Systematic Theology – Covenant

The Kinsman Redeemer

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: 07-22

Genre: Speech

Track: 7 of 22

Dictation Name: 07 The Kinsman Redeemer

Location/Venue:

Year:

Let’s begin with prayer. Our Lord and our God we come to Thee mindful that Thou who art the author of all good art ever mindful of our e very need, that there is nothing too great or too small for Thee. And so we come to Thee to cast our every care upon Thee who carest for us. We pray for our country that Thou wouldst deliver us from the hands of humanistic statists. We pray for our church that we may be recalled to Thy true word and may stand firmly and unafraid. We pray for the families of this country that they may become strong in Thee and that the children may honor their fathers and mothers and might grow up into godly manhood and womanhood. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word and grant that we may understand Thee and Thy kingdom more clearly. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Our subject for the first session is The Kinsman Redeemer and I’d like to read just a few verses from Leviticus 25:24-28.

“And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land.

25 If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away some of his possession, and if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother sold.

26 And if the man have none to redeem it, and himself be able to redeem it;

27 Then let him count the years of the sale thereof, and restore the overplus unto the man to whom he sold it; that he may return unto his possession.

28 But if he be not able to restore it to him, then that which is sold shall remain in the hand of him that hath bought it until the year of jubile: and in the jubile it shall go out, and he shall return unto his possession.”

One of our problems as we approach the bible is that it is a world that we are very far from. It is remote to us because ours is an Adamistic age and Adamism has prevailed socially again and again in history, in our Lord’s day the people were as remote to the Old Testament, the bible of their day as we are perhaps because in our Lord’s day it was a society of big cities and of Adamistic families. The kinsman redeemer doctrine is one of the most important in all of scripture.

It was the duty of a covenanted man, of a covenanter to defend to the death the one to whom he was in covenant with, to be an avenger or redeemer of blood. Thus, if two men came together and formed a covenant they had to be ready to be faithful in all things to one another even to death. Now the family is and always has been even though we do not recognize it as such today a natural covenant and the next of kin in a family is the one who has the duty of redeemer. The book of Ruth gives us a classic example of a redeemer at work. The law requires in the bible that the next of kin avenge the murder of his kinsman. Now this is not primitivism. There are people who read these passages and dismiss them saying this is simply an example of the blood feud, the kind of thing that prevailed with the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s, and is an example of Biblical primitivism. It is not so, emphatically. What it does declare is that justice begins at home, in the family. It is a part of the responsibility of which Paul speaks in 1st Timothy 5:8 when he says:

“But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.”

The members of a family are required to care for one another. Now does that encourage parasitism? Does it make the person who is to be cared for a parasite? No. Far from it, what was life like under that kind of culture?

It meant indeed that the family had a responsible relationship to every member but on the other hand it meant that no family member was any good if his family did not vouch for him. In other words, supposing a young man were prodigal like the prodigal son? Who would hire him? Hardly anyone because he had no family to vouch for him. In fact he was faithfulness to his family so what did the prodigal son get? Only one kind of job, the lowest in the society of the day, feeding the pigs. He was not to be trusted with anything else, simply because he did not have a family behind him. We have a responsibility scripture says to care for our families and this includes justice. It does not mean subsidizing indefinitely; it means we have to care for our families and their needs but also to provide justice where justice is required. To administer justice to our children and to make sure that justice ensues when someone in the family is wronged or murdered. The law in Paul’s day and in the bible times required sentences to be passed by state courts. What is the duty of the relative then, the kinsman redeemer, to see to it that there is a prosecution of justice. To become a part of the prosecution, to bring about justice for the person who has been defrauded or murdered. Now in the biblical law the avenger of blood was under law. What happened? Well we’ll deal with that more in the next hour but he could not function unless a court of law said that the man was guilty, then he was responsible for the execution, together with the witnesses.

But to pass over that for a time, simply to say in Numbers 35:6-34 especially verse 12 specified there had to be a trial. Now in the history of the role of the kinsman redeemer we find that it could be a woman if there was no male relative living, if there were no man nor any woman or child living who could be the kinsman redeemer the court could and did appoint a kinsman redeemer, to see to it that justice was done where somebody was killed or defrauded. Someone to act as so to speak their friend in court, to make sure that all proceedings were followed. The bible gives us examples of fathers acting as redeemers, as sons, brothers and even the king. Now the redeemer of blood not only has a place in the family law of the bible but in God’s covenant law. Let’s look briefly at the obligations of the kinsman redeemer, first he must be next of kin to the one to be redeemed. Second, he must pay all the accrued charges of the person is in debt or in serious trouble and must satisfy every legal claim. Third the redemption might require marriage as we find in the book of Ruth. Fourth he must avenge the wrongs his kinfolk suffered. Thus the kinsman redeemer must redeem the forfeited inheritance. He must avenge the death of his kinsman and all of this has theological implications. God in His covenant with man enters into a relationship and makes himself our next of kin. In the person of Jesus Christ we have the god man who represents both parties in the covenant, because Jesus Christ is very God of very God He is the representative of God almighty in the covenant with man. But because He is also the son of Mary, very man of very man He also represents man in the covenant.

He is next of kin to every believer. Our next of kin is no one that we think of as such, our next of kin according to the bible is Jesus Christ. Every time the word redeemer and redeemed appears in the New Testament, when it speaks of Jesus Christ redeeming us, what it is saying in the language of the day is that as our next of kin he went to bat for us so that we must think of Jesus Christ as our next of kin. That’s what salvation is about. We have a next of kin, His name is Jesus Christ. He pays the penalty for our sins, He is the bridegroom who takes the church to Himself. Our inheritance, this earth, which was forfeited in Adam is in process of restoration to us and Paul tells us in the latter part of Hebrews in the twelfth chapter that the things are are being shaken so that only those things which are unshakable might remain. And he tells us indeed we’re having problems and troubles but we are being chastened and scourged and if we were not so treated by God, disciplined, then he says we would not be sons but rather bastards. And so he said we are being prepared by God to repossess our estate, the whole earth, to take it over and to govern it, but before we’re ready for that we’re going to be disciplined by God and we’re going to be prepared for that maturity. And so the covenant man, Jesus Christ, very God of very God, prepares His people to possess the earth. We are called to victory, John tells us, this is the victory that overcometh the world even our faith. We are told in Hebrews that the blood of all the Abels in history, the innocent blood like Abel shed by the evil cries out for the kinsman redeemer.

In Revelations 6:9-11 we have a vivid picture in that vision of all these innocent ones crying out from under the altar ‘how long, oh Lord, how long’. And then the great promise, that they will be avenged. That all the blood guiltiness will be avenged and that the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. The kinsman redeemer shall take over. The book of Revelation is a book about the kinsman redeemer and hence it is portrayed at the end as the great day of reckoning when all the ungodly perish, when they lose out, when they are shattered and broken and their economic power and pride and the bridegroom takes the bride unto himself, that is, he restores his people to their inheritance. So the doctrine of the kinsman redeemer is an exceedingly important doctrine for us to know. It’s a sad fact that in our day for the past couple of generations even more for about a hundred and fifty years that great word, redeemer, which in the Hebrew is goel, g-o-e-l, has dropped out of our language. But it’s basic. When we say Jesus Christ is our redeemer we say He is our next of kin. Therefore we pray in His name because when we approach the throne of almighty God we have the greatest in anybody in history could have had. Our next of kin is the second person of the Godhead. He in His humanity, is one with us and therefore His humanity as our intercessor speaks to the triune God to make intercession for us. Are there any questions about this particular subject first of all?

Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] It was the civil court that rendered the judgment.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well there were authorities of the commonwealth and later of the king but it’s a principle of biblical law that the execution has to be by the witnesses and in such cases the kinsman redeemer.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] That’s right, that’s right; if it’s a hanging they’d pull the trap.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] That I cannot answer but that has been used at times in history and the fact that the witness, you see, In the bible the witnesses not only had to take a part in the execution but if they were guilty of perjury precisely the sentence that was to fall upon the person on trial would fall upon them. They would suffer the death penalty or if it were a fine of let’s say a thousand dollars, they’d pay it. Unhappily perjury today has really no penalty, I’ve sat in courts and seen people perjure themselves, most flagrantly, and it’s been brought out on cross examination that they lied again and again and again and the judge has been totally silent. So perjury today is rarely dealt with unless you’re before a congressional committee. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] In such a case the family or the church or the court could appoint someone to be you might say in a sense executor for the minor child.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] It points to Christ, it tells us that Christ is our kinsman redeemer. It also tells us what the family should be, what it once was even in this country. And the family structure today is virtually anarchistic, as a result the family which should be the basic government in a society is a very weak thing by and large. Well, as the family takes over it becomes more and more the basic government, now it’s interesting that one of the first things that the Marxists did in Red China was to destroy the old family system. Now the family system there was pagan, it was a part of ancestor worship, but over the centuries the thing that had kept the Chinese people going and their culture going was the family, because they had long eras where the state was really nothing, the same is true of the Jews and most especially. The Jewish people over the centuries survived precisely because the family was the government. Today the Jewish community in the United States at least is collapsing and there are people who predict that in a generation it will have but disappeared, simply because the family system there is broken down since the end of the fifties as the students become humanistic to the core and radicalized.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well, that’s far from true, as a matter of fact one of the best examples of the survival of this has been among immigrants, who’ve lost it after they came to this country. What has happened in the past hundred years is that we’ve had a flood of migrants to this country, from Germany, from Russia, from Poland, from Ireland, from all over the world. Now, in these migrations one of the important things has been that the next of kin has functioned, to send over someone to this country or those who came over to bring over their next of kin and to vouch for them, so that it used to be a regular part of the immigration service and its duties to have the relatives here vouch for the people they brought over and one of the things which is very interesting that they had to sign to was that the person they brought over, their kinfolk, would not be a public charge. Now that was routinely done by families because they felt it’s our duty, as next of kin, to bring them over. Or as next of kin let’s send them over because they don’t have a chance here. So this has been practiced right up to, through World War I into the twenties. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Limitation on accrued charges…or…?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Oh yes I get your point. Yes there was a limitation, the six year limit on debt. Now, if you knew that after six years all debts were cancelled, that every seventh year all debts were wiped out, how much money would you lend to someone? You see? Your loan would be governed by their ability to pay it back in six years or fractions thereof. So that if it were the fourth or fifth year you would not loan too much. We have a survival of that six year debt limit in our bankruptcy laws. If you are bankrupt then you cannot go bankrupt again for seven years, until the seventh year, and that’s because we had that pattern in our culture and it’s the only place it survived, in bankruptcy laws. But I can remember when there was no long term debt in this country, no ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, year mortgages, those are fairly recent.

Any other questions? Well if not we’ll take a break for a few minutes.