Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and as I like to do, I'm basically just going to jump right into the topic today. We're gonna be continuing with our discussion that we've been having lately about substitution in Scripture and in particular, substitution replacement.
[00:00:32] And at this point, I feel like there's a really natural objection that people might have after the last couple of episodes that we've talked about because we've seen that replacement language exists in Scripture, we have also seen that it is more varied and complicated than people often assume. And now we need to ask whether the idea of ransom changes or challenges any of that.
[00:00:59] Now be aware that this episode is not gonna solve all of the ransom and redemption questions. The goal is to open the category up and show the range before loading it with a full atonement mechanism. So again, last week we talked about how Moses offered himself for Israel or perhaps instead of them, but Yahweh refuses this transfer. We talked about how Judah offers himself instead of Benjamin, but that didn't actually happen. We also talked about how David wished he had died instead of Absalom. And we also brought up Caiaphas and Barabbas, which really gave us some one-for-another logic. But those are in morally compromised scenes.
[00:01:49] Now when it comes to the idea of ransom, and Jesus is explicitly said to be our ransom, there are some natural assumptions here that we're going to look at. The chain of reasoning that I think that people are bringing to this idea is that ransom sounds like payment. Payment sounds like an exchange. An exchange sounds like substitution. Jesus gives himself as a ransom. Therefore, it can be natural to assume that ransom settles the question of substitution.
[00:02:28] And that's not really unfair. We're gonna look at these kind of frameworks that we talk about and that we bring to the table, and we're gonna talk about the framework that Scripture brings to the table. We're not gonna cover every ransom and redemption passage. We're not gonna answer every question. We're gonna get to Mark 10 and 1 Timothy 2, but maybe not to the degree that you would like to see me do that in, in this episode. But we're gonna open up the frames, okay?
[00:02:58] And a few months ago, I actually did this practice where I sat down and I framed out a modern concept of ransom. And then I compared that frame with the frame of rescue. And then I did it also for the frame of the Exodus. And I did it for another frame that centered on divine warfare. And also promise. Now, I don't have time to lay out all of these frames for you today. You can do a similar exercise yourself, actually. Ask questions like, who is involved? What are they doing? What is happening in the situation? And so on.
[00:03:38] And so for us, ransom brings to mind payment by necessity. It just comes in this package with the word ransom. We might be thinking of something like a kidnapping situation. Now, ransom in a kidnapping situation is also going to involve rescue, right? Where we're freeing someone from a negative situation or consequence. But the difference in our mind of ransom and rescue is that ransom has a form of payment and rescue doesn't necessarily.
[00:04:13] So then we come to Scripture and we read this word ransom and we think, well, we know what ransom is. It involves a dangerous situation and a payment that is being made in order to save somebody from that dangerous situation. And that is, in a nutshell, kind of our modern framing of the idea of ransom.
[00:04:35] But the question is, is this at the core, the center of the biblical idea of ransom? Because again, we have a distinction between ransom and rescue in our minds today. Is that distinction actually there for the biblical mind, though?
[00:04:53] I'm going to suggest to you that in the biblical material, in the ancient Near East at large, and even in the Greek world, ransom and redemption language is centered on not payment but release or rescue from a claim or bondage or danger or loss, or especially in the New Testament, from a death-bound situation. And payment can be one way that that release happens. There is no doubt about that. But payment is not always the controlling idea of the frame. And that really does matter because we have these, again, different frames.
[00:05:37] When we bring the idea of ransom up, we are primarily thinking of the payment. But I would suggest that in the Bible, the idea of ransom is primarily about deliverance. I know we would just prefer that the biblical authors not use a term that doesn't necessarily bring up this mind of payment if they're gonna not focus on that idea. But it's really just about different mindsets and different ways that we're thinking about a concept.
[00:06:09] The reason that ransom is still is gonna make sense as the word we're gonna use in translation is that it belongs to a world where release often did involve some kind of a cost, possibly an exchange, an intervention, or an action that's going to break the claim of somebody with somebody else. But the cost is not always or even primarily a literal monetary payment. And even when money is involved, the point is not merely a transaction or exchange happened. The focus is that someone or something was released, restored, protected, or reclaimed. This is not necessarily our modern idea of kidnapping, cash payment, and the recipient of that cash payment.
[00:07:01] Our primary example of this is obviously the Exodus. Yahweh is redeeming Israel. He is bringing Israel out from Pharaoh's grip by power and by covenant faithfulness, not by paying off Pharaoh. Another great example is in Leviticus 25, where redemption is family restoration of land, and it involves kin and inheritance and belonging to the people. Another idea is in Exodus 30. The census ransom is tied to life, averting a plague, and Yahweh's claim over Israel. In Numbers 35, ransom is explicitly forbidden for murder. In Psalm 49, human ransom from death is impossible. In Isaiah 52, God says Israel will be redeemed without money. So payment is clearly part of the semantic world of this idea, but it cannot be the center in every one of these passages.
[00:08:07] Now, I really do want to kind of foreground the idea of substitution here and the possibility that that's what we have in the idea of ransom. So is there any sense in which we should or could read, especially New Testament passages in particular, where ransom is substitution?
[00:08:28] And I'm gonna remind you of how I've been defining substitution. Are we talking about actual substitution replacement in a situation? Or are we talking about the kind of idea that people call substitution, but that is really either representative or involves some sort of rescue or action on behalf of another person, and that is really not technically substitution at all?
