THOUGHTFUL THOUGHTS 2.10.26  BY JOHN DUNNING.

Each year in Jerusalem, a great ceremony used to place the sin of the people onto a goat. The goat was a male (ie. a ‘ram’), given the title a ‘scapegoat’. Then it was forced out into the wilderness, where it was left to die. Holman Hunt recaptured that event in the painting called “The Scapegoat”. It was painted in the desert outside Jerusalem where these events took place.

Symbolically passing those consequences of sin onto a goat became known as the ‘scapegoat’, (which is how the word came into the English language.) That was a ‘shadow’ of what Jesus did for us. It enabled people to escape the consequences of their own sin.