Leviticus 16:30

because on this day atonement will be made for you to cleanse you, and you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD.

BSB

Parallel translations

4 additional translations

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KJV

For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you, that ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord.

ASV

for on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins shall ye be clean before Jehovah.

YLT

for on this day he maketh atonement for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins before Jehovah ye are clean;

DBT

for on that day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you: from all your sins shall ye be clean before Jehovah.

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The world behind this text

The book of Leviticus

When

Israel camped at Mount Sinai · c. 1445 BC (traditional; given in the single month between the tabernacle's completion in Exodus 40 and the march in Numbers 1 — critical scholars assign most of the book to a much later priestly hand)

Where

The camp at the foot of Mount Sinai, with every word of the book spoken out of the newly raised tent of meeting rather than from the mountaintop.

Who first heard it

A nation freshly redeemed and camped in a circle around God's tent, plus Aaron and his sons, who had just been set apart as priests and needed to know exactly how to serve without dying.

The history

Every nation in the ancient world had altars, priests, and sacrifices. What set Israel apart was not that it offered animals but what it was forbidden: no image of its God, no shrine prostitution, no offering of children, no fee-for-favor bargaining with the divine. Israel's neighbors in Canaan practiced all four.

The camp was arranged with the tent at the dead center and the tribes in ordered ranks around it. That layout is the book's logic in physical form. Getting closer to the tent meant more rules, not fewer — an ordinary Israelite to the courtyard, a priest to the holy place, the high priest into the innermost room one day a year.

The offerings were ordinary farm wealth: a bull, a lamb, a goat, two doves for the poor, flour and oil for a grain gift. Worship cost real money, and the sliding scale meant no one was priced out. Much of the meat was eaten by the worshiper and his family in a shared meal — sacrifice and feast were the same event.

Clean and unclean were not about being dirty or sinful. They were a daily, physical habit of telling holy from common — in food, in childbirth, in skin disease, in mildew on a wall. A person who touched something unclean simply washed, waited, and rejoined the camp. The land laws went further still: every seventh year the fields rested, and every fiftieth year debts released and family land went back to the family that lost it.

What it meant to them

To a people who had just watched fire fall and kill two priests for careless worship, Leviticus was mercy, not red tape. It answered the terrifying question their own camp raised: God is living right there in the middle of us — how do we come near and live? The answer was blood on an altar, provided by God Himself, handled exactly as He said.

It also told them holiness was not a temple hobby. The same book that governs the altar governs how you pay a worker, harvest a field, treat a foreigner, and speak about the deaf and the blind. "Ye shall be holy; for I am holy" covered the whole of ordinary life.

Sources: Keil and Delitzsch, *Commentary on the Old Testament* · Edersheim, *Bible History: Old Testament* · Merrill, *Kingdom of Priests* · Jamieson–Fausset–Brown, *Commentary* — the sources registry

Commentary voices

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Voices3

On this verse

For on that day shall the priest make an atonement for you to cleanse you,.... By offering the sin offering for them; typical of the sacrifice of Christ, whose soul was made an offering for sin whereby atonement is made for it, and whose blood cleanses from all sin.

John Gill· Exposition of the Entire Bible, 1771reformed

Related commentary

The rehearsal of these passages appointing the solemn ceremonial was very appropriate, and the details of the successive parts of it (above all the spectacle of the public departure of the scapegoat under the care of its leader) must have produced salutary impressions both of sin and of duty that would not be soon effaced.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871reformed

The annual repetition of the sacrifices showed that there was in them only a faint and feeble effort towards making atonement; it could be done effectually only by the offering up of the body of Christ once for all, and that once was sufficient; that sacrifice needed not to be repeated. Let us see what there was of gospel in all this.

Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710puritan

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Cross-references

11 linked verses

The verses this one reaches11

Jeremiah 33:8
And I will cleanse them from all the iniquity they have committed against Me, and will forgive all their sins of rebellion against Me.
Psalms 51:2
Wash me clean of my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
Ephesians 5:26
to sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
1 John 1:7–9
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
Hebrews 10:1–2
For the law is only a shadow of the good things to come, not the realities themselves. It can never, by the same sacrifices offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.
Psalms 51:7
Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
Psalms 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Leviticus 25:9
Then you are to sound the horn far and wide on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement. You shall sound it throughout your land.
Titus 2:14
He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.
Hebrews 9:13–14
For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that their bodies are clean,
Ezekiel 36:25–27
I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols.

Cross-references

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The quotation web

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Original language

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Around this verse

Themes on this verse

Forgiveness
the Day of Atonement establishes that forgiveness comes through blood applied on Israel's behalf, not mere par…

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Word doors

Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread — the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.

About this book

Moses and Aaron Appear before Pharaoh — Gustave Doré, Doré's English Bible (1866), public domain

Leviticus — A holy people before a holy God. Five offerings, a priesthood, a purity code — and at the centre, a single day that carries the sins of a year to a cleansed Most Holy Place.

Canon: Old Testament
Author: Moses — receives these laws at Sinai; the repeated formula is ‘the LORD spake unto Moses, saying’
Date: Composed during Israel's year at Sinai (15th–13th century BC)

The walk8

Where the connections lead

Two steps out along the cross-reference floor, votes-ranked — destinations reached by more than one path rise (the text's own hubs). Every stop is a page, and every stop travels with its words.

Through
Ephesians 5:26
to sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
leads to
- Ezekiel 36:25
  I will also sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols.
  Reached by 3 independent paths from here.
- Hebrews 10:22
  let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
- John 15:3
  You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
- John 3:5
  Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.
- John 17:17–19
  Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.
Through
Psalms 51:2
Wash me clean of my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
leads to
- 1 John 1:7–9
  But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
- Hebrews 10:21–22
  and since we have a great priest over the house of God,
- Psalms 51:7
  Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

The whole web at once: see the Arc.

Where the connections lead

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