[00:08:57] Now, ransom really does complicate this because the ransom texts can involve a liberative exchange. But they're also very clearly representative self-giving in place of bondage kinds of ideas. But if we press it a little bit too firmly, then we end up with questions that really don't make sense within the passage themselves. Like, who is the payment being paid to? Is God paying Satan? Is God paying himself in some weird situation there? Is God paying the law, which makes the law kind of have some overarching power over God himself?
[00:09:43] Honestly, I don't think any of those questions make any sense within the context of what we have in the passages. And so that becomes really problematic when we're taking the idea of ransom and making it about the kind of monetary or monetary-ish exchange. So even if we have one for many structures of logic where Jesus gives his life and the many receive the benefit of that giving, honestly, it sounds a lot more like what I was talking about last week with the self-giving offering idea, doesn't it?
[00:10:23] I mean, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you can tell me that I'm wrong. But I kind of feel like it really fits really well in those ideas which are not substitution replacement in kind of a legal way or a way that is a requirement for something else to happen. God did not require Moses to offer himself. Joseph did not require Judah to offer himself. The suffering servant of Isaiah 53, God is not requiring the suffering servant to do what he does, but the suffering servant exists in a world of sin and people who are going to treat righteous people poorly. And in that context, God is using that for redemption. And within that context of reality, God uses those circumstances in order to provide cases and places where people are ransomed or rescued.
[00:11:23] So we certainly have a where Jesus gives himself for the many in a way that they could not do for themselves. Another way to put that is that Jesus gives Himself on behalf of the many for their release in terms of ransom. But that does not mean that Jesus is punished instead of the many so that they are not punished.
[00:11:50] Do you see the different framing here? in the framing that is connected to penal substitutionary atonement, or PSA, Jesus takes our punishment instead of so that we are not punished. But in a ransom release framework, Jesus is offering Himself on behalf of the many for their release, but it's not a direct exchange. And Jesus is acting in the form of a champion. He is acting in the form of what's going on with the Exodus and now the new Exodus in Jesus.
[00:12:30] And if the people can be said to be ransomed in the Exodus or even after the exile or different situations like this, then the emphasis or the center of the frame is not on payment. It is not on punishment of the people receiving the benefit, but it is a rescue or a release or a redemption or a liberation. So this is much more about a frame of rescue than it is of ransom.
[00:13:02] Again, I know you're gonna be like, "Well, why don't we just use rescue language instead of ransom language?" And the reason we're gonna do that in Scripture, and the reason we have that in Scripture, is because of the way that slaves were directly ransomed. So this is not a modern kidnapping situation. It is an ancient slavery situation, which then, you know, that makes sense that we do not understand that natively today because that is not our context.
[00:13:35] We are not today ransoming slaves. We do have plenty of movies about kidnapping ransom, though, so we can kind of natively understand ransom in that sense, but we're not understanding it in the sense of slavery. Okay. And that is what we need to do in order to understand the ancient context. That's why our frames are just not the same, because a kidnapping ransom frame is not the same as a slavery deliverance frame using power. It is also not the same as a kinship redeemer frame, which we also do not understand today.
[00:14:15] So again, call me crazy, but understanding the Bible and its concepts in their context is going to make a massive difference to how we're understanding the whole thing.
[00:14:28] Another place that we have this in the New Testament is in 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 6. This is pretty strongly ransom language. Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all. Now, the word here is one that people will latch onto for a PSA context, because the prefix of the word is anti and a lot of scholars will natively say that that means instead of. So grammatically, people are latching onto this word, which is not a common word at all. In fact, I think it's only used here in this passage.
[00:15:07] And again, should we be building a doctrine out of a single word in a single passage? I would say no. But in any case, we still need to be really careful with this verse here because the context is one God, one mediator, the man Jesus Christ, God's desire for all to be saved, Christ giving himself as a ransom for all.
[00:15:34] And then there's another strange phrase here that scholars don't know what to do with about a testimony in proper time. I think if anything, we could at least see that the center of the passage is mediation and universal saving scope. Now, that's not universal salvation, okay? I'm not saying that, but God desires for all to be saved. And so Christ gives himself as a mediating ransom by which humanity is brought toward salvation and knowledge of the truth.
[00:16:07] I'm not doing a complete exegesis of the passage here. I'm just laying this out as some groundwork. Because we have clearly mediatorial self-giving ransom. And to me, that calls directly back to what Moses is doing in how Moses is trying to rescue the people and Moses is offering himself. And so if you tie that with the idea of righteousness and the idea of the righteous sufferer, then Christ is giving himself in the place where no one else can mediate or liberate. It is not transferred punishment. It's not penal replacement. And I could show you a whole bunch of commentaries that speak of costly rescue, liberation, self-surrender. And that is not the same as being compelled to pay a price.
[00:16:56] It is certainly not the case that this is indicating that God has set a price. If that is what's going on, then that is a deep theme that needs to come out of Scripture. And that's very problematic because of the number of ways and the number of places that God says He will forgive and not require a price.
[00:17:19] It's also really essential to notice that there is no recipient of a ransom price because the payment recipient question is really imported from later ideas and debates. No one can say that there is no kind of exchange language at all, okay? But we really have to be very careful with it because if it is an exchange of payment, we just don't have enough data to actually formulate a doctrine on that.
[00:17:49] And so trying to set ransom in the framework of substitution, especially substitution replacement. If it was substitution replacement, then what we would have is Jesus as a ransom paying that price for us so that we don't have to. But again, you would need to establish that God has a price that He requires to be paid before anyone is released. And that is just not the framing we have in the Old Testament at all.
