Not With Silver or Gold

A goel must be kin, and a goel must pay. Hebrews 2 has shown how the first condition was met: the One who stood outside the household of flesh and blood shared in it, called its members brothers, and was obligated to be made like them in every respect. The second condition is still open. What did He pay?

The Price in Leviticus

In the law of the goel, the price was counted in money. When a brother had sold himself to a sojourner, the law set out how his redemption was to be reckoned.

Leviticus 25:50-51 And he shall reckon with the one who bought him from the year of his being sold to him until the year of the Jubilee; and the money of his sale shall be by the number of years, according to the days of a hired one it shall be with him. If yet many are in the years, according to them he shall return his redemption from the money of his purchase.

The price depended on the years left until the Jubilee. If many years remained, the redemption cost more; if few remained, it cost less. The Hebrew word behind “money” is kesef, which is also the word for silver; in Israel silver was money. A goel paid in silver, and the man went free.

In Ruth it was the same. Boaz “bought” the field, and the matter was settled at the gate before witnesses. Redemption under the law was a real transaction, with a real price, paid in the currency of the day.

Not With Perishable Things

Peter writes to believers about their own redemption.

1 Peter 1:17-19 And if you call on Him as Father who krino κρίνω kree'-no(judge)s impartially according to each one's work, conduct yourselves with fear during the chronos χρόνος khron'-os(chronological-time) of your sojourning, knowing that you were redeemed not with perishable things such as silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Messiah, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

“You were redeemed.” Peter uses the language of redemption, the verb lytroo λυτρόω loo-tro'-o, which belongs to the word for a ransom price. He is speaking of exactly the kind of transaction the goel law describes: someone was bought back at a cost.

Then he says what the price was not: “not with perishable things such as silver or gold.” Silver was the very currency of the goel. Under the law, silver could buy back a field for a family, or a man from the sojourner who had bought him. Peter calls silver and gold “perishable things.” They wear, they are spent, they pass from hand to hand; they could buy back land, but not what Peter is speaking of.

He also says what they were redeemed from: “from your futile way of life inherited from your fathers.” This is not a field and not a debt to a sojourner. It is a whole way of life, handed down from one generation to the next, and Peter calls it futile, empty. No amount of silver reaches that far.

The Precious Blood

Then he names the price: “the precious blood” of Messiah, “like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”

Silver and gold are called perishable, and the blood is called precious. The contrast is deliberate. What paid for this redemption was not something that wears out and passes from hand to hand, but the blood of the One who redeemed.

The comparison Peter chooses is a lamb “without blemish.” Israel heard that phrase in the Torah, and at the Passover it stood over the lamb itself.

Exodus 12:5 A lamb without blemish, a male, a son of a year, shall be for you; from the sheep or from the goats you shall take it.

Book 4 of this series followed the Passover in detail. Peter’s comparison does not come from the market but from the Torah. The Passover stood at the start of the deliverance from Egypt, for “on the morrow after the Passover the sons of Israel went out” (Numbers 33:3), and of that deliverance the LORD had said, “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.”

Peter also says that this price was not an afterthought.

1 Peter 1:20-21 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last chronos(chronological-time)s for your sake, who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him doxa δόξα dox'-ah(glory), so that your faith and elpis ἐλπίς el-pece'(hope) are in God.

The One who would pay was known before the world was made. He was made manifest later, at the time appointed. Jacob, on his deathbed, called Him the messenger who had redeemed him, and confessed that he waited for the LORD’s salvation. The price that would make that redemption complete had not yet been paid in Jacob’s day. Peter writes as one who stands after it has been paid.

Kinship and Price Together

The incarnation and the blood are not two separate events standing apart. They belong together, in the same way the two conditions of the goel belong together.

The incarnation gives the standing of a kinsman. The blood is the price that kinsman pays. A kinsman who does not pay is the nearer man in Ruth, who had the right and said, “I cannot redeem.” A payment made by someone who is not kin is not redemption under the law at all. Only together do they meet the requirement of the goel.

In the book of Ruth both conditions met in one man. Boaz was of Elimelech’s family, and Boaz said, “I have bought.” The New Testament shows the goel Jacob named in the same way, with both conditions met in one Person. He partook of the same flesh and blood as the children, and He paid with His own blood. The incarnation and the blood of Yeshua are His becoming our kinsman, and His redeeming us as that kinsman.

That gives us the whole line of what the goel law asked and how it was met, in four steps.

In Revelation 5:9, the new song sung to the Lamb, the price is named as His blood too, and the One who paid it is a Lamb.

What Jacob Could Not See

Jacob called his goel “the messenger who has redeemed me from all evil.” He knew the One who had redeemed him. He had met Him, wrestled with Him, and been blessed by Him. What he did not see, and could only wait for, was the price.

Peter names it: not silver, though silver was the price a goel paid under the law, and not gold, but the precious blood of the One who became kinsman. With the payment made, the question that remains is how far it reaches. Does it stop at the people redeemed, or does it go further? Paul answers that in Romans 8.