Haggo'el:
The Cultural Gyroscope of
Ancient Hebrew Society
MICHAEL S. MOORE
Preliminary
Lexical Considerations
Some lexicographers divide the meaning
of ga'al
into two concepts.
Koehler
and Baumgartner1 and Gesenius2 assign two separate
meanings
to
the word. The first centers around the idea of "redemption"; the
second,
around the concept of "defilement," suggesting a possible
affinity
with ga'al,
"to reproach or rebuke."
Others claim to see a single root
meaning,3 a meaning which cor-
responds
to its usage in the Hebrew Old Testament, i.e., "to cover,
or
protect." To illustrate, in Ruth 3:9 Ruth asks Boaz to spread
(parash) his wings
over her, for "you are go’el." That is, Boaz was the
young
widow's protector. He had already used this protection idiom by
assuring
her that the God of Israel, the God to whom she had come for
refuge
in
would
illustrate a positive usage of this basic root, "to cover."
In the Old Testament, however, one can
be covered with all sorts of
things,
good or bad. Whereas Ruth was covered with the wings of her
protector
(go'el),
Job uses the term to lament the day upon which he
was
born:
Let that day be darkness. May God above
not seek it, nor light shine upon it. Let
gloom and deep darkness claim it (yig'aluhu). (Job 3:4, 5, RSV)
G.
Beer further suggests, "ga'al=ga'al, cf. Mal 1, 7," a passage in
which
Malachi spoke about polluted food on the altar of God. Here
1 Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti
Libros, 1953 ed., S.v.
"ga'al,"
by L. Koehler and
W.
Baumgartner.
2 Handworterbuch uber das Alte Testament, 1853 ed., s. Y. "ga'al," by Gesenius.
3 Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Jerushalmi, and the Midrashic
Literature, 1950 ed., s.v. "ga'al," by Marcus Jastrow.
27
28
Restoration
Quarterly
again
ga'al is the
term used (lehem mego'al).4
The Job passage has been a thorny problem
for translators. The RV,
following
LXX, Theodotian, and Symmachus,
translates yig’aluhu
"claim
it for their own." Can this be the meaning? Can gloom and
deep
darkness even metaphorically reclaim the day of Job's birth?
Perhaps.
On the other hand, the AV, following
Targumim, translates the
phrase ". . . let darkness and the shadow on
death
stain it." This choice, however, disregards the context. Job
wants
the clouds, darkness, and gloom to blot out the light God was to
shine
upon the day of his birth, not stain it.
Johnson's view may shed light on the
problem. Following the
Peshitta Syriac and Latin Vulgate, he translates ". . . let
darkness, let
utter
blackness cover it."5 In sum, Johnson would define go'al thus:
Qal- "to protect;" Niphal- "to be protected," later coming to mean
in
negative contexts "to be covered over; to be coated"; then Piel-
"to
coat something intensively, pollute, desecrate"; Hithpael-
"to
stain."6
The argument for one root meaning for ga'al is
interesting, if not
conclusive.
It deserves consideration from a lexical standpoint, even if
such
consideration leads one to conclude no more than that such an
argument
proves more palatable than the various attempts which have
been
made to link ga'al
with ga’al.
Ringgren concludes: "It seems better
to
begin with actual linguistic usuage than to postulate
an original
meaning."7
Go'el in the Old
Testament
Several models have been proposed to
break down the meanings of
this
word by its various contexts in the Old Testament. Ringgren
suggests
it should be examined in the two broad categories of secular
usage
and religious, figurative usage.8 Lieber
deduces five basic activities
of
the go'el
in the Old Testament:
(1) He acquires the alienated property
of a kinsman (Lev. 25:25)
4 Biblia Hebraica, 7th ed., edited by R. Kittel (
1973),
p. 1108, nt. 5a.
5 A. R. Johnson,
"The Primary Meaning of ga'al," Supplement
to Vetus Testamentum
1
(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1953): 73. Cf. also R. de Vaux, Ancient
Institutions, trans. by J.