[00:18:22] We do, however, have a very strong context of liberative costly self-giving . This is not substitution replacement, but it does fit in with the self-offering idea of the righteous sufferer. And Jesus gives himself for the many, or all, in a way that brings release, or potential release. This also parallels the Exodus. The people who chose to follow Moses are the ones who were released. Whether or not they were slaves, they could follow. But there were no doubt a whole bunch of Israelites who didn't choose to go, a whole bunch of Egyptians who did not follow them. And by remaining behind and by not following and by not participating in the covenant people, then they were not liberated. And so this is how Christ could offer for all, but not everybody's going to be delivered.
[00:19:23] You have to actually follow Christ, be in covenant with Him, and by doing that, you are saved. You are ransomed because He performed the costly self-giving offering of Himself. Not as a way to appease God, not even as a way to appease the law. But because Christ is our Passover.
[00:19:45] If you really want to say that ransom language is substitutionary in the sense that Jesus gives himself for the release of others, doing what they cannot do for themselves, I mean, I guess you can define it that way, but it's not substitution replacement.
[00:20:03] The options are you follow Jesus and you are no longer a slave to sin and death, or you don't follow Jesus and you remain a slave to sin and death. It's the same choice in Egypt. You follow Moses and you're no longer a slave to the Egyptians. You stay in Egypt and you're still a slave to the Egyptians. This is not a substitutionary replacement concept, okay? It's, it's just not.
[00:20:32] I only have so much time in this episode to bring all of this out, but there is a lot of scholarship backing this up. Ransom or redemption, particularly framed in the Old Testament and the ancient Near East, can involve release from slavery, kinship restoration, protection from plague, return from exile, rescue from death, God reclaiming what belongs to Him, and sometimes payment or exchange, but not always.
[00:21:02] But what we don't really have is one party punished instead of another. In fact, we have many places that resist that explicitly. Numbers 35 forbids ransom for murder. Psalm 49 says that no human can ransom another from death. And Isaiah 52 speaks of redemption without money. We have to take all of that into account when we get to the New Testament and it says that Jesus gives himself as a ransom. So there is a seriousness of cost and exchange, but it does not require payment.
[00:21:42] Now, before I get into some of the actual passages, I kind of wanna just lay out a little bit more of this for you. Because I think that the question of ransom is very important, and it gives us a category of what Jesus's suffering actually accomplishes. And I know that especially coming from an atonement kind of theory idea, people really want a, what does this do, kind of a question and answer.
[00:22:13] So I think ransom does help here, even though it is not a mechanism, and it's not, like, some requirement, like it couldn't have happened some other way perhaps or whatever. This is the narrative story we have. The narrative story of Jesus is deeply embedded in the narrative story of the Old Testament, deeply embedded in the history of Israel and the meaning of all of these things, okay?
[00:22:39] So it's not like God is bound by some rule that He can't do something a different way. But God is working in history, and history has these cyclical patterns that keep showing up. And so it can be really great to describe the same thing in the same kinds of terms because of that cyclical pattren of history, and Jesus being the fulfillment of everything we have in the Old Testament.
[00:23:06] So what does Jesus' suffering accomplish?
[00:23:10] Well, ransom language is focused on release. Someone is in bondage, in danger, in captivity, in exile, in servitude or slavery, in death, or under some other kind of a claim. And the ransom or the redemption act brings release. So in the New Testament, Jesus gives himself as a ransom for many or for all, so the language is about costly self-giving that brings liberation. And the whole reason you need it is because the one who is being ransomed is trapped. They cannot do something themselves, and so they literally need a redeemer to save them from that situation. And the situation, again, is really about bondage and slavery.
[00:24:03] That is the main picture we should have here. I'm not trying to sideline the fact that we have a law and a curse, and that the people are in a curse because of their own stupid actions, right? Like, okay, so you have the Torah. You have the people who come from Egypt. You have the Exodus. They enter the land. Before they enter the land, Moses tells that you can have either blessing in the land or you can have curse when you disobey God, and you break covenant with God, and you go and follow other gods, and you go and act in terrible ways. That's going to bring a curse upon you. And that actually happens in the exile. There is a curse that happens, and the people are under that curse.
[00:24:52] The way of release from the curse is not that Jesus takes it instead of them. Because look, they're already under it. They're already experiencing it. So there is no sense of instead of here. They have it. They're under it. That's where they are. They don't need a substitute because they are literally experiencing the curse. We even still literally die.
[00:25:20] But Jesus redeems us from death because we are resurrected. And we're resurrected into spiritual bodies and glorification. So like literally, Jesus us from the things. And literally, Jesus rescued them from the curse, not by being a substitute instead of them, but by entering it and breaking it apart so that they can be liberated in a way that they could not do themselves.
[00:25:52] Jesus gives himself in a way that brings release and he does what they cannot do for themselves. When I see people pushing back against PSA, a lot of times the person being threatened by that pushback comes back and says, "Well, what does Jesus do?"
[00:26:11] The presumption is that if we don't have PSA, then somehow we save ourselves. But that is the furthest thing from what we have. We don't save ourselves. Jesus does. Jesus liberates us. Jesus heals us. Jesus restores things. Jesus defeats death. There's a whole list of things that Jesus does that we can't do for ourselves.
[00:26:36] That does not make Jesus a replacement for because, again, we are already there. We're already suffering the consequences. The Jews of Jesus' day were already under the curse of the law. They were already living out what Deuteronomy had in store for them. They did not need somebody to come in and suffer instead of them because they were already doing that. They needed a release from the bondage of sin, slavery, death, and all of the things that they had put themselves under.
