עזאזל: מי או מה

and he shall place lots upon the two goats, one marked for the LORD and the other marked for Azazel.

lots These objects are known to us through the tradition which we have received from our ancestors. Sa‘adya Gaon said that ‘Azazel is the name of a mountain, so called because it is mighty [Hebrew: ‘az]. A divine name [Hebrew: ’el , powerful] appears as a suffix, in the sense of “the great mountains” [Psalms 36:7] and “Yequti’el” [literally, “hope in the Mighty One”] [I Chronicles 4:18]. The Gaon Halevy held that the word ‘Azazel does not contain such a suffix, because its ’alef appears between two zayin’s . Some say that this mountain is near Mount Sinai, and that God commanded us to lead the goat up the mountain and to slaughter it there. Afterward, during the time of the Second Temple, the goat used to be led to a different mountain. The evidence that the particulars were reinterpreted is the otherwise superfluous verse “Aaron did everything…” [8:36]. In my opinion the festival of Shavu‘ot was treated similarly, as I shall explain in its place [comment on 23:11]. One commentator has pointed out that the service in the Second Temple differed from the service in the First Temple: the High Priest lacked certain garments, and there was no ark-cover. He suggested that, originally, the scapegoat was sent into the wilderness , for so it is written: “he will send the goat into the desert” [:22]. The purpose is the same as that of the bird send “into the fields” [14:7] — an uninhabited place — in the case of someone purifying himself from ṣara‘at . As conclusive evidence, he cites the phrase “to a barren region” [:22]. We may rebut this argument thus: The goat is first sent into the wilderness, as it is written. It is then pursued until it flees atop a high rock — at which point, in the words of our Sages, “he pushes it from behind” [Yoma 67a]. Gaon Shmu’el ben Ḥofni HaKohen has said that, although the sin-offering goat is marked for God, the scapegoat is also for God. Scripture does not require his explanation, though, because the scapegoat is not a sacrifice , since it is not slaughtered.