Double, Double, Toil and Trouble
Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion; Psalm 103:4 NASB
Redeems – Who redeems your life from the pit? David frames it as a statement, but perhaps we should begin with a question. Who does this? According to David’s psalm, YHVH is the redeemer. Of course, Trinitarians will take this as an inference that Yeshua is YHVH, but that’s not what the text specifically says. David’s claim is the monotheistic one: YHVH is the redeemer. What does YHVH do? He redeems. The Hebrew verb is perhaps not what we would have expected. We might have been looking for yasha’, “saves.” But David uses go’el, “to act as the kinsman, to ransom.” What is the difference? Go’el assumes some filial relationship. While I might “save” someone unrelated to me simply because the person faces great danger, the act of the go’el depends on family. In specific cases found in the Torah, the go’el retains the privilege or duty of intervening in circumstances that threaten familial order, property or protocol. This includes redeeming the first born with the appropriate payment, avenging a murder and vindicating unjustly oppressed relatives. One of the great love stories of Scripture is built around the privilege and duty of the go’el.
Now reflect on David’s personalized address. YHVH acts as go’el for David. This can only be true if David is part of YHVH’s family. David assumes this is the case. But that implies that David, who certainly acted as a rebellious and disobedient child in some notorious ways, is still able to call upon YHVH as the go’el. In spite of David’s past sins, the structure of the relationship is still in place. Time and tide do not wash away the Lord’s privilege or duty. You see, being go’el does not depend on the behavior of the relative. You do not stop being my second cousin once removed because you rob a bank and are sentenced to prison. You are not disqualified from being my long lost uncle just because I haven’t seen you in thirty years. You are still my brother even if we haven’t spoken to each other for decades. Double, double, toil and trouble is not enough to erase the bloodline. Nor is it enough to eliminate my responsibility as go’el. Once more this is a case for the oddities of Hebrew attribution. God is not simply known as Redeemer. Redeemer and YHVH are permanently fused. One does not exist without the other. That is why David, even after his bent behavior, can firmly and irrevocably assert that YHVH is go’el. It doesn’t depend on David. It depends only on the family YHVH established.
Before you quickly decide that this endorses the “once saved always saved” theory, let me remind you that go’el determines the appropriate action for maintaining the relationship. Family matters may not always mean rescue of the bent one. In fact, sometimes the go’el needs to punish in order to bring about family protection and continuity. Tough love is real. The judgment of God does not mean He is no longer go’el. It means that He can only accomplish what needs to be done for the family by sending you to the woodshed.
Topical Index: go’el, redeemer, Psalm 103:4
It’s so interesting that growing up in church, a very fundamental one and later switching to a charismatic one, hearing how I was to pray to Jesus, and hearing how I was to pray to the Holy Spirit it never seemed right. When I would pray and read the word it always was about Yaweh.
How can I be so amazed at His leading when my very prayers have always been that He would lead and guide me into truth and not let me be deceived. He has always been my salvation! To realize that crying out to know Him and to be a life He could use has been heard.
From the time I was a young child, five years old to be exact there has always been a longing for Yaweh, and an awareness of His presence and my need for Him. Sure there have been multiple times of my own way and falling into the very things that have brought destruction and devastation into my life but I am proclaiming once again, He is and has been faithful. He has redeemed me from the snares and ways of destruction! He has been my kinsman Redeemer! He has covered me with His glory and He has been the lifter of my head.
So who pulled everything down around my ears? I did. Who is “I”? Was it just me? What exactly has my destruction been composed of? When I look back at my life, I see a wasteland. Did I do it all? Not exactly. You see, I may have a big Daddy, but my other relatives count, too. I am affected by the choices of all around me. My earthly family on this planet has made many choices that have had the net effect of putting me in a ditch. My choices, also, have introduced chaos and destruction into the world and the lives of others; not just myself. We all bear the unbearable responsibility of being able to choose the destruction of more than ourselves. There is no such thing as my own, private little sin, that doesn’t bother anybody as long as they don’t know about it. Even the smallest infraction, the smallest little crack in the unity of reality, would have caused enough chaos to require my Kinsman to have to come stop the sea from destroying the dike with His own body, and with His own life. Why His own life? Because the wages, the net effect, of sin, any sin, means death. The universe, you see, apparently cannot bear even the slightest bit less love. Neither, it appears, can I. Love does not just make the world go ’round, it holds up the heavenly bodies, and all the delicate interwoven complexity of life, where everything depends on all else. Bobble this ball even the slightest, and the whole train can lurch off the track. Love is powerful for the good, but the lack of it is just as powerful for evil. We have all made a big, big mess for the family, and all that was given the family to be in charge of. Lots of death and destruction!
