It has been asked, How often did the high priest go into the most holy place during the per formance of this service? Jewish tradition replies four times; and this is probably correct. The text of Moses expressly states that he went in twice (comp. ver. 14 and 15) ; and as he could not well carry the censer, and the incense, and the blood within the veil at once, it is probable that he first took in the censer and then came out for the blood. This makes three entrances ; and as it is probable that he went in after he had sprinkled the blood upon the altar for the purpose of removing the censer, this would make up the number of four, The statement of the Apostle, Heb. ix. 7, may be easily reconciled with this by understanding the Bra there of the one entrance in the year not of only one in the day; just as the many acts of the day might be spoken of as one service.
The name of this festival,' says Bahr ontn intimates its general significancy ; the entire festival had singly and alone expiation for its design, and that in the most extended sense, universal, all embracing expiation.' Along with this it was a day of perfect rest—a sabbath of sabbaths ; so that the two ideas of full expiation and perfect rest were thus combined. It was, moreover, a day of fasting, not as a sign of grief, but simply as ex pressive of humiliation before God as the proper state of those who appeared before him to confess their sins and offer atonement for them. With this, the general idea of the day, all the acts of the priest concurred; his slaying of the victims as emblematical of the death penalty which sin entails ; his entering the holiest of all with blood, and his sprinkling of it upon and before the capporeth, as betokening the need of a mediator to go for the sinful people into the presence of God, and the need of that mediator's coming with sacrificial blood to his being accepted on behalf of sinners ; and his sending away the live goat, after atone ment had been made for sin, with the sins that had been expiated on its head, into utter and perpetual banishment, as intimating that sin atoned for was sin utterly taken away, so that when sought for it could not be found. In all these there were
presented, in lively symbol, the great truths of a redemptory system by means of propitiation. There was here also a typical foreshadowing of the great truth of Christianity—redemption through the expiatory sufferings and vicarious intercession of the Lord Jesus Christ, who bath taken away sins by the sacrifice of Himself; who hath entered into the heavenly temple with atoning blood, and who appeareth in the presence of God for us. (See, besides the works already referred to, Light foot, Temple Service, ch. 15 ; Magee, Discozersesand Dissertations on Atonement and Sacrifices, 3 vols. ; J. Pye Smith, Four Discourses on the Sacrifice and Priesthood of Christ, etc., 2d. ed. 1842; Chevalier, Hulsean Lecture for 1826, pt. iii. ; Litton, Bampton Lecture for 1856, lects. 3 and 4; Russell, On the Old and New Covenants, ch. iii. ; Alexander, Congrega tional Lecture for 1840,1ect. viii. ; Kurz. Das Mos. Opfer; Fairbairn, Scripture Typology, vol. ii. For the Rabbinical account of the service as performed in the second Temple, see the treatise entitled Yoma in the Mishna, and for the ceremonies observed by the later Jews, etc., B. Picard, Cere monzes et Cozetzemes Religieuses, etc., i. c. 6, p. 18, and Buxtorf, Synagoga c.xx.)—W. L. A.