[00:27:09] And all of this is within the context of Jesus' suffering in many different ways. When Peter quotes Isaiah 53, he is doing so not because of penalty, but because Jesus is the healer. It is healing language. So when somebody asks about what do we do with atonement without PSA, without the idea of punishment being taken on as a necessity, it's really, there's a whole bunch of things. We could talk about healing. We can talk about, again, the bondage, the captivity, the death, and the other claims that we have put ourselves under by following something or someone other than God.
[00:27:55] So if we bring the idea of the righteous sufferer into the mix with redemption, what kind of a person suffers and why does it matter? The righteous sufferer frame is more about the pattern of the innocent or the faithful one suffering under conditions created by the wicked, the violent, the unjust, or the rebellious.
[00:28:19] So that does include Abel, Joseph, David in many of the Psalms, the persecuted righteous people in the Psalms, Daniel and his friends, the servant in Isaiah, the martyrs of all time, and Jesus. The frame of the righteous sufferer is not about payment, but suffering faithfully in the midst of human evil, false judgment, violence, betrayal, oppression, and death. And the righteous sufferer does this in order to lead the way through all of that so that people who follow can also do the same thing. Not because they're suddenly capable of saving themselves, but because they're in covenant relationship with him and they come into covenant relationship with God.
[00:29:11] The righteous sufferer, the framework of that asks questions like, who is righteous? Who is causing the suffering? What injustice is being exposed? How does the righteous one remain faithful? How does God vindicate the sufferer? And how does the sufferer's faithfulness benefit others? As Andrew Rillera and many others say, Jesus goes ahead of us, not instead of us.
[00:29:41] And this is what the language of the New Testament picks up on continuously in these themes with Jesus. And Jesus is suffering, and somehow that becomes healing to us. And so there is this overlap with the righteous sufferer's faithful suffering, and that becomes the means of release for others.
[00:30:00] And if you think about it in the frame of Peter quoting Isaiah 53, for instance, where Paul is talking to somebody in slavery who has an unjust master. And somebody who is in that situation has a few options, right? They could be rebellious themselves against their master in retaliation. But what Peter is saying is, "No, you have to follow the lead of Jesus." Just because someone else is unjust to you does not justify you acting in a way that is not righteous. But if you are acting in a righteous way in response to people doing bad things to you, then Jesus literally can transform our behavior and who we are and the way that we live our lives.
[00:30:51] And the problem with imputation and PSA is that it really does not have any way of doing that. It has no narrative where we are actually necessarily made into righteous people. But following the righteous sufferer, we are. We directly are. And of course, this involves the work of the Spirit. It's not just our own power and so on. I probably need to say this multiple times today too. We do not save ourselves. We don't. Jesus does things that we can't do.
[00:31:24] The righteous sufferer gives himself for others, and that self-giving becomes the means of ransom or release in Jesus.
[00:31:33] Now granted, a little bit of this I'm kind of piecing together myself. I don't read a whole lot of people who are talking about things in the same way that I am here. So acknowledgement here that some of this is me taking the frames and looking at the typology and that these really do seem deeply connected thematically. So there is a little bit of caution that I want to put on this. But I really think there's also strong overlap, including in the grammar and linguistically.
[00:32:06] So the best way I would put it is that ransom language names the effect. We have release, rescue, redemption, even restored belonging. And then the righteous sufferer language shows us the shape of it. The faithful one suffers under evil, injustice, violence, or oppression, and that suffering becomes significant for others. It becomes an actual way that the remnant are carried forward and through the suffering and through the injustice.
[00:32:41] Some of the most obvious language is that of, for many or for others. As Mark 10:45 says, quote, "The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." End quote.
[00:33:01] Isaiah 53 repeatedly has the servant in relation to many and we and us and our. The servant's suffering is not isolated private suffering, but it has consequences for and with others. So there is a conceptual overlap here. One faithful figure suffers or gives himself and many benefit
[00:33:26] And as I just said, this vocabulary of giving oneself. In Mark, it says the Son of Man gives his life as ransom. 1 Timothy says Christ gave himself as ransom for all. So the self-giving language is just naturally connecting with righteous sufferer ideas. Because the point is not that there's a payment, but there is a giving. And that giving ends in rescue, liberation.
[00:33:55] But also self-surrender is a theme that Jesus shows and then people are supposed to pattern their lives after. And by doing that, that is transformative. Again, with the Spirit and God acting in us. But just like with Judah, he went from a brother who sold his brother to a brother who gave himself for his brother. That was in the story of Judah. That had nothing to do with ransoming anybody, right? But the pattern is there.
[00:34:30] Ransom also has life language around it. In Exodus 30, each Israelite gives a ransom for his life in the census context. In Psalm 49, no one can ransom another's life from death. Mark 10, Jesus gives his life as a ransom. First Timothy, we just have Christ giving himself as a ransom. And the righteous sufferer pattern also centers on threatened life. The righteous one is hunted, falsely accused, oppressed, rejected, or killed. So these are conceptual bridges that I think are actually pretty clear. Again, ransom is not just about money, but it's about life under threat, life under some form of claim, or life needing release.
[00:35:21] We also have a context of the oppressed, the enslaved, and the dominated. Ransom and redemption language most often shows up under a power claim. Slavery in Egypt, poverty and servitude in Leviticus twenty-five, exile in Isaiah, death or Sheol in Psalm forty-nine. And so righteous sufferer texts also involve the righteous suffering under the powers of the wicked, violent rulers, false witnesses, enemies, oppressive systems, unjust judgment, the pit, the nations, or death. While those are not all the same, they belong in this overlapping narrative world. Both the frames of ransom and the frame of the righteous sufferer are concerned with people caught under destructive powers.
