If thy brother grow poor, and sell of his possession, then shall his redeemer, his nearest relation, come and redeem that which his brother sold.
A man in Israel grows poor and sells part of the family land God gave him. The law's answer is not charity but kinship: his nearest relative comes and buys it back.
The Provision Itself
The law guards the family's land. Poverty is the only reason it gives for selling, and the right to buy the land back stays open.
If poverty forced him to sell part of his property, he kept the right to buy it back before the Jubilee, and so did his relatives. Poverty is the only reason the law gives here for parting with the family estate. If a relative came forward to do it, this law gave him the power. If he had no relative to do it, the freedom to redeem it stayed with him. But redeeming it himself depended on what he could afford. The inheritance was to be prized. No one should have thought lightly of it, for it was God's provision for His people.
Only A Relative Could Redeem
Redemption here was not open to just anyone. The right belonged to a relative, and it came with a duty.
Only a near relative could act as the kinsman-redeemer. In other words, he first had to be related to the one needing redemption — a brother (Lev. 25:25), an uncle, or an uncle's son (Lev. 25:49). When disaster and difficulty came, the kinsman-redeemer was to step in. He bought back the property or the persons, or both, of relatives who had sold themselves or their possessions to a stranger. More than that, he could not shelve or evade the responsibility laid on him. The kinsman-redeemer who refused to do his part was to be in disgrace in Israel.
Why The Redeemer Became Man
Kinship is the qualification. Commentators draw a straight line from that rule to Christ.
In verse 25 we learn that, if a man stayed poor and could not buy it back himself, "any of his kin" might step in and redeem it for him. Boaz does this in the Book of Ruth. That picture shows how necessary it was that the Lord Jesus should take up perfect Manhood, sin apart. So He shared in flesh and blood, as Hebrews 2:14 says, so that by death He might break the devil's power over us. If He had taken hold of angels only, He could not have fulfilled the picture as our Kinsman-Redeemer, or paid the price that was needed.
Grace, Not Law
One phrase runs through this chapter: "if your brother becomes poor." Commentators say the repetition is deliberate.
Redemption by buying back is the subject of Lev. 25, and the expression comes four times in the chapter. "If your brother becomes poor" is not mere repetition of words. Each time it is used it suggests a different condition of misery, and each one goes deeper than the last. This was instruction for the guidance of the people of Israel in the first place. Even so, it had nothing to do with law as a principle — keeping strict righteousness and demanding it from others. It points instead to the principle of grace on which God had dealt with Israel, and on which He expected His people to act towards others. It begins where law ends.
The Nation That Lost Its Inheritance
Commentators also read the poor brother as a picture of Israel. The nation lost its land through unfaithfulness, and grace will give it back.
Grace will count the time of suffering over, and sin pardoned through Him who loved His people and suffered for their sins... We hear of a brother who lost his possession through unfaithfulness and got it back through grace that overcame every difficulty. And Israel will be the standing, public witness both of the loss through evil and of the gain through grace. Yet the credit is not theirs in any way, but only Jesus'.
Two Ways The Land Came Back
The chapter offers the impoverished man two routes home: a relative pays, or the Jubilee arrives and the land returns free. Commentators see both fulfilled in one Redeemer.
The ordinance of the Jubilee seems to set out this twofold redemption — by price and by power. That chapter teaches us that at any time during forty-nine years, a relative of the heir could buy back the lost possession of an Israelite. The land was redeemed, or brought back to the family to which, under God, it had belonged. But if that were not done, it would return to the heir in the fiftieth year, the Jubilee, with nothing paid.
Summary
- Poverty. The brother has lost what God gave him. Only poverty could make him sell it, and he cannot win it back alone.
- Kinship. The redeemer's qualification is relationship. Without blood ties there is no right to redeem, only a right to buy.
- Price. Because kinship qualifies, the Son of God took flesh and blood, and paid what redemption cost.
- Power. The chapter joins the price to the Jubilee. What money buys back, power alone restores when the Jubilee comes.
- Possession. The inheritance returns. It was lost through failure and regained through grace, and the credit belongs to the Redeemer, not the redeemed.