Ha-Goel

Where this conclusion stands

Part Four itself established, from the source text, the three names Jacob called at his death — Goel, Shiloh and Yeshuah. The study appendix, "Christophany," set out in order the ways in which the One those names point to made Himself seen: theophany, Christophany, incarnation.

Both pieces were moving toward a single question. Why did Jacob call those names, of all names? And what does the answer amount to for us now. This conclusion takes up only those two.

Grammar is pointed out only where the sense turns on it — the yod and the shua that make up the name, the waw consecutive, the article ha (הַ), the passages where shua is used, and shamar and tereo, the verbs for keeping. Each is the size of a single word, and each one changes the time or the subject of its sentence.

1Jacob is the one man whose body touched Him

The Old Testament records of meeting God fall into three layers: those who heard Him speak, those who saw Him appear in a form, and the man whose body touched Him. Each layer holds fewer people than the last, and in the final layer one man is left.

The recorded appearings to the three patriarchs

Abraham has the most appearings recorded, and Jacob leaves four or more, one at each turning point of his life. But one of Jacob's belongs to a different layer from every other record.

The Jabbok — the night a hand touched Him

Wrestling is an act that does not exist unless two bodies take hold of each other. And that night left a mark on Jacob's body — the socket of his thigh was put out of joint, and the text goes on to record that he passed on limping (Gen 32:31). Not a vision and not a dream, but an event that left a result in a body.

Jacob himself calls the one he faced God, and names the place Peniel, the face of God. Hosea, long after, looks back on the same event and identifies that opponent as a malakh, a messenger.

2The meeting came first, the names after

In Genesis 48, blessing his grandsons, Jacob names in three ways the One who kept his life — the God before whom his fathers walked, the God who fed him from his birth until that day, and the messenger who redeemed him from all evil (Gen 48:15~16). It is the third of these that carries goel.

As chapter 4 of Part Four established, the malakh called goel here is the One who declared Himself the God of Bethel in Gen 31:13, and the ish — the man — who wrestled with Jacob at the Jabbok. What binds the four together is not a word but an event.

Then, in the course of blessing his twelve sons one by one, in what he says over the tribe of Dan, Yeshuah appears.

3Yeshua = Yod + Shua

This name is two pieces — the yod (י) in front and the shua (שׁוּעַ) behind.

Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ, H3442) is not a name that first appears in the New Testament. It stands in the Old Testament source text twenty-nine times as a man's name, in exactly this form, including at the head of the list of those who returned from exile (Ezr 2:2 · 1Ch 24:11 · 2Ch 31:15).

The yod in front — "He"

A Hebrew verb marks person and number on the front of the word. Set out on the root yasha (יָשַׁע, H3467, to save), a single opening letter changes the subject.

The opening yod is "He." And because this form carries both what has not yet come and what is done again and again, it reads either way — "He saves" and "He will save."

The gibbor yoshia (גִּבּוֹר יוֹשִׁיעַ) of this verse is that form — a warrior who saves, that is, He saves.

The shua behind — salvation · abundance · nobility

Shua is not a sound that carries only the act of saving. A word of the same sound points, in the source text, to one who has plenty, one who is noble (chapter 5 establishes this from the text). So the back half of this name carries both the work of saving and the One who has enough — in wealth and in rank — to carry that work through.

Put together

Stop at Joshua and you miss the yod

The two names are the same behind and different in front. The front of Joshua is the name of God; the front of Yeshua is "He." Explain Yeshua only as a shortened form of Joshua and stop there, and you miss the "He" that the opening yod sets up. That the doer stands inside the name is the whole point of this name.

Matthew unfolds the name exactly so

In Matthew 1:21 the instruction to give the name and the meaning of the name stand joined in one sentence.

The Greek sosei (σώσει) is future, and the autos (αὐτὸς) before it is the pronoun that puts weight on "He Himself." Matthew does not render the name with the noun "salvation" but unfolds it as a sentence: "He will save." The "He" that the Hebrew opening yod set up is what the Greek takes up in autos.

4One waw turns what is ahead into what is past

Hebrew has a device that hangs a waw (וַ) on the front of that same yod-form. With the waw attached the time turns over, and a form that spoke of what had not yet come becomes a form that narrates what has already happened. Nearly all of the narrative of Scripture runs in this form.

Wayyosha stands seven times in the source text, and the first of them is the Red Sea.

@본문표 1Sa 14:23; 2Sa 8:14

The verb Jacob used in Genesis 49:18 is the perfect of qawah (קִוָּה, to wait) — "I have waited for Your Yeshuah." What he waited for had not yet come. The wayyosha of Exodus 14:30 records what has already happened. One root stands on both sides of the same event in time.

Not everything a waw touches turns over

The tense turns over when the waw is attached to a verb. A noun from the same root with the conjunction waw in front does not turn over.

@본문표 Psa 62:7

5He must be able to redeem

The goel provision requires two things together. The first is that he be a kinsman; the second, that he be able to bear the price of redemption.

Ruth 4 shows plainly that the first condition alone is not enough. There was a kinsman nearer than Boaz, and he drew back.

Standing is not enough if one cannot bear it. So the place of the goel requires rank and capacity together.

Shua — the One who has plenty and is honoured

What the back half of the name carries, the source text shows directly. Shua (שׁוֹעַ, H7771) is used to point not at the act of saving but at a standing.

In the one it is set against poverty and in the other against folly. That is, the single word shua holds abundance and nobility at once.

6Ha-Goel — the One who became our kinsman

In Genesis 48:16 the article ha (הַ) stands in front of goel. Hebrew ha corresponds to English "the": it singles one out from among many. What Jacob called, then, was not a redeemer but the Redeemer.

As chapter 5 established, the place of the goel requires two things together — that he be a near kinsman, and that he bear the price. How those two are filled is followed here in the order the text gives.

Step one — all mankind is one household

For the kinship condition to hold, the side redeemed and the side redeeming must first be of one household. Genesis records mankind after the flood as one, spread out from a single forefather.

Paul states the same thing at Athens.

@본문표 Act 17:26

Because men spread over all the earth from the three sons of Noah, mankind after the flood is not many peoples divided by blood but one household. Here is the ground on which the words "near kinsman," which the goel provision requires, can hold for the whole race.

Step two — the incarnation, entering that household

But the One who is God stands outside that household. And so He came inside it.

@본문표 Heb 2:14; Heb 2:11; Heb 2:16; Heb 2:17

Hebrews puts this four different ways — since the children have shared in flesh and blood, He likewise shared in the same (2:14); the One who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one (2:11); the ones He helps are not angels but the seed of Abraham (2:16); and therefore He was obliged to be made like His brothers in all things (2:17).

The phrase "was obliged" in 2:17 overlaps exactly with the language of the goel provision. Redemption is not a favour a stranger extends but a duty that falls to the nearest kinsman.

The name of that door — Judah and David read in the ancient letters

Hebrew letters came out of pictures. In the letter shapes older than the square script now in use, each letter copied the shape of a thing, and the name of the letter is the name of that thing. Two letters bear on this.

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