Editing Azazel (section)

==In Judaism==
===Rabbinical Judaism===
The [[Mishnah]] ([[Yoma]] 39a<ref>[https://www.sefaria.org/Yoma.39a?lang=bi Yoma 39]</ref>) follows the Hebrew Bible text; two goats were procured, similar in respect of appearance, height, cost, and time of selection. Having one of these on his right and the other on his left, the high priest, who was assisted in this rite by two subordinates, put both his hands into a wooden case, and took out two labels, one inscribed "for [[Yahweh]]" and the other "for Azazel". The high priest then laid his hands with the labels upon the two goats and said, "A sin-offering to Yahweh" (thus speaking the [[Tetragrammaton]]); and the two men accompanying him replied, "Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever." He then fastened a scarlet woolen thread to the head of the goat "for Azazel"; and laying his hands upon it again, recited the following confession of sin and prayer for forgiveness: "O Lord, they have acted iniquitously, trespassed, sinned before Thee: Your people, the house of Israel. O Lord by Thy name, forgive the iniquities, transgressions, and sins that Thy people the house of Israel committed before Thee, as is written in the law of Moses, Thy servant, 'for on this day He will forgive you, to cleanse you from all your sins before the Lord; ye shall be clean.'"

This prayer was responded to by the congregation present. A man was selected, preferably a priest, to take the goat to the precipice in the wilderness; and he was accompanied part of the way by the most eminent men of Jerusalem. Ten booths had been constructed at intervals along the road leading from Jerusalem to the steep mountain. At each one of these the man leading the goat was formally offered food and drink, which he, however, refused. When he reached the tenth booth those who accompanied him proceeded no further, but watched the ceremony from a distance. When he came to the precipice he divided the scarlet thread into two parts, one of which he tied to the rock and the other to the goat's horns, and then pushed the goat down ([https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Yoma.6?lang=bi Yoma 6:1–8]). The cliff was so high and rugged that before the goat had traversed half the distance to the plain below, its limbs were utterly shattered. Men were stationed at intervals along the way, and as soon as the goat was thrown down the precipice, they signaled to one another by means of kerchiefs or flags, until the information reached the high priest, whereat he proceeded with the other parts of the ritual.

{{bibleverse||Isaiah|1.18|HE}} makes a symbolic allusion to the scarlet thread, and the Talmud states (ib. 39a) that during the forty years that [[Simeon the Just]] was [[High Priest of Israel]] the thread actually turned white as soon as the goat was thrown over the precipice. This was construed as a sign that the sins of the people were forgiven. In later times the change to white was not invariable: the absence of an observed change in color was taken as proof of the people's moral and spiritual deterioration, which gradually increased until forty years before the destruction of the [[Second Temple]] (l.c. 39b).<ref name="Jewish" />

====Medieval Jewish commentators====
The medieval scholar [[Nachmanides]] (1194–1270) identified the Hebrew text as also referring to a demon, and identified this "Azazel" with [[Samael]].<ref>Israel Drazin, Stanley M. Wagner, {{Google books|id=4s5cLrx_n8gC|page=PA122|title=Onkelos on the Torah: Understanding the Bible Text Vol.3}}. Gefen, 2008. p. 122. {{ISBN|978-965-229-425-8}}.</ref> However, he did not see the sending of the goat as honoring Azazel as a deity, but as a symbolic expression of the idea that the people's sins and their evil consequences were to be sent back to the spirit of desolation and ruin, the source of all impurity. The very fact that the two goats were presented before God, before the one was sacrificed and the other sent into the wilderness, was proof that Azazel was not ranked alongside God, but regarded simply as the personification of wickedness in contrast with the righteous government of God.<ref name="Jewish" />

[[Maimonides]] (1134–1204) says that as sins cannot be taken off one's head and transferred elsewhere, the ritual is symbolic, enabling the penitent to discard his sins: “These ceremonies are of a symbolic character and serve to impress man with a certain idea and to lead him to repent, as if to say, ‘We have freed ourselves of our previous deeds, cast them behind our backs and removed them from us as far as possible’.”<ref>[http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/gfp/gfp182.htm#page_366 Guide to the Perplexed 3:46], featured on the [[Internet Sacred Text Archive]]</ref>

The rite, resembling, on one hand, the sending off of the basket with the woman embodying wickedness to the land of [[Shinar]] in the vision of [[Book of Zechariah|Zechariah]] ({{bibleverse-nb||Zechariah|5:6-11|HE}}), and, on the other, the letting loose of the living bird into the open field in the case of the leper healed from the plague ({{bibleverse||Lev|14:7|HE}}), was, indeed, viewed by the people of Jerusalem as a means of ridding themselves of the sins of the year. So would the crowd, called Babylonians or Alexandrians, pull the goat's hair to make it hasten forth, carrying the burden of sins away with it (Yoma vi. 4, 66b; "Epistle of Barnabas," vii.), and the arrival of the shattered animal at the bottom of the valley of the rock of Bet Ḥadudo, twelve miles away from the city, was signalized by the waving of shawls to the people of Jerusalem, who celebrated the event with boisterous hilarity and amid dancing on the hills (Yoma vi. 6, 8; Ta'an. iv. 8). Evidently the figure of Azazel was an object of general fear and awe rather than, as has been conjectured, a foreign product or the invention of a late lawgiver. More as a demon of the desert, it seems to have been closely interwoven with the mountainous region of Jerusalem.<ref name="Jewish" />