Leviticus 16:11 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The bullock Mentioned in general, Leviticus 16:6; the ceremonies respecting which are here particularly described. This was a very different sacrifice from that of the red heifer spoken of Numbers 19., as evidently appears upon comparing the two places. He shall kill the bullock which is for himself Here we may clearly see, as the apostle to the Hebrews argues, the utter insufficiency of the Jewish dispensation to “make the comers thereunto perfect,” or to furnish those who were under it with every thing necessary for their complete justification and salvation. It made nothing perfect, because it made men priests that were sinful creatures like others, and had need to offer year after year for their own sins; for “there was a remembrance made again of sins every year.” But in Christ we have a very different high-priest and intercessor, who is, and when on earth was, holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, and higher than the heavens, who needeth not daily (as the Jewish high-priests) to offer up sacrifices first for his own sins and then for the people's: for this he did; he offered for the people's sins, having none of his own to expiate, once when he offered up himself. For “the law made men priests which had infirmity, but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated for evermore, and is able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.”