GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
RUTH 4:14
14 The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel!
When Ruth and Naomi first returned to Bethlehem, the women of the village came out to greet them, “Can this be Naomi?” (1:19). Now the women are delighted that the family has an heir; that this baby boy will carry on the family name of his grandfather (yet our perspective about that needs to be correctly focused; we will discuss it further with verses 18-22).
In this verse, we learn especially that the women describe the baby, not only Boaz, as a kinsman-redeemer (goel). His is the one the Lord has sent; he is the one who will become famous in Israel. In the verse that follows, the women will add, “For your daughter-in-law… has given him birth.” It is clearly about the baby that they speak.
In a 1996 paper titled “The Role of a Goel,” my classmate (now missionary) Nathan Wagenknecht lists four functions of a kinsman-redeemer: (A) To redeem land (Lev. 25:25), (B) To redeem someone out of slavery (Lev. 25:49ff.), (C) To avenge blood (Num 35:19ff.), and (D) To continue the family line (Dt. 35:5). “The goel,” says Wagenknkecht, “was not the same as the levir (brother-in-law), but we see by the time of Boaz that they were connected.”
The role of a kinsman-redeemer it not a true Old Testament type of Christ. Rather, Christ is truly our redeemer, surpassing the idea of a type and fulfillment. Israel was yearning and looking for redemption (Luke 2:38l 24:21). Our kinship with Christ comes through his true humanity. He paid the price of our redemption by keeping the law “to redeem those under the law” (Galatians 4:4-5), by bearing the full curse of the law (Galatians 3:13), and by paying the full price, which was himself. “He have himself as a ransom for all men” (1 Timothy 2:6). Another way of expressing the same thing comes in all the passages which talk about the shedding of his blood. “He bought [the church] with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). “We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Ephesians 1:7). “It was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from this empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19). “Yyou were slain, and with your blood (O Jesus) you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).
Through Christ, “the LORD provided redemption for his people” (Psalm 111:8). His purchase was not just some land, or a single family’s inheritance, but the complete inheritance of all mankind, lost in the fall, regained on the cross. Jesus’ redemption includes everyone who puts their faith in him, whether the thief on the cross, the faithful patriarchs who waited for him their whole lives, or people like you and me, who were raised knowing our Savior’s name, and who now only await the resurrection on the last day, when we will be brought home at last, brought home forever, by our kinsman the Son of Man, our Redeemer the Son of God.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota