself was about to offer in His own person the vessel of His Spirit as a sacrifice for our sins, that the type also given in Isaac—who was offered on the altar—should be fulfilled. 4 What then does He say in the prophet? ‘Let them eat of the goat that is offered during the fast for all their sins. Pay close attention: And let all the priests alone eat the entrails unwashed with vinegar.’ 5 Why? ‘Since you are going to give Me, who will offer My flesh for the sins of My new people, gall with vinegar to drink, eat by yourselves, while the people fast and mourn in sackcloth and ashes,’ so that He might show that He must suffer by their hands. 6 Pay attention to the commands He gave: ‘Take two goats, fair and alike, and offer them, and let the priest take the one for a whole burnt offering for sins.’ 7 But what must be done with the other? ‘Cursed,’ He says, ‘is the one.’ Notice how Jesus is revealed in this. 8 ‘And all of you must spit on it and poke it, and place scarlet wool around its head,⁠a and thus cast it into the wilderness. And when this is done, the one who takes the goat into the wilderness leads it, and removes the wool, and places it upon the branch called Rachia, from which we eat the shoots if we find them in the countryside. Of this briar alone the fruit is sweet.’ 9 What does this mean? Pay attention: One is at the altar, and the other is cursed. Moreover, the cursed one is crowned. For in that day they will see Him wearing a long scarlet robe on His flesh, and they will say, ‘Isn’t this the One whom we once crucified and ridiculed and spat upon? Truly, this was He who said He was the Son of God.’ 10 For what reason is He compared to the goat? For the reason it says: ‘The goats shall be fair and alike,’ so that when they see Him then, they may be astonished at the likeness. Therefore, notice the type of Jesus who was to suffer. 11 But what is meant by them placing the wool in the midst of the thorns? It is a type of Jesus set out for the Church, since anyone who desires to take away the scarlet wool must endure many hardships because of the fearful nature of the thorn, and only through suffering gain mastery over it. Therefore, He says, those who desire to see Me and to attain My kingdom must grasp Me through distress and suffering.