[00:36:15] So we bring all of that to the cross. And that can be seen in not just the cross, but other places in Jesus's life. There's many places where Jesus, the righteous one, enters the condition of the oppressed, the accused, the enslaved, the exiled, the death bound. And he's entering that as the faithful one. And his suffering and his moving through that situation becomes the means of release for everyone else. The idea of the vindication after suffering is absolutely crucial and forms another bridge between ransom and the righteous suffering.
[00:36:56] All right, so because I don't have enough time to really dig deeply into the ransom and redemption texts, and there's just too many of them, I'm going to give you some diagnostic questions to ask in these passages. When ransom or redemption language appears, here's a few questions you can ask.
[00:37:16] Number one, who or what is being redeemed? Is it a person, a family member, land, inheritance, the firstborn, Israel as a whole? Someone threatened by death, someone in slavery or debt, or even some animal like a donkey, for instance?
[00:37:37] Number two, from what are they being released? Is it slavery? Is it poverty? Loss of inheritance? Danger? Plague? Exile? Death? Foreign domination? A legal claim? A family crisis? Servitude? Or something else?
[00:37:57] Number three, who has the claim? Pharaoh, a creditor, a foreign power, death, the land, Yahweh, a family obligation, or maybe there's nobody named as the claimant. Keep in mind that in any given passage, we might not be able to answer all of these questions cleanly.
[00:38:19] But number four, what is given, paid, exchanged, or done? Is it money? Is it land? Is it a substitute? Is it a relative's action? Is it divine power? Is it judgment against oppressors? Or is there no payment at all?
[00:38:39] Question five, who receives the ransom, if anyone? This is especially important because a lot of later theologians are trying to find a recipient, but the text may not be identifying one. And so in some cases, asking paid to whom may be less central than asking released from what or restored to what.
[00:39:05] Question six, what changes afterward? Is it freedom, return, restored land, restored family, covenant belonging, protection from plague, release from slavery, rescue from death, renewed service to Yahweh?
[00:39:23] Question number seven: Does the passage actually involve one person receiving the punishment owed to another? This is a question we should not simply assume. Ransom may involve a cost. It might involve a payment. There is possibly an exchange of some sort. But we still need to ask whether it is actual substitution replacement.
[00:39:47] A few key distinctions to keep in view when you're looking at these passages. Ransom or redemption language may speak of costly release. But costly release is not automatically the same thing as penal substitutionary replacement. The category has to be built from the passages themselves and the context.
[00:40:08] Something I would suggest is that rather than asking what was the price, we also need to ask what was the bondage? What was lost? Who had the claim? What changed afterward? And sometimes the question of payment is useful. But often the text doesn't seem interested in that question, and so if we make that the controlling question, we may miss what the passage is actually emphasizing.
[00:40:35] I want us to keep the idea of ransom really strongly without making it do work that it's really just not doing.
[00:40:45] Okay, so with those questions in place, again, the best place to begin is the Exodus because that is the great redemption story of the Old Testament. Exodus 6 verse 6 says, quote, " I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment." End quote.
[00:41:15] Exodus 15 verse 13 says, quote, " You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed. You have guided them by your strength to your holy abode." End quote.
[00:41:30] Deuteronomy 7 verse 8 says, quote, " But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt." End quote.
[00:41:50] All right, so redemption in Exodus includes slavery under Pharaoh, Yahweh's covenant memory and covenant faithfulness, liberation by divine power, judgment against Egypt and Pharaoh and their gods, release from bondage, movement toward worship and covenant life, and Israel becoming Yahweh's own people. This is done by God's mighty hand. That is about power. That is about redeeming something, not with money, but the way that God did it in the Exodus.
[00:42:26] All of it is about release, release, release. And Israel's not redeemed into some neutral space where they can just do what they want. They're not released so they can now belong to nobody. They go from being under Pharaoh to being under Yahweh. So this is God reclaiming His people from bondage. That is the massive overarching framework. This is our foundational redemption picture. The Exodus material also uses redemption language in terms of some other interesting things, like the kinsman redeemer, for instance. The kinsman redeemer acts to recover what belongs within the family.
[00:43:10] So remember, we've made a distinction between the idea of someone acting for someone else and someone acting instead of someone else. Those can cross over, but they don't necessarily, and in fact, they usually don't. Yahweh acts for Israel. On behalf of Israel. Yahweh defeats the power that holds Israel, and Yahweh brings Israel into covenant life. I've already talked about how the lamb is not a picture of substitution in this story.
[00:43:42] Okay, so we have that established in our minds here as a baseline. Now let's go into the book of Leviticus, because everyone loves the book of Leviticus. And in Leviticus 25, redemption is not only about slavery in Egypt, but it is also about land, kinship, inheritance, poverty, and the responsibility of a near relative. So many of these things are just ideas and concepts that don't jive entirely with how we think of things today.
[00:44:15] So Leviticus 25 gives us the context of the Sabbath year and the year of Jubilee. It also talks about redemption of property, , and it has also a focus for treating poor people well and actually doing something about that. I don't have time to read this whole chapter, but it's a chapter more people should become familiar with, I think. It's probably a chapter that the Israelites themselves should have been more familiar with because they don't seem to have done all of this, and that's what led to the exile.
