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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Redeemer
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(See RANSOM.) Redeem, Hebrew padhah and gaal. The goel, nearest of kin, had three rights:
(1) To purchase back the forfeited inheritance for an Israelite who, through poverty, had sold his land; as Boaz ("might in him"; the name of one of the two temple pillars; a type of Christ) did for Ruth (-5); or to hold land in possession for an impoverished kinsman until the year of Jubilee, when it should revert to the original owner (; -16; -28). Antitypically, man the heir of all things bartered his magnificent birthright for vanity; Christ, by assuming our manhood, became our go'el, and saved us from being disinherited forever (-15); the full restoration of the inheritance is to be at "the times of restitution of all things" (; ), the grand last Jubilee (-4); ushered in, as the Israelite Jubilee, with the great trumpet (; ; ; ).
(2) The goel ransomed his kinsman from bondage to the foreigner (-49). So man sold himself to Satan's bondage; Jesus has (at the price of His precious blood, -19) ransomed "the lawful captive delivered" ().
(3) The goel avenged the death of his slain kinsman as a point of honor. So our Redeemer "through death has destroyed Satan (man's "murderer from the beginning", ) who had the power of death," and has delivered us from everlasting "bondage" to him (-15; ). Our Boaz has not "left off His kindness to the living and to the dead" (); translated -27 "I know that my Redeemer (vindicator, avenger; redressing my wrongs on Satan their inflicter) liveth, and that He shall arise the Last (; ) above the dust (with which is mingled man's crumbling body: ; ; ; ), and though after my skin (is destroyed) this (body) is destroyed, yet from my flesh (mibesari; as from a window, ) shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself (on my side), no longer estranged" (zar) from me.
The redemption of our now weak body will be our grand vindication from present wrongs such as Job's. As the body (not merely the soul) was the sufferer, the body's restoration in incorruption must be the vindication; this alone would disprove the imputation of guilt thrown on Job because of its sufferings. Job elsewhere hoped for the resurrection after his being "hidden in the grave" for a time (-15; -26; ; -21; ). The Egyptian myth of Osiris and his son Horus in the "Ritual of the Dead" strikingly confirms the primitive revelation of the promised Redeemer, of which it is the corruption. Horus as Ra was "creator"; as Teti, the "redeemer from the power" of Apophis the "serpent", and of Typhoon the "hippopotamus", representatives of the evil being; as Nets, Horus is "the deliverer of the justified".