McHugh (New York: McGraw-Hill 1961), p. 21: ". . . funda-
mentally
its meaning is 'to protect.'"
6 Johnson, op. cit., pp. 73, 74.
7 Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, 1974 ed., s.v. "ga'al," by H. Ringgren.
8 Ibid., pp. 350-355.
The Cultural
Gyroscope 29
(2) He purchases property when it is
in danger of being lost to a stranger (Jer.
32:6ff.)
(3) He is morally, if not legally,
obligated to support the widow of his next-
of-kin in the event of her becoming
dependent on this estate for her livelihood
(Ruth 4:4ff.)
(4) He redeems a clansman who has been
reduced to slavery by poverty (Lev.
25:47ff.)
(5) He avenges blood when it has been
shed (Num. 35:17ff.).
Spiritual
Equilibrium
Leviticus 25 is the usual starting
point in discussions concerning the
meaning
of ga'al.10 Predictably,
all the legal material which deals with
the
duties of the go'el
is predicated by
is
done,
Yahweh's
chosen people (25:17, 20ff.). Yahweh owns the land;
merely
sojourns there (25:23). This land ('eres) is to be treated as a
ge’ullah by
In the book of
In
Isaiah 41:14; 43:14; 44:6 and 24, the writer refers to Yahweh as
restoring,
and bringing
with
himself.11a This spiritual relationship was foundational to the
Israelite's
social and economic existence.12
Luzbetak
defines equilibrium thus:
a
state of balance. ..a feeling of "well-being" characterized by an
over-all steadi-
9
Encyclopedia Judaica,
1971 ed., s.v. "Redemption," by D. L. Lieber.
10 0ne has to decide
however, if the Leviticus material is a compilation of ancient or
contemporary
laws. In addition, one's concept of the relative personality or impersonality
of
Yahweh enters the picture here.
11 The inclusion of all
these elements, land, cult, clan, and security, led H. C. Brichto
to
conclude
that these elements make up a Biblical complex (an anthropological technical
term),
"Kin, Cult, Land, and Afterlife--A Biblical Complex,"
Annual 44 (1973):
1-54.
11a On Job
N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1973), p. 146: "It is not clear here whether Job has in mind a
human
agent
who will act as his vindicator. The strongest point in favor of taking the
vindicator
and
guarantor as God is the specific reference to seeing God in 26b. . . . The
application
of
the term go'el
to God in this context is questionable since elsewhere in Job's
complaint
it is God himself who is Job's adversary rather than defender."
13 Brichto,
op. cit., p. 23: "Death does not
constitute dissolution but rather a transition
to
another kind of existence, an afterlife in the shadowy realm of Sheol. The condition
of
the dead in this afterlife is, in a vague but significant way, connected with
proper
burial
upon the ancestral land and with the continuation on that land of the dead's
proper
progeny." In Brichto's schema, then, the go'el "was
not merely a close-kinsman
obligated
to blood-vengeance or privileged to redeem property. The go'el is he who
redeems
the dead from the danger to his afterlife by continuing his line," p. 21.
30 Restoration Quarterly
ness in the culture, a high morale,
self-confidence, and a sense of security.13
One
feels justified in using this technical term for several reasons, but
it
is not the purpose here to enter into an extended anthropological
analysis
of ancient Hebrew society. This paper is
primarily a philological
study
of the meaning of a particular word and its usage in the Old
Testament
literature. Luzbetak
is an anthropologist and “equilibrium”
is
an anthropological term, yet the overall usefulness of this term
ought
to be evident after further inspection.
“Equilibrium” incorporates
the
many analogous meanings attested by a solid consensus of Biblical
scholarship
on the matter.
Social
Equilibrium
Interfamilial, interclan,
and intertribal relationships can better be
understood
in terms of social equilibrium, as ramifications of
spiritual
relationship with Yahweh. Again, several
analogous concepts
can
be found in the relevant literature.
