to act as the next of kin who reclaims what has been lost to the family: buying back land or a relative, avenging a killing, or pleading a relative's cause.
Behind this word stands one Israelite family duty, not a scatter of separate ideas. When a relative fell into debt and had to sell off land, was sold into servitude, was killed, or was wronged, the nearest eligible kinsman had both the right and the obligation to step in and put it right. He bought the land or the person back, he hunted down the killer, he took up the wronged relative's case. One form of the word names that man, the redeemer or next of kin, and the verb names what he does. Scholars sum up the single core as reclaiming what is rightfully the family's and restoring it.
The senses below, then, are facets of one role rather than different words. The thread running through buying back a field, freeing a relative from servitude, avenging a death, and standing up for someone wronged is family solidarity: a person with the standing and the duty acts to recover a relative or what belongs to them. This is why one Hebrew word covers situations English keeps in separate boxes (property law, criminal justice, the courtroom). What is striking, and the reason this word matters, is that Hebrew alone among the Semitic languages bound all of this into a single term; the surrounding cultures used unrelated words for these separate practices.
Israel then took this family word and made it the great name for God. Already at the Exodus, God says he will redeem his people with an outstretched arm, and the rescue from Egypt is pictured as a kinsman discharging a family duty. In the second half of Isaiah it becomes God's signature title, the Redeemer of Israel, set beside the Holy One of Israel: the transcendent God is also the near relative bound to buy his people back, this time out of exile. The claim is deliberate and daring. The God of Israel has not merely chosen to be kind; he has bound himself by the strongest tie a person could have, the tie of next of kin, and so he cannot stand by while his people are in bondage.
Nuances
Who Job's redeemer is, and what Job expects of him.
- contestedGod himself. Job's strict belief in one God rules out a third party, and "lives" echoes the title "the living God."; Robert Gordis, The Book of Job (Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1978); John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (1988)
- contestedA heavenly advocate distinct from the God who has become Job's adversary, a defender in the heavenly court answering to the accuser.; Marvin H. Pope, Job, Anchor Bible 15 (1965); Norman C. Habel, The Book of Job, OTL (1985)
- contestedJob's own cry for vindication: there is no external advocate, only Job's protest, like his blood crying from the ground, personified as a witness that will outlast him.; David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20, WBC 17 (1989)