The King of the Inheritance

Two lines run through Jacob’s words: the line of rule, which came through Judah, the tribe of the scepter and the lion, and the line of the goel, which rests on kinship and on the price. Revelation set them one verse apart: the lion was announced, the Lamb was seen, and the Lamb purchased a people for God by His blood.

One question remains. When the price has been paid, what happens next? A goel does not pay a debt and walk away. Something is given back, and someone must hold it.

What Was Sold Returns

The first words of the goel law say that the redeemer “shall redeem the sale of his brother” (Leviticus 25:25). The point of redemption is not the payment for its own sake. It is the return of what was sold to where it belonged. When the price of the sold field has been paid back, the same chapter of Leviticus says: “and he shall return to his possession” (Leviticus 25:27). After the price, the inheritance comes back.

So redemption has two parts: the paying of the price, and the inheritance, recovered and restored. The first belongs to the goel. The second raises a further question: who will rule over what has been recovered?

The Anointed One

The Hebrew word mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ) means “one anointed.” In the Old Testament, anointing was the act by which a priest or a king was set into his office. Aaron was anointed as priest, and the verse gives the purpose: “to sanctify him.”

Leviticus 8:12 And he poured from the oil of anointing on Aaron's head, and anointed him, to sanctify him.

David was anointed as king, in the midst of his brothers, and from that day the spirit (ruach רוּחַ roo'-akh) of the LORD rushed upon him.

1 Samuel 16:13 And Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brothers; and the spirit (ruach) of the LORD rushed upon David from that day and onward. And Samuel arose, and went to Ramah.

The law even uses this word with the article in front of it. When it speaks of “the anointed priest” (Leviticus 4:3), the Hebrew is ha-kohen ha-mashiach, the priest, the anointed one.

Saul’s anointing shows what a king was anointed for. When Samuel poured the oil on his head, he said this.

1 Samuel 10:1 And Samuel took the flask of oil, and poured it on his head, and kissed him, and said: "Is it not that the LORD has anointed you as leader over His inheritance?

The anointed king was set over an inheritance, and the inheritance was the LORD’s.

As we saw in Chapter 2, the article ha stands in front of goel in Genesis 48:16. Hebrew ha works like English “the”: it singles one out from among many. Jacob did not speak of a redeemer but of the Redeemer, ha-goel הַגֹּאֵל gaw-al'. In the Hebrew Bible ha-mashiach stands only in that phrase about the anointed priest (Leviticus 4:3, 5, 16, and once more in chapter 6). Used as a title, with the article singling out one as it does in ha-goel, it means not an anointed one but the Anointed One. The New Testament writes that title in Greek as Christos, “the Anointed One,” which the YLV renders Messiah; twice John keeps the Hebrew-shaped form Mesias (John 1:41; 4:25).

The King Who Paid

The book of Revelation, which showed us the Lamb paying the price, shows us at its end the same One as King.

Revelation 19:16 And He has on His garment and on His thigh a name written: King of kings and Lord of lords.

That name is written on His garment and on His thigh, in John’s vision of heaven opened (Revelation 19:11). The Lamb who was slaughtered and who purchased a people by His blood is the One who bears that name; Revelation says it of the Lamb directly: “He is Lord of lords and King of kings” (Revelation 17:14).

Paul brings redemption and inheritance into one sentence.

Ephesians 1:13-14 In Him, you also, after listening to the logos λόγος log'-os(word) of aletheia ἀλήθεια al-ay'-thi-a(truth), the good news of your Salvation — having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the hagio(holy) pneuma πνεῦμα pnyoo'-mah(spirit) of promise, who is given as an arrabon(pledge-deposit) of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory.

An arrabon is a deposit paid first as a pledge that the rest will follow. The inheritance and the redemption stand together: what God has redeemed is “God’s own possession,” and those who belong to Him have been given a pledge of the inheritance to come.

Two Aspects of One

Redemption and kingship are the front and back of one event. Paying the price belongs to the goel. Ruling the recovered inheritance belongs to the king. Scripture does not hand these two to different persons. It does not give us one figure who pays and another who reigns. The song of Revelation 5 already joined them: the One worthy to take the scroll is the Lamb who was slaughtered, and the One who opens it is the lion of the tribe of Judah.

That is why the two lines had to be kept apart and why, in the end, they meet. Kept apart, each says what it says: the scepter is not a price, and the price is not a scepter. Seen together, they describe one Person. The kinsman who paid the price is the King of the inheritance He recovered. Ha-Goel and Ha-Mashiach are not two persons but two aspects of one.

Jacob saw only the beginning of this. He spoke of a messenger who had redeemed him from all evil, and he spoke of a scepter that would not depart from Judah until Shiloh came, to whom the obedience of peoples would belong. He waited a lifetime for the salvation of the LORD. Scripture gathers into one Person the One who redeems and the One who reigns, as Revelation 5 showed. That the messenger Jacob named at his bedside is that same One is not written in one sentence, but it is a very persuasive reading.

How Does a Person Take Hold?

That leaves the most personal question of all. If the Redeemer has paid the price and is King of the inheritance, how does a person come to belong to Him?

Jacob’s own life might seem to give a simple answer, but Scripture sets an order, and its first step is something that happens to a person, not something he does.

Yeshua said it to a teacher of Israel who came to Him by night. Before a person can enter the kingdom, before he can force his way in, before he can find the door or remain in what he has found, there is a first thing. Without it, Yeshua said, he cannot even see. That order begins where Yeshua began, with John 3:3.