[00:44:49] So the main themes that we have in Leviticus twenty-five, the land must not be permanently alienated from the family. Impoverished Israelites may sell land use rights, and a near relative may redeem the land. An Israelite who sells himself into servitude may be redeemed. The jubilee returns the land and releases the people. Israel belongs to Yahweh, so Israelites cannot be treated as permanent slaves. This is all seated within the context of the Exodus.
[00:45:23] Like in Leviticus 25, verse 23, it says, quote, " The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine, for you are strangers and sojourners with me." End quote.
[00:45:38] So this is actually casting the Israelites in kind of a framework of the stranger. Leviticus 25 verse 25 says, quote, "If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold." End quote.
[00:45:59] Jumping down to the end of the chapter, Leviticus 25:55, quote, "For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God." End quote.
[00:46:17] So is there an exchange that happens in this ransom? Absolutely. That exchange went from Pharaoh to God. It's not an exchange of payment, it's an exchange of ownership and belonging. So if we're really centered on the idea of payment, we miss the actual frame.
[00:46:37] In Leviticus 25, redemption is about restoring what poverty, debt, or servitude has disrupted. It's about keeping land within the family, preventing permanent loss of inheritance. It's about freeing kin from servitude and preserving the family's place in Israel. But ultimately, it's about remembering that Israel and the land belong ultimately to Yahweh.
[00:47:01] So Israel's social life is connected directly back into what happened with the Exodus. And so we can see that redemption becomes a way of organizing the life of God's people. It's a thing that just continually happens, actually. It's not just a one-time thing. If Yahweh brought Israel out of the house of slavery, then Israel cannot build a society where their own kin are swallowed permanently by debt, poverty, or servitude. And if that happens, then it's bad news and look, exile.
[00:47:34] Now we have an expanded redemption category. Again, sure, we can have payment, but we have kinship, claim, restoration, belonging, return, and inheritance. All of those things are part of the idea of redemption. These are not categories about justice and law in a way where if you do something wrong, you pay the price, right? The justice here is one that is far more ethical and overarching than just a legal set of codes. It's not about breaking the law, and so you deserve some punishment. It is about living your life in a way where you are yourselves unjust, where you are enslavement. You are causing the poor and people to be dispossessed of their inheritance that God gave them.
[00:48:32] That is the broader context of justice here. It is not about, " Oh, there's a law. You broke the law. Now you deserve a penalty." I mean, there is a penalty, and there is consequence here, but it is a very, very deeply ethical one that is about society, the structure of society, how we treat each other, how we care for each other, and how we relate all of that to what God gives us.
[00:49:00] Again, it's not about legal justice in a sense of a law code where, "Oh, darn it, I did something that the law told me not to, and I better pay the price." No, it is conceptually larger than that and conceptually more important than that. The way that the Israelites are to treat each other is within the frame of family and inheritance and again, covenant belonging. When you're treating people not like that, then you are causing injustice, you are causing death, you are causing slavery.
[00:49:39] Alongside this kinship restoration frame, there's also places where ransom is connected even more directly to life, danger, and even atonement. Exodus 30 gives us one of those examples with the census ransom. This is genuinely a strange passage. So let me go ahead and read this because it's fairly short this time. This is God speaking to Moses.
[00:50:05] And starting in Exodus 30 verse 12, it says, quote, " When you take the census of the people of Israel, then each shall give a ransom for his life to the Lord when you number them, that there be no plague among them when you number them. Each one who is numbered in the census shall give this: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary. The shekel is 20 gerahs, half a shekel as an offering to the Lord. Everyone who is numbered in the census from 20 years old and upward, shall give the Lord's offering. The rich shall not give more and the poor shall not give less than the half shekel when you give the Lord's offering to make atonement for your lives. You shall take the atonement money from the people of Israel and give it for the service of the tent of meeting, that it may bring the people of Israel to remembrance before the Lord so as to make atonement for your lives." End quote.
[00:51:06] So really kind of a strange situation here, right? All right, so let's just look at this broadly. When Israel is numbered, each man gives a ransom for his life. The stated purpose is so that no plague comes upon them when they are numbered. The rich and poor give the same amount. The money is used for the service of the tent of meeting. The payment becomes a memorial or a reminder before Yahweh. So this passage connects ransom with life, numbering or census, danger, plague aversion, atonement, sanctuary service, and Yahweh's claim over Israel.
[00:51:45] Some scholars have summarized it as a protective payment that prevents divine judgment during the census. And generally the census is seen as something that they're doing because they are going to war or they might be going to war.
[00:52:01] Now, why is it bringing up atonement? Is it because we're appeasing God? Well, it's a difficult question, clearly the money is actually going to the sanctuary service. So there is a connection there with what may be going on with the sanctuary, right? And atonement and sacred space and all of those ideas. Again, the question is really difficult here of why it's bad for a census to happen. Why is it dangerous? It's probably associated with going to war. It might be associated with taxation in general, and this is a way to prevent over taxation. It can be associated with royal power and control.
[00:52:43] Counting can also imply ownership or mastery. But Israel belongs to Yahweh, so the ransom acknowledges Yahweh's claim over their lives. The one who is trying to count them is acting like an owner of these people. And that ownership properly belongs to God. So numbering is an act of control, an act of possession, a way of measuring strength. But Israel's life does not belong to the king, to the army, or whoever is taking the census. Israel belongs to Yahweh.
