Leviticus 25:47-55--​Redeeming a Poor Man

Leviticus 25:47-55
English Standard Version

​Redeeming a Poor Man
47 “If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner with you or to a member of the stranger's clan, 48 then after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him, 49 or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or a close relative from his clan may redeem him. Or if he grows rich he may redeem himself. 50 He shall calculate with his buyer from the year when he sold himself to him until the year of jubilee, and the price of his sale shall vary with the number of years. The time he was with his owner shall be rated as the time of a hired worker. 51 If there are still many years left, he shall pay proportionately for his redemption some of his sale price. 52 If there remain but a few years until the year of jubilee, he shall calculate and pay for his redemption in proportion to his years of service. 53 He shall treat him as a worker hired year by year. He shall not rule ruthlessly over him in your sight. 54 And if he is not redeemed by these means, then he and his children with him shall be released in the year of jubilee. 55 For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

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Again, we see here that God writes a kind of "welfare" system into the Law, but it is something that each person is responsible to do out of their charity and it is part of their religious system based on their understanding of who God is and what He has done for them--it's not so much a system of taxation and redistribution of wealth or a class system between the "haves" and "have nots," but instead a system that says that everyone is to watch out for and take care of everyone else in the community and that God has given everyone the wealth they have and they are to be good stewards of that wealth and use it to take care of others because that's what God wants them to do and they can be like God in His nature in that He is our Redeemer and they too can be about the business of redeeming those who cannot redeem themselves.

We see here again the idea of a "kinsman redeemer"--a close relative whose option it is to redeem the person and property that had been lost by being sold to foreigners.  We'll see this at play in the book of Ruth and we'll later see Jesus called our Kinsman Redeemer.  Because there was always going to be an eternity of us being enslaved to sin, the price that needed to be paid by Jesus to redeem His people was very high--an infinitely high price to be paid that could only be covered by the infinitely precious blood of God the Son.

The kinsman redeemer would then take on such a man and his family as hired hand (employees, not slaves) and would release them at the time of the year of jubilee according to the Law that we already studied, specifically in our last passage about Kindness for Poor Brothers.  For the children of God were to be owned by no one other than God.  They were His servants and were not to be slaves to anyone else, and if that somehow happened, they were to be redeemed by their brothers who had the money to buy them back--brothers who would treat them like family and care for them in their time of need and help them to get back on their feet and back into their homes.  So then the answer to Cain's question from many years before of "Am I my brother's keeper" is definitively answered here with a resounding "Yes!"