the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

362 ATONEMENT: QUMRAN AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
grammatically it would be better translated “to expiate the sins of the
people.” There is no exact fit as to the construction in the LXX. Psalm
65:3 (64:4 LXX) has hilaskesthai with sins as the direct object, but there
the subject is God, not the high priest. What could be the background of
these examples (all exilaskesthai unless otherwise stated)? In 1 Sam 3:14
the iniquity of Eli’s house cannot be expiated by sacrifices, presumably
by the high priest. In Isa 6:7 a seraph brings a coal from the altar and tells
Isaiah, “By this thy sin is expiated”; but a seraph in a vision is hardly
equivalent to the high priest. In CD 14.19 it appears that the Messiah of
Aaron and of Israel will expiate (kipper) Israel’s iniquity in the last day. As
for the Temple Scroll (11Q19), I cannot find any clear use of kipper with a
direct object for sins, and in any case this document tends to reproduce
the constructions in the Pentateuch. What follows from all this is that the
author of Hebrews, who uses the LXX so much, does not reflect LXX
language at this point, though clearly the idea behind the Hebrew verb
kipper is what he is intending to express here.
The cognate hilaste¯rion usually means the “mercy seat” in the LXX.
The exception is in Ezekiel, where it means the altar. This term apparently
occurs twice in the NT. In Heb 9:5 it simply means the mercy seat in his
sketch of the tabernacle contents. In Rom 3:25 it occurs in the pivotal passage
(vv. 23–26): “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,
being freely justified by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God set forth as an atonement (hilasterion) through faith, by
his blood, in order to demonstrate his righteousness.” It is unlikely, however,
that hilasterion means mercy seat here, for the idea is of a demonstration,
and the mercy seat was one of the most hidden elements in the
tabernacle furniture. Instead, it is probably a form of the adjective
i9lasth&rioj (hilasterios), which means “atoning,” as in the phrase “atoning
death” in 4 Macc 17:22, referring to the death of the Maccabean martyrs.
Here too, then, there is no discernable link with the LXX, though the connection
with the thought behind the kpr root is evident.
Another cognate i9lasmo&j (hilasmos) occurs in 1 John 2:2 (“and he is
the propitiation concerning our sins, and not concerning ours only but
also concerning the whole world”) and in 4:10 (“God loved us and sent
his Son as a propitiation concerning our sins”). This word twice translates
Myrwpk (kippurîm) in the LXX (Lev 25:9; Num 5:8), and in each
case it refers to the rituals of the Day of Atonement. It seems safe to take
the term, especially in the first Johannine reference, as alluding to the
all-encompassing atonement effected on Yom Kippur. In this regard it is
perhaps significant that Qumran linked the Day of Atonement in its
thinking with the year of Jubilee and the activity of an eschatological