ʿăzāʾzēl occurs four times, all in this chapter, and its meaning is genuinely disputed.
An abstract noun: the goat that departs. LXX apopompaios (“the one carrying away”), Vulgate caper emissarius (“the emissary goat”), behind Tyndale’s 1530 coinage “scapegoat.” Strength: matches the rite’s stated logic: “the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities” (16:22). Weakness: strains the parallel of 16:8, “one lot for Jehovah, and the other lot for Azazel,” which reads most naturally as two names, not a name and a description.
A proper name: a wilderness demon. The 16:8 parallel is this view’s engine; Torah elsewhere locates unclean spirits in the wilderness (Lev 17:7). 1 Enoch names Azazel chief among the Watchers: “to him ascribe all sin” (1 Enoch 10:8, R. H. Charles trans., 1917, PD, a labeled study resource, never Scripture). Even here the goat is no sacrifice to a demon: both goats stand “before Jehovah” first (16:7), the lot decides which is which, and the live goat dies to no one; the text banishes sin, it does not appease anyone.
A place: the jagged cliff. Rabbinic tradition (Mishnah Yoma 6; b. Yoma 67b) has the goat led to a precipice, reading the name as “a rough and rocky place”, matching documented Second Temple practice, though Leviticus itself says only “into the wilderness” (16:22); the cliff is later elaboration.
Sources: Leviticus 16 (ASV); LXX, Vulgate, Tyndale on 16:8; 1 Enoch 8–10 (Charles trans., 1917, PD, labeled study resource); Mishnah Yoma; b. Yoma 67b (Rodkinson trans., 1903, PD).