to buy someone out: to pay the price that frees a person from a claim held over them
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintyStrong
The plain word underneath this one just means to buy something in the marketplace (ἀγοράζω). This is that word strengthened, with a piece added that means "out of," and the picture sharpens: not simply paying for something, but paying to get someone out. Somebody is being held, and the payment is what removes them from that hold.
Paul uses it twice, both times of Christ and both times about the same predicament. In one verse Christ buys people out from under the law's curse, and the cost named is his own death on a cross. In the other the purpose is stated: he buys out those living under the law so that they can be received as sons. The word itself never says who collects the price, and Paul does not raise that question; what it does say is that a real cost was paid and that people who were held are now out.
It sits in a family of rescue words that each look at the same event from a different angle. One watches the captive walk away free once a ransom is handed over (λυτρόω); another names the resulting release itself (ἀπολύτρωσις). This one keeps its feet in the market: it is the word for the transaction, the moment the price changes hands and a person's standing changes with it. Behind all of them stands an older Hebrew practice, where a relative buys back a family member who has been sold (גָּאַל) and where a life is set free by handing over its payment (פָּדָה).
Gal 3:13Gal 4:5
Disputed
Whether the word in Galatians should be heard against the Greek and Roman practice in which a slave's freedom was arranged through a purchase made in a god's name.
minorityThat practice supplies the background, so the word pictures a purchase whose whole point is that the one bought comes out free.; A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (trans. L. Strachan)
majorityThe background is ordinary legal and commercial practice together with the Old Testament vocabulary of redemption, and the temple parallel should not be pressed.; F. Lyall, Slaves, Citizens, Sons: Legal Metaphors in the Epistles; D. B. Martin, Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity
2
to buy up the available time: to seize an opportunity fully while it is still open
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
In Ephesians and Colossians the same verb turns into merchant's shorthand. A trader who spots a limited supply buys up the whole lot before anyone else can. Paul applies that to time: the opening in front of you is limited stock, so take all of it.
Both times the phrase comes with a reason attached. In one letter the days themselves are evil, so the good time available is scarce and must be claimed. In the other the concern is the people outside the church, so what gets bought up is the chance to act wisely toward them. The word Paul uses for time here is not clock time but the right moment, the opening that will not stay open.
Older English Bibles rendered the phrase "redeeming the time," which sounds like a doctrine and sends readers hunting for a hidden meaning. The sense is more down to earth than that, and it stands in the letters next to plain instructions about how to live: spend the opening you have, because it is running out.
It adds the idea of buying someone out of a bad situation: Christ paying to free people from the curse of the law and from being under the law.Gal 3:13Gal 4:5
It also appears in a set expression about time, urging readers to buy up every opportunity and make the most of it while it lasts.Eph 5:16Col 4:5
Both
Both picture paying a price to gain something, and both are used for the saving act of purchasing people so they belong to God.Rev 5:9Gal 3:13
It is the everyday word for buying at the market: paying money to get goods, food, or property in ordinary commerce.Mat 13:44Mat 25:10Jhn 6:5
It carries the image of Christ purchasing people at a price, making them his own possession, without stressing what they are bought out of.1Co 6:20Rev 5:9Rev 14:4
λυτρόωto set someone free by paying a ransom; it watches the captive walk away, where this word watches the price change hands
Twice it is not about rescuing people at all. Paul turns the buying image on time itself, telling believers to buy up the present moment and make the most of every opportunity they have.Eph 5:16Col 4:5
When it does describe rescue, what people are bought out of is always a legal hold on them: the curse the law pronounced, and the standing of those living under the law.Gal 3:13Gal 4:5
Both
Both name what people are set free from, and in each case it is something that held them guilty: the curse the law pronounced, and lawlessness of every kind.Gal 3:13Tit 2:14
Both come out of the marketplace, where a payment secures a person's release, and both put Christ in the place of the one who pays so that others walk free.Gal 4:51Pe 1:18
It keeps the price itself in view. Peter says plainly that the release was not bought with things that wear out, silver or gold, but with the costly blood of Christ.1Pe 1:18
It is the word for setting a whole people free, in the shape of the exodus: the travelers on the Emmaus road had hoped Jesus was the one to free Israel, and Titus speaks of a rescued people who become their rescuer's own.Luk 24:21Tit 2:14
ἀπολύτρωσιςthe noun for the release that results, redemption as a settled state, where this is the verb for the act of buying someone out
Keeps the marketplace in the picture and names the transaction: the price changes hands and a person passes out of someone else's hold, with the cost spelled out as Christ taking the curse in their place.Gal 3:13Gal 4:5
Reaches outside rescue language altogether into everyday advice, where what gets bought up is the available time, the way a trader clears out a scarce supply before it is gone.Eph 5:16Col 4:5
Both
Both belong to the language of ransom: someone is held, a cost is paid, and the person comes out free. One says the freedom came through Christ's blood, the other says Christ bought people out by becoming a curse for them.Eph 1:7Gal 3:13