You know, I think we can get all hung up on just EXACTLY what part we are responsible for, and to hear the arguments of children about who did what, we can see the sense of personal blame is exquisitely developed very early, but the real truth of the matter is that we are all in this boat together. When somebody in the family does wrong, we all are responsible. When God looks down on ‘me’, He sees all who are connected with me as, essentially, me, too. Especially my family. Their choices DO affect me (and likewise, mine them); witness the many stories that read like Achan and the “goodly Babylonian garment”. His choices destroyed his whole family line, and that was AFTER the defeat of the entire nation at Ai. Can I go so blithely down the street, comparing myself to those around me, like the Pharisee who prayed “I am glad that I am not like that publican”? How does YHVH view it? What if, when He sees the publican’s plight, He sees me, too? Perhaps I should change that prayer!
But if my choices do affect my family, and that would include my heavenly Redeemer Kinsman also, for sure(!), then that means that every time I DO reach out in faith and choose to act in love, even in the smallest of ways or thoughts, then, through the power of the Holy Spirit, those choices can start to heal the fracture of all around me. We read about the famous “butterfly effect”, where supposedly a butterfly fluttering its wings in Tokyo can eventually alter the weather’s effects in Topeka, Kansas. I believe that it is not just the weather! My choices, also, In Athens, Georgia, can affect lives in Athens, Greece. Just 12 men and their cohorts, in one lifetime of making a collective decision to lay down their lives and do what they were told, was enough to change the world in their lifetime – so much so, that Paul would write to the Colossians that the gospel had been “preached to every creature which is under heaven”. I have read estimates that, by the time the last of the Twelve had died, approximately a quarter of the planet had become a follower of the Way.
Yes, every choice matters, and the destruction is compounded every time someone (or myself!) makes yet another choice for evil in response to mine, but, then, I can also start to reverse that destruction, too, by making another set of choices. You see, my sin, and the sins of my earthly family, too, are not just about me; but then, redemption is not just about me, either. When I get bought back from that destruction, that destruction, or fracture, can get repaired, too. Y’all, those cracks run in all directions and affect all kinds of folks, and creation, too! Sin is fracture; redemption is where the fractures can get healed. I am called to participate in that redemption, too, for as soon as I get pulled out of the ditch, I am expected to turn around and extend the same to all around me. I am called to act out my part in that redemption. When does that redemption start? Now! Halleluah! I am sorry I have wronged so many good folks, but, y’all, I am here to start trying to make up for it! Fasten your seatbelts!
Not the Woodshed! Oh Please, not the woodshed!
“You see, being go’el does not depend on the behavior of the relative.”
I can understand the position of those who believe it is the automatic duty of the go’el, as first born, to redeem all other family members, regardless of behavior.
And I can understand the position of those who believe that it is the duty of the go’el to only redeem those who accept Him as their eldest brother redeemer, and beg forgiveness and repent.
But I cannot understand this mixed position. You say the, “go’el determines the appropriate action for maintaining the relationship.” Does the “woodshed” euphemism mean that ALL relatives will be saved through tribulation, or, that some relatives must unfortunately be annihilated in hell for all time?
After that, I am then curious to know who qualifies as a “family” member, and as such, is even qualified of being redeemed by the Brother. Or is the “family” connotation meaningless in our Gentile world?
I know where I qualify.
Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion? (Psalm 103:4)
Yes, [in the form of a question]— “Who?”
Straight talk. [ Straight answers?] -WHO is our “near-kinsman Redeemer?”
What price was paid to ransom or redeem us?