What Does Leviticus 16:22 Mean?
The goat carries upon himself all their crookedness into a cut-off land, and he sends the goat away into the wilderness.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.THE KEY
Release is the ritual’s final act: the bearer and the crookedness it carries are sent beyond the inhabited world.
THE MEANING
All their crookedness rests on the goat, which carries it to a land without habitation and is then released in the wilderness. Removal takes visible form: the burden leaves the community’s inhabited space and is let go there.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that collective crookedness must remain within the community that bears its effects: here, the goat carries it beyond the camp and is released.
THE ROOT
וְשִׁלַּח
wə-shillaḥ
GROWS FROM
שלח
š-l-ḥ
Send, send forth, release, let go.
The final verb actively sends the goat away; release is the enacted endpoint, not merely a description of where it stands. The same root’s language of sending makes this a movement outward from the community.
ALSO GROWS
shaliaḥ: A messenger, one who is sent.
שְׁלִיחַ
The goat is sent out carrying what the community has placed upon it.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of the pool of Siloam.
שִׁלֹחַ
The name preserves the root’s sense of something sent outward, echoing the goat’s release.
shulḥan: Table; provision extended.
שֻׁלְחָן
The outward movement associated with release also appears in the image of provision extended to be received.
עֲוֹנֹתָם
ʿavonotam
GROWS FROM
עון
ʿ-w-n
Crookedness, guilt.
The word translated “iniquities” carries the image of crookedness. Its plural gathers the community’s crookedness into a burden that the verse places on the goat and sends away.
ALSO GROWS
ʿavon: Crookedness, guilt.
עָוֹן
This is the singular form behind the verse’s “iniquities,” keeping the image of what has gone crooked beneath the English wording.
ʿavonotam: Their crookednesses, their iniquities.
עֲוֹנֹתָם
The plural and possessive form makes the burden collective: it belongs to them, though the goat bears it here.
nāśāʾ ʿavon: Bear crookedness or guilt; in some contexts, bear away guilt or forgive it.
נָשָׂא עָוֹן
The phrase joins the verse’s load-bearing image to its crookedness, showing how carrying and release meet in the biblical language.
וְנָשָׂא
wə-nāśāʾ
GROWS FROM
נשא
n-ś-ʾ
Lift, carry, bear.
“Bear” here is carrying language: the goat takes the community’s crookedness upon itself and carries it out. This root can name both a burden being borne and something being lifted up, placing weight and removal in the same word family.
ALSO GROWS
massa: A burden, load.
מַשָּׂא
The goat’s burden is not abstract in the verse; it is carried away from the people.
nasi: A leader, prince; one lifted up.
נָשִׂיא
The root spans carrying a load and being lifted up, while here the goat is the bearer that removes the load.
THE PATTERN
Crookedness is pictured as something borne away from the people and removed beyond their reach.
As far as the east is from the west, so far he puts our rebellions from us.He will turn back to us, and have compassion on us; he will tread down our crookedness, and you will throw all their shortcomings into the depths of the sea.Who himself carried our shortcomings in his own body on the tree, that we, dead to shortcomings, might live to alignment; and by his bruises you were healed.THE THREAD
All of us like sheep have wandered; each has turned to his own way, and the LORD has caused the crookedness of us all to fall upon him.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew word, עָוֹן (ʿavon), for “iniquity” that appears here in the plural. The goat makes that shared crookedness a carried load; Isaiah names the one on whom the crookedness of all is laid.
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