Both are used of the same event, Christ's death freeing people from what held them, which is why English Bibles reach for the same family of words, rendered "redemption" for one and "redeemed" for the other.Col 1:14Gal 4:5
Names the freedom itself, as something a person already holds. Paul sets it beside being counted right with God, and says believers have it in Christ, so it is a standing possession rather than a moment of paying.Rom 3:241Co 1:30Col 1:14
Points forward to a rescue that has not arrived yet. Believers who already have it still groan while they wait for their bodies to be set free, a day is named after it, and Jesus tells his followers to look up because it is coming near.Rom 8:23Eph 1:14Eph 4:30Luk 21:28
Can mean plain release with no purchase anywhere in view, as when tortured believers refused the freedom their captors offered them.Heb 11:35
exagorazō in the other biblical languages
גָּאַלHebrew“to redeem: redeem”the Hebrew word for a relative buying back a family member or their land, which adds a family obligation this Greek word does not name
The Greek word can buy up time itself. Paul tells readers to buy back the passing opportunity of each day, a use with no person, land, or family in view at all.Eph 5:16Col 4:5
What people are bought out of is a legal sentence rather than a debt or a lost field. In Galatians the rescue is from the curse the law pronounced, and the price named is Christ taking that curse himself.Gal 3:13
Both
Both name a payment that lifts a person out of bondage and puts them into a standing they could not claim on their own. In Leviticus a relative buys a poor Israelite out of servitude; in Galatians people under the law are bought out so they can be received as sons.Lev 25:48Lev 25:49Gal 4:5
English Bibles render both words "redeem", and in both the rescuer can be God acting for a whole people rather than one buyer settling one account. Israel is brought out of slavery in Egypt, and those under the law are bought out from its curse.Exo 6:6Exo 15:13Gal 3:13
The buyer is a near relative acting on a standing family duty. When land is sold off under hardship, the closest kinsman is expected to step in and buy it back so it stays with the family.Lev 25:25Rut 3:12Rut 4:4
The same word names the relative who answers a killing, where nothing at all is bought. He is the family member charged with pursuing the one who took a life, and cities of refuge exist to hold him back.Num 35:19Deu 19:6Jos 20:3
It also covers buying back what has already been promised to the sanctuary, at a set value with a fifth added to the price.Lev 27:13Lev 27:19
פָּדָהHebrew“to ransom”the Hebrew word for freeing a person or animal by handing over its payment, the closest match to the buying out in Galatians
Half of its New Testament appearances are not about buying a person at all. Paul uses it for buying up the present moment, usually rendered "making the most of the time", so what is purchased is opportunity in evil days rather than a captive.Eph 5:16Col 4:5
When it does concern people, what they are bought out of is a legal verdict rather than a human captor: the curse the law pronounces, with Christ absorbing that curse himself as the price paid.Gal 3:13Gal 4:5
Both
Both picture a payment that moves people out from under a power that was holding them, and English Bibles reach for the same family of words for each, "redeem" and "ransom". The Old Testament word does it for slaves brought out of Egypt, the New Testament word for people bought out from under the law.Deu 7:8Gal 3:13
In both, the release is not the end of the story: the freed party now belongs to the one who paid. Israel is a freed slave who owes the LORD the memory of it, and those bought out from under the law are placed as sons.Deu 15:15Gal 4:5
It is the word of the priestly rulebook, where the payment is fixed and countable: a firstborn donkey is bought back with a lamb, and a firstborn son at five shekels of silver.Exo 13:13Num 18:16Lev 27:27
The one paying is often an ordinary human being, not God: a master lets a slave woman be bought back, the army buys Jonathan out of a death sentence, and Job asks his friends to pay off the ruthless men holding him.Exo 21:81Sa 14:45Job 6:23
It stretches past the marketplace into plain rescue, where no price is mentioned and the word simply means to get someone out alive: out of famine and sword, out of the grip of the grave.Job 5:20Hos 13:14Psa 34:22
It also appears in the negative, marking what money cannot buy back: a person under a ban may not be ransomed, and no one is rich enough to buy back another man's life.Lev 27:29Psa 49:7
What scholars say about exagorazō
BDAG divides the four New Testament occurrences into two entries: an active use meaning to secure the release of someone by payment (Galatians 3:13; 4:5), and a middle use meaning to make the most of an opportunity (Ephesians 5:16;Colossians 4:5), the latter paralleled at Daniel 2:8 in the Septuagint and in commercial usage collected by Moulton and Milligan. Büchsel, treating the ἀγοράζω group in TDNT, reads the compound as the simple verb intensified with the note of removal from a prior claim, while cautioning that the preposition will not by itself yield a doctrine of who receives the price. The sacral manumission background popularized by Deissmann from the Delphic inscriptions is still widely cited but contested: Lyall and Martin argue that Paul's slavery language draws on ordinary Greco-Roman legal and social practice together with the Septuagint redemption vocabulary, and Dunn's commentary on Galatians locates the imagery primarily in the exodus and kinsman-redeemer traditions. The lexical sense within each of the two groups is not itself in doubt.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. ἐξαγοράζωlexicon
LSJ, s.v. ἐξαγοράζωlexicon
F. Büchsel, "ἀγοράζω, ἐξαγοράζω," TDNT 1:124-128theological-dictionary
J. H. Moulton and G. Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, s.v. ἐξαγοράζωlexicon
J. D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (Black's New Testament Commentaries)commentary
A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (trans. L. Strachan)monograph
F. Lyall, Slaves, Citizens, Sons: Legal Metaphors in the Epistlesmonograph