What is Yom Kippur?

Finding the Messiah in Israel's Holiest Day

What is Yom Kippur?

Yom Kippur is commonly recognized as the Holiest day on the Jewish Calendar and it falls in the seventh month of Tishri, ten days after the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. Translated into Hebrew, Yom Kippur literally means the “Day of Atonement”. In Biblical tradition, Yom Kippur was commanded by God to be recognized as one of His seven appointed feasts.

And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Also the tenth day of this seventh month shall be the Day of Atonement. It shall be a holy convocation for you; you shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire to the Lord. And you shall do no work on that same day, for it is the Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before the Lord your God. For any person who is not afflicted in soul on that same day shall be cut off from his people. And any person who does any work on that same day, that person I will destroy from among his people. You shall do no manner of work; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It shall be to you a sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your souls; on the ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall celebrate your sabbath.”

The Appointed Feasts

If you remember reading through Leviticus, you will recall when God commands for the celebration of the Seven Appointed Feasts, known as “The Feasts of the Lord.” Each feast played a unique part in remembering God’s provision through Israel’s past, trusting in God’s providence in the present, and anticipating God’s promises for the future. In the twenty-third chapter of Leviticus, Moses concisely lays out the Jewish Calendar in the order of the feasts. The Jewish Calendar would forever be ordered around these feast days with four feasts in the Spring and three feasts in the Fall. Notice, long cold winters and hot dry summers of silence separate these two celebratory seasons. However, when these feasts are laid out chronologically, it is easy to see why Yom Kippur is unique and set apart from the others.

​Appointed Feast	When?	What?	Looking Back	Looking Forward
Passover	14th day of the 1st month	Pilgrimage Festival	God delivers Israel from Egypt through the lamb’s blood	Jesus is crucified on Passover
Unleavened Bread	15th day of the 1st month	Grain offering	Israel’s quick escape from Egypt/God provides the Manna	Jesus’ burial is the offering of the first grain. God would raise the true Bread of Life.
First Fruits	15th day of the 1st month	Offering of the First Fruits	God's gift of harvest	Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus is the first fruit of those raised from the dead.
Feast of Weeks	50 days after Passover	Pilgrimage Festival	The giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai	The Holy Spirit is poured out during the Feast of Weeks
Rosh Hashanah (Feast of Trumpets)	1st day of the 7th month of Tishri	Religious services, blowing the shofar, reflecting on God’s coming Judgment.	The first Shofar blast when God came down on Mt. Sinai	The last Shofar blast when the Messiah will come down for His return
Yom Kippur	10 days after Rosh Hashanah	High Priest Makes Sacrifices	The day for all of Israel to seek forgiveness through the High Priest’s sacrifice	Israel will look on the one whom they pierced and morn. All Israel will be saved. The Judgment Day of the Lord.
Feast of Tabernacles	15th day of the 7th month of Tishri	Build booths to live in and eat meals for 8 days	To remember the Israelites living in the wilderness.	The Marriage Supper of the Lamb, where we will receive our mansions made by Jesus on the New Earth

What happens on Yom Kippur?

Yom Kippur, translated as the Day of Atonement, was a day for all Israelites to seek forgiveness. Celebrated ten days after Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur was a day when work was forbidden, there was no visiting of the temple, and the High Priest would make a sacrifice on behalf of himself and all of Israel’s sins. This would be the one day of the year when the High Priest could enter into the Holy of Holies to make a sacrifice on the mercy seat, or in Hebrew, the kafar, or kapporet, where we get the name Kippur. In addition, the High Priest would put his bloodied hands on the head of a scapegoat to transfer all of Israel’s sins and he would send it out into the wilderness to die. To those who were right with God, they welcomed this Holiday with anticipation, but to those who were not, they spent the ten days after Rosh Hashanah repenting and rigorously following the Law of Torah to make their lives right with the Lord. Yom Kippur points to the day of Judgment when all those who have accepted Jesus’ atoning sacrifice will enter into the New Heavens and the New Earth by the blood of the Lamb. To those who have denied the Messiah, what a horrible day of judgment this will be!

Yom Kippur, What Makes it Different?

As you read through the Feasts laid out for us in Leviticus 23, it becomes obvious that the Jewish Calendar is extremely celebratory. God loves to see us celebrate Him and loves to see the joy it brings us. However, we also notice that, because each feast is loaded with symbolism and prophecy, God commands each feast to be celebrated in a very specific fashion. For example, three of the Festivals (Passover, Feast of Weeks, and Feast of Tabernacles) are known as Pilgrimage Festivals. Pilgrimage Festivals expected that all able-bodied, Jewish men would travel up to Jerusalem from the whole Jewish diaspora to make sacrifices for themselves and their families. This is why Jerusalem was flooded with people who spoke a myriad of languages during the falling of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Jews from all over were there for the Feast of Weeks. In addition to the Pilgrimage Festivals, the other appointed feasts that don’t require travel are still flooded with odd commandments, or mitzvot, that provide them with the dos and don’ts necessary for a Holy and successful feast.

The Nothingness of Yom Kippur

Contrasting Yom Kippur to the idiosyncrasies that make up the other Feasts, it becomes strikingly obvious how little is asked of the Israelites. Contrary to the other Feasts that consisted of specific foods to eat and how to eat them, hundred-mile pilgrimages for the males, and special huts and tents to build and live in, Yom Kippur demanded no work to be done. In seven verses, God makes three separate commandments not to work. As if to separate this feast even further from the others, God doesn’t ask them to eat specific food a specific way, but instead to fast, to abstain from eating. The picture that is clearly being painted is that on this Holiest of Days, when your nation and family will receive forgiveness, it will not be granted because you trekked to Jerusalem, it will not be granted because you ate a certain way, and it will not be granted because you labored a certain way. In fact, on this Holiday, the less you do the more obedient you are. To quote from Jonah, Yom Kippur perfectly exclaims that “Salvation is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).

