My Redeemer Liveth

"I know that my redeemer liveth." These words are among the sentences read at the start of a burial in the Book of Common Prayer, so many people heard them over a grave long before they ever opened the book of Job.

There is a fair objection to the way this verse is often used, and it deserves to be stated properly. People offer it as Job's confession that the body will rise again. The weight of that reading rests on the next verse, which the King James prints as "yet in my flesh shall I see God." The Hebrew says "from my flesh," and that can be read two opposite ways: seeing God from inside the body, or seeing Him apart from it, once the flesh is gone. Bibles divide over it for that reason. So nothing about the rising of your body should rest on a sentence the Hebrew leaves open. Scripture teaches that hope plainly in other places.

Now take hold of what no translation disputes, because it is the word that carries the weight. Redeemer is go'el in Hebrew. A go'el is more than a helper. He is the near relative with a legal duty. He buys back the land a poor man has had to sell. He answers for blood that was shed. He takes up the case. Leviticus sets out the role, and Boaz fills it for Ruth at the town gate. Proverbs warns anyone who would move the boundary stone of an orphan's field: "For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee." Again and again the word belongs in a courtroom.

A courtroom is exactly what Job has been asking for since chapter nine. There he said there was no one to settle the case between him and God, no one "that might lay his hand upon us both." By chapter sixteen he says it more plainly: "O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbour." He wants someone with standing, someone who will still be alive when Job is gone, and who will stand up for him. That is what verse 25 claims, and no translation disputes it.

So what have you been leaning on? Is it a promise about your body, or is it knowing that Someone lives who will stand up and take your case? Job could only reach for that hope, but we know His name. Jesus "ever liveth to make intercession" for all who come to God by Him.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 174 is Set in Families (Psalm 68:6).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two