Kinsman Redeemer

In the book of Ruth is a story about a lady named Naomi.  She moves to a foreign country, where her husband dies, and her two sons die.  She is left a widow, a beggar, with no form of support.  She moves back to her home town, and her daughter in law, Ruth, accompanies her.  In their hometown, Ruth catches the eye of Boaz.  Naomi tells Ruth that Boaz is their “kinsman redeemer” and enacts a plan that leads to Ruth being married to Boaz.

 What is this “kinsman redeemer?”  In ancient Israel, laws were set up where if a man died and left a widow, the brother of the man was to marry the widow to keep up the name of the man who died.  This seems rather odd to us today, but there is some rationale behind the concept.  In those days, women were not considered highly, maybe just slightly more significant than property.  It was a male dominated society.  A woman’s place of order and security was either in the house of her father before she was married, or with her husband after she was married.  But if her husband died, she was left without a form of support and would be poor and reduced to begging.  If you’re familiar with the story of Ruth, you’ll remember when Naomi and Ruth came back to the hometown that Ruth was out scraping up the gleanings from the harvest.  (Gleanings being the stalks and stuff the harvesters dropped, overlooked, or just missed when harvesting.). They were dependent upon the gleaning for food, as neither Naomi or Ruth had a job with which to provide for themselves.  However, if someone had a kinsmen redeemer, they could find shelter and safety in the home of that redeemer who would marry the widow.  In a way, the kinsmen redeemer concept was set up by God to ensure that widows were taken care of in a male dominated society.

Without a kinsmen redeemer, a widow would be left in poverty.  Left at the mercy of others.  Unable to provide for themselves.  At the mercy of their circumstances.  They would be a slave to poverty, and not free to pursue life as they might otherwise have wished.  In a way, that sounds like the plight of humanity when you consider how we were held in sin.  Where we were once in a relationship with God, our sin has caused us to leave the protection and care that would otherwise be ours when we were in relationship with God.  We now find ourselves at the mercy of the world around us and to the circumstances we find ourselves in.  We are held captive to our sins, and are not free to do as we wish.  Like a widow without a husband, we have no security, no safety in this world.  Humanity needed a kinsmen redeemer.

Isaiah 54 verses 4-8 say it this way:

““Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called. For the Lord has called you like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit, like a wife of youth when she is cast off, says your God. For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer.”

Note how we are ashamed and disgraced.  We are considered widows (without a husband) - and I bolded that word - widow. Then see how God is our redeemer.  He has called us.  We were like a wife (bolded in the quote) who was deserted (you could say a wife who was widowed).  God will gather us.  He will have compassion on us.  And he says that he is YHWH our Redeemer (in bold).

You know what I find interesting about this?  The word used to describe a kinsmen redeemer in Ruth is a derivative form of the same word used as redeemer here in Isaiah.  The Hebrew word we translate as redeemer gives the sense of buying back.  Or it means to pay a redemption price to allow someone in slavery to have their freedom.  We, sinners, are widowed and have no one to care for us, to provide us with security in this world.  We were held slaves to our sin, we were slaves in our sin.  But God comes in to redeem us, to rescue us from our lost state, to take us to himself, to take us for his wife and he is our husband, to release us from bondage.  Such is the love that God has for his people, and the love he has for us.  God is our “kinsman redeemer.”

-Mike Hendricks