Bible Tribes
Judah
Reuben
Gad
Asher
Naphtali
Manasseh
Simeon
Levi
Issachar
Zebulun
Joseph
Benjamin
Atonements
The description of how the priest is to atone for himself and the nation at large is given in Leviticus 16. The process is quite complex and follows 13 steps which map to the tribes. Each step in the ritual, then, acts out or reveals the main aspect of that tribe. What better way to atone for each of the tribes.
Beginning
The Leviticus 16 passage has an opening and closing thought that frame the ritual itself. Here's the beginning of the passage.
3 Leviticus 16:1-2
1And Yahvah spoke to Moses after the death of the 2 sons of Aaron, when they offered strange fire before Yahvah and died.
2And Yahvah said to Moses, Speak to Aaron your brother that he does not come at all times into the holy place inside the veil before the mercy seat which is on the ark, that he does not die; for I will appear in the cloud on the mercy seat.
Middle
The ritual itself, which maps to the tribes, sits in the middle of the passage, from verse 3 through 28.
| Tribe | Step | Characteristic | Scripture |
|---|---|---|---|
| Judah | 1) High priest chooses young bull and ram. | Planning |
3 Leviticus 16:3 |
| Reuben | 2) Washes and dresses. | Intimacy |
3 Leviticus 16:4 |
| Gad | 3) Goes into crowd to receive goats and second ram. | Going |
3 Leviticus 16:5 |
| Asher | 4) Needs to atone self and family. | Purifying |
3 Leviticus 16:6 |
| Naphtali | 5) Casts lots to discover scapegoat. | Sensing |
3 Leviticus 16:7-10 |
| Manasseh | 6) Offers bull to atone self and family. | Recursion |
3 Leviticus 16:11 |
| Simeon | 7) Makes cloud in holy of holies. | Counseling |
3 Leviticus 16:12-14 |
| Levi | 8) Atones for nation. | Atoning |
3 Leviticus 16:15-16 |
| Issachar | 9) No one else in tent. | Working |
3 Leviticus 16:17 |
| Zebulun | 10) Removes defilement. | Origins |
3 Leviticus 16:18-19 |
| Joseph | 11) Confesses over and sends away scapegoat. | Discerning |
3 Leviticus 16:20-22 |
| Benjamin | 12) Burns rams. | ? |
3 Leviticus 16:23-25 |
| Dan | 13) Burns bull and goat outside the camp. | Separating |
3 Leviticus 16:26-28 |
End
And here's the close of the chapter.
3 Leviticus 16:29-17:0
29And this will be a statute forever to you: that in the 7th month, on the 10th day of the month, you will humble yourselves and not work at all, both you and the proselytes who stay among you;
30for on this day the priest will atone you, that you may be clean from all your sins and that you may be clean before Yahvah.
31It will be a sabbath and a rest to you, and you will humble yourselves; it is a statute forever.
32And the priest who will be anointed and who is consecrated to minister in the priest's office, in his father's place, will atone and will put on the linen clothes, even the holy garments;
33and he will atone the holy sanctuary, and he will atone the meeting tent and the altar, and he will atone the priests and all the people of the congregation.
34And this will be an everlasting statute for you, to atone the sons of Israel for all their sins once a year. And he did as Yahvah commanded Moses.
Notes
Judah has Selection Day. It's the 10th day of the 1st month, the day a lamb is selected for the Passover meal. It's a day where the Passover is planned ahead of time. Here in the atonement ritual the pattern is the same. The priest has to select or raise or decide where to buy or how to acquire a young bull and a ram before the ritual itself ever begins. This planning ahead is smack in the middle of Judah's special ability as a tribe.
Reuben has a theme of intimacy. Intimacy meaning closeness or transparency in a relationship. The second step in the ritual involves the high priest taking a bath. Being naked for a bath is, well, intimate, or personal. Then the priest dresses for the ritual. This too, is a private or at least personal act.
