Exodus 29:36-37

29:36 Every day you are to prepare a bull for a purification offering ¹  for atonement. ²  You are to purge ³  the altar by making atonement ⁴  for it, and you are to anoint it to set it apart as holy. 29:37 For seven days ⁵  you are to make atonement for the altar and set it apart as holy. Then the altar will be most holy. ⁶  Anything that touches the altar will be holy. ⁷ 

Leviticus 16:18

16:18 “Then ⁸  he is to go out to the altar which is before the Lord and make atonement for it. He is to take ⁹  some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it all around on the horns of the altar.

Leviticus 16:29-30

Review of the Day of Atonement

16:29 “This is to be a perpetual statute for you. ¹⁰  In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you must humble yourselves ¹¹  and do no work of any kind, ¹²  both the native citizen and the foreigner who resides ¹³  in your midst, 16:30 for on this day atonement is to be made for you to cleanse you from all your sins; you must be clean before the Lord. ¹⁴ 

Leviticus 23:27

23:27 “The ¹⁵  tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. ¹⁶  It is to be a holy assembly for you, and you must humble yourselves ¹⁷  and present a gift to the Lord.

Hebrews 1:3

1:3 The Son is ¹⁸  the radiance of his glory and the representation of his essence, and he sustains all things by his powerful word, ¹⁹  and so when he had accomplished cleansing for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. ²⁰ 

Hebrews 9:7

9:7 But only the high priest enters once a year into the inner tent, ²¹  and not without blood that he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance. ²² 

Hebrews 9:22-23

9:22 Indeed according to the law almost everything was purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. 9:23 So it was necessary for the sketches ²³  of the things in heaven to be purified with these sacrifices, ²⁴  but the heavenly things themselves required ²⁵  better sacrifices than these.

Hebrews 9:25

9:25 And he did not enter to offer ²⁶  himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the sanctuary year after year with blood that is not his own,

[29:36]  ¹ tn The construction uses a genitive: “a bull of the sin offering,” which means, a bull that is designated for a sin (or better, purification) offering.

[29:36]  ² sn It is difficult to understand how this verse is to be harmonized with the other passages. The ceremony in the earlier passages deals with atonement made for the priests, for people. But here it is the altar that is being sanctified. The “sin [purification] offering” seems to be for purification of the sanctuary and altar to receive people in their worship.

[29:36]  ³ tn The verb is וְחִטֵּאתָ (vÿhitte’ta), a Piel perfect of the word usually translated “to sin.” Here it may be interpreted as a privative Piel (as in Ps 51:7 [9]), with the sense of “un-sin” or “remove sin.” It could also be interpreted as related to the word for “sin offering,” and so be a denominative verb. It means “to purify, cleanse.” The Hebrews understood that sin and contamination could corrupt and pollute even things, and so they had to be purged.

[29:36]  ⁴ tn The construction is a Piel infinitive construct in an adverbial clause. The preposition bet (ב) that begins the clause could be taken as a temporal preposition, but in this context it seems to express the means by which the altar was purged of contamination – “in your making atonement” is “by [your] making atonement.”

[29:37]  ⁵ tn Once again this is an adverbial accusative of time. Each day for seven days the ritual at the altar is to be followed.

[29:37]  ⁶ tn The construction is the superlative genitive: “holy of holies,” or “most holy.”

[29:37]  ⁷ sn This line states an unusual principle, meant to preserve the sanctity of the altar. S. R. Driver explains it this way (Exodus, 325): If anything comes in contact with the altar, it becomes holy and must remain in the sanctuary for Yahweh’s use. If a person touches the altar, he likewise becomes holy and cannot return to the profane regions. He will be given over to God to be dealt with as God pleases. Anyone who was not qualified to touch the altar did not dare approach it, for contact would have meant that he was no longer free to leave but was God’s holy possession – and might pay for it with his life (see Exod 30:29; Lev 6:18b, 27; and Ezek 46:20).

[16:18]  ⁸ tn Heb “And.” The Hebrew conjunction ו (vav, “and”) indicates the sequence of events here.

[16:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “And he shall take.”

[16:29]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “And it [feminine] shall be for you a perpetual statute.” Verse 34 begins with the same clause except for the missing demonstrative pronoun “this” here in v. 29. The LXX has “this” in both places and it suits the sense of the passage, although both the verb and the pronoun are sometimes missing in this clause elsewhere in the book (see, e.g., Lev 3:17).

[16:29]  ¹¹ tn Heb “you shall humble your souls.” The verb “to humble” here refers to various forms of self-denial, including but not limited to fasting (cf. Ps 35:13 and Isa 58:3, 10). The Mishnah (m. Yoma 8:1) lists abstentions from food and drink, bathing, using oil as an unguent to moisten the skin, wearing leather sandals, and sexual intercourse (cf. 2 Sam 12:16-17, 20; see the remarks in J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:1054; B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 109; and J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 242).

[16:29]  ¹² tn Heb “and all work you shall not do.”

[16:29]  ¹³ tn Heb “the native and the sojourner who sojourns.”

[16:30]  ¹⁴ tn The phrase “from all your sins” could go with the previous clause as the verse is rendered here (see, e.g., B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 109, and J. Milgrom, Leviticus [AB], 1:1011), or it could go with the following clause (i.e., “you shall be clean from all your sins before the Lord”; see the MT accents as well as J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 221, and recent English versions, e.g., NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[23:27]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “Surely the tenth day” or perhaps “Precisely the tenth day.” The Hebrew adverbial particle אַךְ (’akh) is left untranslated by most recent English versions; cf. however NASB “On exactly the tenth day.”

[23:27]  ¹⁶ sn See the description of this day and its regulations in Lev 16 and the notes there.

[23:27]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “you shall humble your souls.” See the note on Lev 16:29 above.

[1:3]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “who being…and sustaining.” Heb 1:1-4 form one skillfully composed sentence in Greek, but it must be broken into shorter segments to correspond to contemporary English usage, which does not allow for sentences of this length and complexity.

[1:3]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “by the word of his power.”

[1:3]  ²⁰ sn An allusion to Ps 110:1, quoted often in Hebrews.

[9:7]  ²¹ tn Grk “the second tent.”

[9:7]  ²² tn Or perhaps “the unintentional sins of the people”; Grk “the ignorances of the people.” Cf. BDAG 13 s.v. ἀγνόημα, “sin committed in ignorance/unintentionally.” This term seems to be simply a synonym for “sins” (cf. Heb 5:2) and does not pick up the distinction made in Num 15:22-31 between unwitting sin and “high-handed” sin. The Day of Atonement ritual in Lev 16 covered all the sins of the people, not just the unwitting ones.

[9:23]  ²³ tn Or “prototypes,” “outlines,” referring to the earthly sanctuary. See Heb 8:5 above for the prior use of this term.

[9:23]  ²⁴ tn Grk “with these”; in the translation the referent (sacrifices) has been specified for clarity.

[9:23]  ²⁵ tn Grk “the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.”

[9:25]  ²⁶ tn Grk “and not that he might offer,” continuing the previous construction.