The Role of the High Priest

Though Leviticus 23 gives us a brief synopsis of all of the Feasts, Leviticus 16 expounds on what is to be done on the special day of Yom Kippur. If you look closely at the verbs, there are 81 verbs used in this description and only two of them are directed at the everyday Israelite. Seventy-nine of those verbs are for the High Priest.

The High Priest on Yom Kippur was given specific instructions to bathe and wear white linen garments, to symbolize purification, before entering the Holy of Holies. In the Holy of Holies, the High Priest was commanded to make two sin offerings, a bull for himself and his house and a goat for the nation of Israel. Additionally, the Priest would lay his hands on the head of a second goat to transfer all of the sins of Israel into the goat, which he would then send it out into the wilderness to die. But why wasn’t this sufficient and why was this just a foreshadowing of things to come?

The Tabernacle vs The Throne Room

From Genesis to Revelation, we learn that God had established 5 separate dwelling places with humanity. The initial dwelling place with humanity was in the Garden of Eden where God walked freely and in unity with Adam and Eve. Once Adam and Eve forfeited that unity through sin, God removed Himself from their presence, yet covered them with animal skin. Therein, the first death takes place and the very first sacrifice is made. God’s next appointed dwelling place with humanity would be in the Tabernacle, and later, in the Temple, in the Holy of Holies. Here is where we find that the Tabernacle and the Temple looked back at and resembled with imagery the Garden of Eden. Additionally, it looked vertically toward its ultimate representation of the Throne Room. Hebrews 9 tells us:

Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us;

Here we begin to see why the Yom Kippur sacrifice never fully atoned for our sins once and for all, but needed to be repeated yearly. The sacrifice that was made was only ever made by sinful people, through a sinful High Priest, in a Holy of Holies that was a representation, or copy, of the true Throne Room. Though the priest would make sacrifices in the presence of God in the earthly Holy of Holies, it wasn’t until the veil was torn that Jesus could make His perfect sacrifice once and for all and enter into the actual presence of God in the Heavenly Holy of Holies.

Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the

Most Holy Place once and for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

Looking Ahead through Yom Kippur

As earlier noted, Yom Kippur is the Holiest Day and most widely celebrated Holy Day amongst Jews throughout history and today. Even secular Jews, who live most of their life apart from God, celebrate this day by avoiding work and fasting all day. Yom Kippur has always been recognized as the day on which all of Israel’s iniquity has been forgiven. Many scholars believe that this indeed also points to the future.

When you follow the Biblical order of the feasts and connect them to their symbolism in the future, we notice that Rosh Hashanah precedes Yom Kippur by ten days. Rosh Hashanah symbolizes the blowing of the Shofar to commemorate the first shofar blast on Mt. Sinai and the giving of the Law while pointing to the future shofar blast that ushers in the return of the Messiah. Chronologically, then, ten days after Rosh Hashanah is Yom Kippur. This can have multiple meanings when looked at chronologically.

Some scholars believe that since Yom Kippur always represented Israel’s repentance and forgiveness, that this will be when all of Israel accepts the Messiah after His return. Paul quotes Isaiah as he writes in Romans 11:

…a partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way, all Israel will be saved, as it is written,

The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will banish ungodliness from Jacob; And this will be my covenant with them When I take away their sins.

Additionally, many Old Testament prophecies speak of the day when all of Israel will be saved. Notice in Zechariah, as God switches between first and second person, describing the moment when Israel will look upon Him whom they pierced:

And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.

Another lens through which Yom Kippur is looked at is when it is paralleled with Judgment Day. To those who fasted, repented, obeyed Torah, and became right with the Lord during the 10 days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, Yom Kippur was not looked at as a somber day but a joyful one. To those who doubted their standing with the Lord, Yom Kippur was very somber as the weight of their sins weighed heavy on each individual's back. The same can be said for the future Judgment Day. To those who have put their trust and faith in the Messiah, the future Day of the Lord is hopeful and joyfully anticipated. But to those who have denied the Messiah, the dreadful Day of the Lord is fearful, to say the least.

Symbolism in the Greetings

As we have seen, the chronological order of God’s Appointed Feasts plays a significant role and how we anticipate and hope for our future. This order and its symbolism can still be heard in the Jewish greetings around these holidays. With Rosh Hashanah marking the first Fall Holiday, followed ten days after, by Yom Kippur, unique greetings are said from one Jew to another during these ten days. If you have any Jewish friends, you can politely greet them with “L’shanah Tovah tikateivu v’teichateimu.” Though it is a mouth full, its meaning is packed with symbolism. Translated into English, this greeting means, “A good year, and may you be inscribed and sealed for blessing in the Book of Life.”

This phrase, being sealed in the Book of Life, should bring to mind many passages in Scripture. Some of our faith’s most prominent figures all spoke of this Book, including but not limited to: Moses, David, Malachi, Luke, Paul, and most importantly, John. More so than other passages, you may be thinking of Revelation 20 and The Great White Throne Judgment, just before the completion of scripture. As you read it you realize, it is the judgment of Yom Kippur all over again:

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works. Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.