[00:53:19] We're told about the function of the ransom. There's a plague that is ... might possibly happen. But it also protects their lives. It supports the sanctuary. A reminder that their lives belong to Yahweh. Whatever you think of that, what this text gives us is ransom language, language about life, about atonement, about danger, payment equality, sanctuary service. But what it does not give us is replacement or a transfer of guilt to a substitute, or a substitute penal mechanism to avoid the plague. In all likelihood, we are supposed to compare this to David's census in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21, which directly shows the danger of numbering Israel wrongly because the result is a plague.
[00:54:13] And that is a really quite difficult thing because, why is Yahweh acting in a way that really seems not great to us today in a lot of ways, I think. We aren't given a whole lot of context where we don't know if they're talking about going to war. We don't know if they're talking about something else. But I do think this idea of power and ownership and acknowledgement of who God is in relation to the people is essential. To me, that is the point of the passage here.
[00:54:46] We might say directly in this passage that Yahweh is the source of the danger because wouldn't Yahweh be the one to give the plague? But would we actually that it is simply the act of counting that would cause it? Or is there something broader and deeper and more important going on? Because if they're doing a census, then they're probably showing something in the way that, "Look, we are not being loyal to Yahweh. We are not living our lives in covenant relationship and trust with Yahweh." And so it's not really the census that's the problem. It is the fact that they are under judgment because broadly speaking, they are acting in unjust ways. They're acting in ways that are not in alignment with the covenant with Yahweh, and acknowledging His strength, and acknowledging His ownership, and acknowledging trust in Him. So the problem isn't really the census and this little small detail. The problem is that it indicates where Israel's heart is.
[00:55:51] All right, so Exodus 30 shows us ransom as protection from danger and something that is authorized. But let's move on to a place where ransom is explicitly forbidden, and that is in Numbers 35.
[00:56:05] Numbers 35 verse 31 says, quote, " Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall be put to death. And you shall accept no ransom for him who has fled to his city of refuge that he may return to dwell in the land before the death of the high priest. You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I, the Lord, dwell in the midst of the people of Israel." End quote.
[00:56:48] Now we have ransom in connection with homicide law, with blood guilt, with land pollution, with justice, and a distinction between murder and manslaughter, so that's quite interesting. The presence of Yahweh in the land. And we have limits of compensation. And importantly, this is not just about a single murderer, but it is concerned with the land, the community, the pollution that is caused by bloodshed, and Yahweh dwelling amongst the people of Israel, right?
[00:57:21] So when things build up, we see what happens during and before the exile. They are spit out of the land because of the pollution that has happened in it. This isn't just a private concern here with the murderer, but it affects the whole community.
[00:57:38] Obviously, this passage says that somebody cannot be a substitute replacement here. We have boundaries. And that this is at least one place where we have a forbidden compensation or exchange or substitution ideas, right?
[00:57:55] But now let's look at Psalm 49, because here we have ransom that's desired, but it can't happen. Psalm 49, starting in verse 7. Quote, " Truly no man can ransom another or give to God the price of his life. For the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit. For he sees that even the wise die. The fool and the stupid alike must perish and leave their wealth to others. Their graves are their homes forever, their dwelling places to all generations, though they called lands by their own names. Man in his pomp will not remain. He is like the beasts that perish. This is the path of those who have foolish confidence. Yet after them, people approve of their boasts. Selah. Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol. Death shall be their shepherd, and the upright shall rule over them in the morning. Their form shall be consumed in Sheol with no place to dwell. But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me. Selah." End quote.
[00:59:08] I think this is really important, especially when we come to Jesus. I think we tend to sideline the problem of death, but it was genuinely something that Jesus did something about.
[00:59:21] Psalm 49 is also especially focused on the rich, as if being rich and being wealthy is a way that you can overcome the problem of death. The psalmist warns against fearing or envying those who trust in wealth because their wealth cannot follow them into death, their honor cannot keep them alive, their possessions cannot buy life, their status cannot rescue them from Sheol.
[00:59:46] So there's a contrast here. Humans can't ransom from death. Wealth cannot ransom from death. But God can redeem from Sheol. It's not that God finally shows up with enough money. The answer is that God is the one who redeems from the power of Sheol. It's really fascinating, this passage, because when we're asking about ransom and money, well, guess what? We don't get a payment here. God has to do that by his overpowering strong arm, we might say.
[01:00:19] All right. I don't wanna end and not talk about Isaiah. Because this is really crucial to the ransom question. Isaiah forty-three, verse three says, quote, " For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life." End quote.
[01:00:51] And then we come to Isaiah 52:3, which remember, this is before the Servant Song of Isaiah 53 of the suffering servant, but it's part of this whole conversation with Isaiah, okay. Isaiah 52:3 says, quote, "For thus says the Lord: 'You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money.'" End quote.
[01:01:18] All right, so Isaiah is connecting ransom with Israel's restoration, God as Savior, God's love for Israel, Israel being precious in God's sight, and he gives nations in exchange. This is geopolitical language and it's not really a payment mechanism. The deeper significance seems to be that God values His people, loves them, and is willing to speak of nations in exchange for them. If we're talking about God who is over all things and over all nations, and even though He doesn't have a special relationship with other nations, we can presume that God still loves them and doesn't want them to be exchanged. And yet we still have this idea, right? So I think it's costly still for God.
[01:02:07] Isaiah 52 brings the conversation even more directly that people are redeemed without money. So we have a clear metaphorical idea here. Babylon didn't pay Yahweh for Israel, and Yahweh doesn't need to pay Babylon to get Israel back. And the stress falls on God's power and His grace, not payment, even though we're using redemption themes here. So clearly, redemption can be powerful, saving, costly in some larger sense, rooted in God's love and commitment, connected to return from exile, and certainly described in exchange terms, but in ways that are really hard for us to really put together one-to-one, right?
