When at last Esau saw his brother Jacob, he 'ran to meet him, and

embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him; and they wept', and Jacob

said, 'If now I have found grace in thy sight, then receive my present at my

hand: for therefore I have seen thy face as though I had seen the face of

God, and thou wast pleased with me' (Gen. 33:8 -11).

Here is the Scriptural basis for interpreting the meaning of kaphar in

the Levitical law.

Would any reader tolerate the argument that, because in the days of

King Alfred the Great a certain word had a certain meaning, that the meaning

must adhere to the word today?  Could we ignore the revolution in language

caused by the Norman Conquest, to say nothing of the changes that must

naturally come with the passage of time?

The use of the word kaphar in the record of the Flood is separated from

the record of Genesis 32 by an interval of seven hundred years.  Besides

this, we have a revolution in language that puts that of the Norman Conquest

into the shade,

'Because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth'

(Gen. 11:9).

The Semitic -speaking people adopted the word kaphar, but evidently

dropped its primitive meaning of 'covering' as with pitch, for Moses was

under no obligation to append a note of explanation to the record of the use

of the word by Jacob, and his subsequent adherence to one meaning and, this

meaning only, throughout the whole of the books of the law, is sufficient

proof of the established meaning of the word.  Apart from the preservation of

the book of the generations of Noah by Moses, no one either in Israel's day

or in our own would ever have had the slightest reason to speak of atonement

as other than propitiation.  It is strange that we should use Moses (Gen. 6)

to confound Moses (Gen. 32)!

When dealing with the related subject of reconciliation, we have said

that unless God were reconcilable, salvation in any form would never have

been suggested.  We must be on our guard lest by stressing the satisfaction

necessary to the claims of righteousness we forget that it is the God of

righteousness Who is at the same time the God of love.  What His

righteousness demanded, His love provided.  Dr. J. Scott Lidgett has a

comment in his work on the Atonement that contains the germ of this same

precious truth.  Speaking of 2 Corinthians 5:19, 'not imputing their

trespasses unto them', he asks,

'Does the apostle intend to treat the death of Christ as bringing about

the determination not to impute them? or does he intend that the

determination not to impute trespasses brought about by the death of

Christ, was in order to make such an act of clemency possible?  It

would seem that the latter is the case, that the apostle is describing

an atoning act in the mind of God, which needs the death of Christ to

justify it, and therefore brings that death to pass'.

Let us now examine the testimony of type, pattern and shadow that is so

abundant in the Scriptures written for our learning.  It is an axiom that

'the greater includes the less', and consequently if the Sacrifice offered by

Christ is seen to be 'greater', it will include all that is essential in the