Scripture · Leviticus 16:22
Leviticus 16:21
The Scapegoat (smaller version)
Then he is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and rebellious acts of the Israelites in regard to all their sins. He is to put them on the goat’s head and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man appointed for the task.
A rainbow crosses the sky above a dark goat on the Dead Sea shore. This smaller Manchester Scapegoat combines a sign of hope with an animal sent away carrying the community’s sins.
What does The Scapegoat (smaller version) show?
The goat stands low against distant purple mountains. A red band surrounds its horns, and a skull lies in the shallows nearby. The rainbow distinguishes this canvas from the larger Lady Lever painting, where the goat is pale and the sky has no such arc. Treating the two as interchangeable loses a conspicuous difference in their treatment of exile.
The exact sequence of the versions is less secure than the distinction between them. George Landow describes this as the original oil study, while earlier cataloguing raises questions about replicas. The rainbow can invite comparison with Genesis, but Hunt’s account of seeing a rainbow at the Dead Sea does not establish his precise intention for this painted one.
Featured in: William Holman Hunt’s Bible Paintings: A Goat, a Gun and The Light of the World
What does Leviticus 16:21 mean?
Leviticus 16:21 describes Aaron laying both hands on the living goat and confessing Israel’s sins over it before an appointed man leads it into the wilderness. This goat is distinct from the goat sacrificed earlier in the chapter. The ritual gives the community a visible enactment of sins being carried away.
Hunt paints the lonely aftermath rather than the hands and confession described in our paired verse. Remembering the ritual prevents the scene from becoming only an animal in distress: the goat’s burden originates with people absent from the canvas. A Christian reading of that burden is an interpretation of Israel’s atonement rite, not a replacement for its original setting.
Leviticus 16:21 supplies the unseen communal action that precedes the Manchester goat’s isolation.
Sources
Manchester Art Gallery (1906.2); oil on canvas, 33.7 × 45.9 cm.
William Holman Hunt, Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, vol. I (1905). The artist’s retrospective account; passages and page references recorded in the accompanying publication research.
Hunt’s Bible paintings: artwork history and sources. Researched manuscript and cited primary accounts; publication review October 15, 2026.
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