Gad has a theme of going and plundering or receiving things. This idea of "raiding" (as his dad called it) shows up when the priest leaves the immediate area of the tent to go into the crowd and receive the goats and the ram.
Asher has many passages that correlate him with oil. One aspect of oil that I think is also a main characteristic of Asher is the aspect of purity. If oil is not pure it will not burn well and the lamp will not give it's light. In the ritual the issue is purity. The priest must first atone for himself before he can atone for the nation. This is a little bit like getting the plank out of your own eye before helping your brother with the speck in his. The priest needs to be in right standing with God himself before he can make much in the way of a request for the rest of the country.
Naphtali has "beautiful words" according to Jacob in Genesis 49. Words, we know, are just labels, not the reality or thing itself. Naphtali's holiday is First Fruits, the day you offer a sample of the crop to get a sense of what the whole crop will be like. His tabernacle item is the incense altar, the place where the incense is burned to create a smell, or sense. Naphtali has to do with sensing or smell. His gate of the city is the dung gate, a smelly place. So in this ritual his part is the act of casting lots to find the scapegoat. Note that the scapegoat is already determined, by God, but unknown by the priest. So he casts two lots, one on each goat, and they both agree that one is the scapegoat and the other is the sin offering. The process reveals or gives the priest a sense of what happens to each animal, but it is not the step of letting the scapegoat go or the act of making the offering, just the act of putting a word or label on each, of sensing what's already happening in God's plan, of realizing what's going to happen.
Manasseh is often pictured as a miniature of the whole. Recursion is the term for this. Here Manasseh lands on the step when the priest offers the bull to atone for himself and family. Later, Levi will offer the goat on behalf of the whole nation. So this first round of atonement, the smaller of the two, appears to be Manasseh's recursive use of the larger story.
Simeon is the son Jacob did not want to enter his counsel. So for his step of the ritual the priest takes coals from the altar, and some incense, and puts them on the incense altar inside the veil such that a cloud of smoke is created between the priest and the mercy seat where God sits. The result is even though the priest enters this innermost room of the tent he still has visual seperation from God. Amazing.
Levi is the tribe whose holiday is the Day of Atonements. So it's not a big surprise that his step of the ritual involves taking the blood of the goat into the innermost room to atone the tribes.
Issachar has a pattern of "working" or "bearing burdens" elsewhere in Scripture. At his point in the ritual the passage rests from the regular definition of what the priest does to say that no one else should be in the tent when this is all happening. In other words, no one else should be doing any work. So even Issachar, the hard worker, should take a break for this ritual.
Zebulun has a theme of origins. In the ritual we're told that the act of atoning with blood removes "defilement" from the tent and the surrounding courtyard. You might miss how this relates to Zebulun if you did not know the spelling of defilement in the original language. The spelling tells us the definition of the word, or it's concept space. That's another story, but the definition of defilement is something that is "twisted from the start." So to remove defilement is to remove something that has an origin or beginning from some time ago. This step of the ritual is exactly in Zebulun's concept space.
Joseph is the tribe that led most of Israel. He's also identified as the "brow" or "forehead" in Scripture. In this step the priest places his hands on the head of the scapegoat and confesses the sins, iniquties and transgressions of the nation. Then a helper takes the goat into the wilderness and lets it go, thus carrying the sins of the nation away from them. The two steps probably picks up something about Ephraim and Manasseh, but in any case the placement of the hands on the head of the goat and the ability to articulate the actual sins and iniquities and transgressions of all the tribes is something that goes along with Joseph since he's ultimately the tribe that becomes a "community of nations."
Benjamin sits on the step where the rams are sacrificed as a burnt offering. I'm not sure why this relates to Benjamin.
Dan sits on the last step of the ritual which involves removing the young bull and the goat to a burn pile outside the camp. Dan is the tribe that had trouble taking land, eventually pushing back the sea instead of other peoples. A clever answer anyhow. This step plays to Dan in that it involves doing something on the periphery or outside the camp.