[01:02:54] And Israel's redemption language here is deeply Exodus-shaped. Just as Yahweh redeemed Israel from Egypt, he will act again to redeem his people from exile. So Isaiah is giving us a new Exodus theme that is going to go into the return from exile. It's connected to divine kingship. Gee, I wonder where we connect this to the gospel, right? And God's arm revealed. Israel talks about comfort for Zion, liberation without money, and really the whole idea of consummation of all things good.
[01:03:31] Okay, so that was a lot. A lot of data, a lot of points we can talk about here, but let's pull at least a little bit of this together. Ransom and redemption are such strong biblical categories, but I think we tend to make them overly theological. We divorce them from the stories in some ways, I think. The whole range of the story is about release and rescue, restoration, belonging to God. It's not really about this legal mechanism.
[01:04:03] What we have gathered here, Exodus redemption is liberation from slavery, from slavery under a slave master that we should not be under.
[01:04:12] Leviticus 25 brings kinship restoration where we have inheritance that's preserved, care for the poor, and poverty and bad situations not permanently erasing one's place in the family. The redeemer acts because he is near kin.
[01:04:31] Then we have Exodus 30, the census ransom. Ransom is about protection and life still, and dedication to God and belonging.
[01:04:42] Numbers 35, ransom cannot be done in the case of a murder.
[01:04:47] Psalm 49, ransom is impossible for humans or for money, but God can save us.
[01:04:54] Then we have all these passages in Isaiah which point forward to, ransom is not just a past event, but it can happen in the future as well.
[01:05:05] So the range of meaning that we have here, ransom and redemption involves things like liberation from slavery, release from oppressive power, family obligation, restoration of land and inheritance, freeing kin from servitude, protection from things like plague perhaps, acknowledgment of Yahweh's claim over life, legal compensation in some contexts, prohibition of compensation in other contexts, human inability before death, God's own rescue of us from Sheol, return from exile, geopolitical exchange, redemption without money, and covenant belonging.
[01:05:47] And so these are really full categories, right? So while they include payment in some places, they are not exhausted by that idea. And in many, many of these places, payment is not the thing. Even if they include some idea of exchange, a lot of times the exchange isn't about the payment. A lot of times the exchange is about who owns us. Even when there is a cost involved, that cost doesn't have to mean payment. A costly release is not a release that is done necessarily by paying a price.
[01:06:25] And if we're not seeing the picture of suffering involved here as well, we're missing a really big part of the category because talk about costly deliverance if the one who's delivering you is actually suffering and expects you to follow him in that suffering. That's exceptionally costly, but it's not a payment exchange.
[01:06:49] Okay, so if you go into this question and ask these things about Jesus in the New Testament, instead of asking only who was paid and what penalty was transferred and who was punished instead, we need to ask some deeper questions. What bondage is being addressed? What claim is being broken? What release is being accomplished? What people are being gathered? What new belonging is being created? And most of all, how does Jesus' self-giving fulfill the pattern of God redeeming what belongs to Him?
[01:07:30] With the range of ideas we now have in our heads, we can come back to that Jesus ransom language and we should hear the full strength of the idea behind it.
[01:07:41] I basically already told you what I think about Mark 10 and 1 Timothy. But I hope all of the Old Testament background really helped to bring the force of what I'm saying in those passages. Ransom is a really important topic here, but we have to view it from the context of the Old Testament and not our modern ideas.
[01:08:02] So in the end, Jesus is giving himself for us. Everything Jesus did, including his death, was costly. Everything Jesus did is saving us. Jesus liberates us. He mediates for us. He restores us. He heals us. He brings us out of bondage and into belonging. And certainly, certainly Jesus does what human beings cannot do for themselves.
[01:08:30] I think that really we have sometimes made the word ransom smaller by forcing it into mechanism and payment. And really that's the wrong direction to go with the language. I really want us to come away seeing that ransom is bigger than the one question we often bring to it. It is about release, rescue, restoration, belonging, and God's own action to redeem what belongs to Him. And that self-offering that God gives us is a pattern that we are to live into.
[01:09:05] The suffering is not about substitutionary suffering where we get off the hook, but rather we also are to live into the same thing, and that is transformative. And I think that is the pattern from the Old Testament forward.
[01:09:20] All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up here, and not quite sure yet what the next step of our conversation will be. I'm sure there will be another step in this whole idea of substitution and things like that, but I don't quite have that laid out yet. If you guys have any questions or any points you think that I haven't hit on that would be really helpful to see, I would love to hear from you.
[01:09:46] You can reach me through my website at genesismarksthespot.com, or you can find me on Facebook. Although I will say I've been getting a lot more messages on Facebook, and it's harder to get to them all sometimes, so if I don't reply to you, you can bug me again. I will not mind at all. Please bug me again if I don't answer your question. You can also talk to me on my biblical theology community at On This Rock, and I will leave a link to that in the show notes.
[01:10:15] I hope you are finding this survey of information from the text and the patterns, I hope you're finding that interesting because I certainly am. Again, feel free to reach out to me with any questions or thoughts you have. Thanks for listening, and thanks especially to those of you who support me financially through Patreon, PayPal, and my biblical theology community. I greatly, greatly appreciate all of you guys. All right. Well, thank you so much, and I wish you all a blessed week. And we will see you later.
