The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion

by N.T. Wright

The Hebrew word kappōreth was rendered in the Greek translations of scripture as hilastērion. This posed quite a problem when English translations of scripture were being produced. One could hardly say that God put forth Jesus as a “lid” or even as a “covering.” That is why some translations made the innovation of rendering the word as “mercy seat,” though the lid of the ark was not a “seat” in the modern sense except perhaps in the sense we use when we describe the heart as the “seat of the emotions” (hence, perhaps, Tyndale’s rendering as “seat of mercy,” the place from which mercy flows, where it is to be found). Strictly speaking, the “lid” was not the place of “mercy” as such, but the place of both “meeting” and “cleansing.” This was where God met with his people; and, in order for this to take place, it was where the priest cleansed the sanctuary from the defiling effects of the past sins of Israel with the sprinkled blood of the sacrifice.