kāphar

Semantic range

1. 1to cover over, smear with pitch (Genesis 6:14, the same root)
2. 2to make atonement, purge, cleanse
3. 3to ransom, to pay a covering price

Kāphar sits under Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement — and under the kappōret, the golden lid of the ark that the KJV calls the mercy seat. Its concrete sense is to cover: Noah covers the ark with pitch (kōpher) so the waters cannot get in. Applied to sin, the picture is of something interposed between the defilement and the holiness that would otherwise consume it.

But covering is not concealment. The related noun kōpher means a ransom price — the sum that covers a debt or a life (Exodus 30:12). Both senses run together in Leviticus 16, where the high priest sprinkles blood on the kappōret and sends the second goat away bearing the iniquities of Israel. Something is covered, and something is paid.

The English word atonement was coined in the 1520s by William Tyndale, quite literally as at-one-ment, because he could find no existing English word for what kāphar and its Greek counterparts were doing. That coinage carries the doctrine the Book of Mormon states outright: the effect of the covering is reconciliation — being made one with God again (see 2 Nephi 25:23; Jacob 4:11).

Where it appears

• Leviticus 16:30The Day of Atonement: "the priest shall make an atonement for you."
• Exodus 25:17The kappōret — mercy seat — from the same root.
• Genesis 6:14"Pitch it within and without with pitch" — the concrete sense, to cover.

See also

• גֹּאֵלgōʾēl
• אָשָׁםʾāšām
• ἱλαστήριονhilastērion