Our Redeemer

Our Redeemer

The Hebrew word goel or gaal ( גָּאַל) means “redeemer”.  It occurs in the Hebrew text over 100 times.  The most famous use of the term is the story of Ruth and Boaz, where Boaz acts as Ruth’s kinsman redeemer.

The story is a beautiful and romantic tale of love and character and honor (a sort of Rom-Com of the Biblical variety: boy meets girl, girl pursues boy, boy purchases girl (and her mother).  Anyway…

The whole “redeem” part gets lost, I think, in not so much the translation as in the passage of time and the change of culture.  It’s perhaps worth taking a stroll through the ancient near Eastern (ANE) cultural landscape to look for meanings which have been obscured by our modern Western filters.

Life was hard for our ancient ancestors.  Go back even two generations and life was orders of magnitude harder.  Throw in the absence of electricity, running water, sewage, etc. and you have a potentially brutal life.  What made matters worse for anyone was isolation from your community, your tribe, or your family.  Your whole identity was tied up with who you belonged to: your tribe.  This fact of life was true for all cultures in the ancient days, and it was certainly true in the ANE, where Ruth’s story takes place.

There’s a famine in Israel.  Elimelech (his name means “God is the King), a man from Bethlehem, decides to load up the family and move to Moab, like the Clampetts.  He takes his wife Naomi (her name means “pleasant”) and their two sons.  Tragically, Elimelech dies leaving Naomi a widow.  At least, she is not left destitute because she has her two sons to care for her.  Her boys marry Moabite women, outside their own tribe, because that’s all they had around there, and I suppose the Naomi family set up shop in the land of Moab, foreigners in a foreign land.

Then, the wheels come off: Mahlon and Chilion (Naomi’s sons) die.  Now, Naomi has a real problem.  Whatever land or possessions she might have acquired during her family’s sojourn in Moab were now forfeit.  Woman could not own land.  Her only choice was to return to Bethlehem and beg for food.  Surprisingly, both of her daughters-in-law decide to return with her.  Naomi, bereft of husband and sons, and therefore bereft of protection and provision, encourages these girls to stay in Moab.  Orpah decides to stay in Moab, but Ruth makes a profoundly moving alternative decision: “Where you go, I’ll go.  Where you stay, I’ll stay.  Your people will be my people.  Your God will be my God.  Where you die, I will die.”

Did Ruth understand the implications of her decision?  What could have possessed her to express this loyalty?  (All the daughters-in-law everywhere are aghast, no doubt.)  But Ruth is also prophetic in the sense that she truly became entwined into Israel.

But they are two poor widows with no prospects and no protectors.  Naomi is so bitter at what’s happened to her that she says even her name is Bitter (Mara) from now on, not Pleasant.  Hard to condemn her for that: she literally had nothing.  But God the Provider (Jireh) offers unexpected hope for them both through the hands of Naomi’s relative, Boaz.  Read the whole story for context, but here’s the gist.

Boaz and Ruth meet.  Boaz redeems Naomi, his kinsman, by buying Elimelech’s field (Naomi could not own it because of that whole woman-not-owning-stuff rule).  When he buys the field, he buys Ruth, who becomes his wife.  Boaz redeems Ruth (and Naomi).  By law and custom, when a poor relative is redeemed by a rich relative, their relationship changes.  The Redeemed does not become slave, but they “belong” to the Redeemer in a special way.  Not property, but especially close family and in some way beholden to the Redeemer.  So, Ruth “belongs” to Boaz.

Boaz and Ruth have a son they name Obed.  If you’ve been following along, you know that Obed’s son is Jesse, the father of Israel’s King David.  And down through the years, along comes Jesus, the son of David.  Jesus, the Redeemer of mankind.  As we are in the place of Ruth, the redeemed bride, we belong to our Redeemer.