The Goat in the Bible

The goat appears throughout Scripture as a familiar animal of the flock, but it also carries rich symbolic and prophetic meaning. In everyday life goats were a source of food, milk, hair, and hide, and they figure in the patriarchal narratives, as when Rebekah told Jacob, "Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savoury meat for thy father" (Genesis 27:9). From the ordinary, the Bible draws lessons that reach to judgment and atonement. The most solemn use of the goat is in the Day of Atonement. Two goats were taken: one was sacrificed, and the other, the scapegoat, was sent away into the wilderness bearing the sins of the people. "But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the LORD, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness" (Leviticus 16:10). "And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited" (Leviticus 16:22). This vivid picture foreshadows Christ, who bears away the sins of his people once for all. In prophecy the goat appears as a symbol of swift, conquering power. Daniel saw "an he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground" (Daniel 8:5), an image later interpreted of the kingdom of Greece and its mighty king. The goat's speed and force depict the rise of empires under God's sovereign hand. Jesus gives the goat its most searching meaning in his teaching on the last judgment. He will gather all nations and "separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats" (Matthew 25:32). "And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left" (Matthew 25:33). Here the goats represent those who, lacking true faith and love, are separated from the blessed. The animal that once carried Israel's sins into the wilderness becomes a warning to examine whether we belong to the Shepherd, trusting the true Lamb who took our place.