When Your Brother Becomes Poor

Jacob called the One who spoke to him at Bethel and held him through the night at the Jabbok his goel. At the Jabbok that One stood before Jacob in the form of a man, and a form taken for one night was enough for a meeting. The New Testament, though, tells of redemption through the Word who became flesh (John 1:14). Why flesh? Why would a form for a time not be enough for what Jacob called Him?

The answer does not come from a theory about God. It comes from a law. Jacob spoke the word goel first, on his deathbed, as the name of what had happened to him. Later the same word was written into the Torah as a statute, with conditions attached to it, and those conditions explain why a redeemer must share in flesh and blood.

The Law Opens With a Brother

The law of the goel stands in Leviticus 25, the chapter of the year of Jubilee. Its first case is set out in a single verse.

Leviticus 25:25 When your brother becomes poor, and sells some of his possession, then his redeemer, the near one to him, shall come, and shall redeem the sale of his brother.

The verse moves in three steps.

First, something goes wrong. “Your brother becomes poor.” The Hebrew verb (mukh) means to sink low, to be brought down in means. The law does not ask how it happened. A failed harvest, a debt, a bad year: whatever the cause, he has fallen.

Second, he loses something. He “sells some of his possession.” In Israel a man’s possession was his family’s share of the land, the ground his household lived from. When a poor man sold part of it, he was selling part of his future.

Third, someone comes. “His redeemer, the near one to him, shall come, and shall redeem the sale of his brother.” The word for redeemer is goel (גֹּאֵל), the word Jacob spoke over his grandsons, and the verse gives this goel two marks before it says what he does for his brother. He is “the near one to him,” and he “shall come.” He does not send help from a distance. He comes to where his brother has fallen, and he buys back what was sold.

That is what a goel does. He is near, he comes, he pays, and what was lost goes back to the one who lost it.

The Land Is Mine

Why did Israel need such a law at all? Two verses earlier the chapter gives the reason, and it is God’s own reason.

Leviticus 25:23-24 And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for sojourners and settlers are you with me. And in all the land of your possession you shall give a redemption for the land.

“The land is mine,” says the LORD. The families of Israel held their portions as “sojourners and settlers” with Him, and so no sale of land could be the last word. Redemption was written into the land itself, and the goel was the person through whom it was carried out.

The next verses show what happens when there is no goel.

Leviticus 25:26-28 And a man (ish אִישׁ eesh), when there is no redeemer for him, and his hand attains and finds enough for its redemption; then he shall reckon the years of its sale, and restore the surplus to the man (ish) to whom he sold it; and he shall return to his possession. But if his hand has not found enough to restore to him, then his sale shall be in the hand of the buyer of it ad עַד ad(עד) the year of the Jubilee; and in the Jubilee it shall go out, and he shall return to his possession.

The law allows two ways back. Either a goel comes, or the man’s own hand “attains and finds enough for its redemption.” If neither happens, the field stays in the hand of the buyer until the Jubilee. The law keeps a door open even for the man who has no one, but that door costs him years without his land, waiting.

If the one who might redeem cannot do it, the one who lost remains without what he lost until the appointed year. That is the weight of the goel in Leviticus. Everything depends on whether there is someone near enough, and able enough, to come.

A Man as Well as a Field

Leviticus 25 does not stop at land. Later in the chapter the brother himself is sold.

Leviticus 25:47-48 And when the hand of a sojourner and settler with you attains wealth, and your brother becomes poor beside him, and is sold to a sojourner, a settler with you, or to an offshoot of a sojourner's family; after he is sold, a redemption shall be to him; one of his brothers may redeem him;

This is a harder case than the first. The man has fallen so low that he has sold not a field but himself, and to a sojourner outside his people. Yet the law says the same for him as for the field, and being sold is not the end of the story for a man any more than for a field. The goel’s work reaches both the inheritance and the person.

Before the Statute, a Confession

The verb gaal גָּאַל gaw-al', to redeem, first appears in Scripture at Genesis 48:16, and within Genesis it stands only there. Its second appearance is Exodus 6:6, where the LORD sends word to Israel in Egypt, “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.” In Leviticus 25 it becomes law.

So the word came to Israel in a particular order. Before redemption was a statute with conditions, before it was a doctrine anyone could explain, it was a word on the lips of one dying man about his own life.

Jacob did not set out the conditions of a goel. He named the One who had done the work. Leviticus, given later, sets out what the work involves. Read together, the two show the weight of the word Jacob chose. In the law a goel is the one who comes near, pays what his brother cannot pay, and brings back what his brother cannot bring back himself. That is the word Jacob reached for when he spoke of “the messenger who has redeemed me from all evil.”

The law also adds something Jacob’s single sentence does not spell out. A goel does not only pay off a debt. The point of the payment is that “he shall return to his possession.” What was sold goes back to where it belonged. The goel’s work ends not with a receipt but with a homecoming. The One who pays the price turns out to be the King of the inheritance He buys back.

Not Just Anyone

Leviticus 25:25 says one more thing. The law does not say that anyone who feels pity may step in. It says “his redeemer, the near one to him.” The right to redeem belongs to someone in particular.

That raises a further question. Who counts as near? And is nearness enough by itself, or does the law ask for something more? Further down the same chapter, in the case of the brother sold to a sojourner, Leviticus answers with a list, and inside that list are two conditions. They are the conditions that the messenger of Genesis 48:16 would have to meet.