Johnson14 talks about the
Israelite’s
nephes as something
which was extended spatially and
temporally,
through one’s bayith,
‘ebhed, or mal’ak;
temporally,
through
one’s dabhar
(including either berakah
or ‘ararah), and the
Israelite
sem. “Corporate personality,”15
“grasping of a totality,”16
“vitality
of extended family group,”17 “total contents of the soul,”18
“interests
of his kinsman”19—these are some of the parallel phrases
one
finds.
Is it not more accurate today to posit
that where manslaughter
occurs,
or where one's husband or male children perish, or where one
is
forced by poverty to sell his ancestral real estate--that where
anything
of this nature occurs in the Old Testament--that these are
characteristics
of social dysfunction, i.e., social disequilibrium? When
this
has been established, the function of the go'el can be more clearly
seen:
to work through the proper channels, whether spiritual, social,
13 L. J. Luzbetak,
The Church and Cultures (Pasadena:
William Carey Library, 1970),
p.
221.
14 A. R. Johnson, The One and the Many in the Israelite
Conception of God (
15 Ibid., p. 3.
16 J. Pedersen,
pp.
106-133.
17 Encyclopedia Judaica, s.v.
"Redemption."
18
Pedersen, op. cit., p. 382.
19 Pope, op. cit., p. 146.
The Cultural
Gyroscope 31
or
economic20 and serve as the society's "cultural
gyroscope."21 The
solidarity
of the Israelite family, clan, and nation depended upon his
assuming
this responsibility.
The go'el functions as a restorative
agent whenever there is a breach
in
the clan's corporate life. In Lieber's model, this
would include his
obligations
a) to support an Israelite widow who is a blood relative and
b)
to redeem a clansman who has been reduced to slavery by poverty.22
In
this paper only the first of these obligations will be examined.
H. H. Rowley's study on the book of
Ruth reveals how entangled
this
problem has become.23 His survey shows that some are divided
over
whether Ruth's marriage was levirate or ge'ullah. I. M. Epstein
sees
it as ge'ullah;
J. A. Bewer does also, even to the point of
dismissing
all
references to the levirate law in the book as interpolations by
partisans
of Ezra and Nehemiah. On the other hand, H. A. Brongers
believed
that one of the book's purposes was to bring the two institu-
tions together. J. G.
Frazer and J. F. McLennan even see polyandry
or
group marriage as having evolved into levirate and ge'ullah arrange-
ments. A. Bertholet and G. Margoliouth see
ancestor worship behind
all
of this.24
Rowley concludes that, if one dates
Deuteronomy late,
the law of Deut. 25:5-10 reflects a
limitation of something that was once wider in
the childless widow to the wider
duties devolving on the next-of-kin.25
Within the schema of this paper it is
irrelevant as to whether levirate
marriage
is separate from or included in ge'ullah or whether the book
of
Ruth represents a "transitional stage between redemption-marriage
as
an affair of the clan and levirate-marriage as an affair of the
20 These divisions reflect a
Western tendency to catalogue and fragment. The Hebrew
go'el probably
perceived no such distinctions.
21"Cultural gyroscope"
is Luzbetak's phrase, op. cit., p. 221.
22 Cf. above, p. 3.
23 H. H. Rowley, "The Marriage of
Ruth," in The Servant of the Lord
and Other Essays
(London:
Lutterworth Press, 1952), pp. 161-186.
24 Any further discussion of this
point is outside the bounds of this inquiry, except to
note
that Brichto,
op. cit., p. 50, draws a sharp distinction between the Jewish and pagan
models
of afterlife: a) Pagan belief (incl. ancestor worship) was magical, mechanical,
amoral;
b) Hebrew belief was based entirely upon the individual's moral relationship'
to
Yahweh.
25
Cf. Rowley, op. cit., p. 170ff., for
all pertinent information, explanations, and
bibliographical
data concerning these many diverse points of view.
32
Restoration Quarterly
family,"
as M. Burrows suggests.26 Broader perspectives are called
for--"wider
duties," to use Rowley's terminology.
Naomi's role in the story of Ruth has
perhaps been misunderstood
or
underplayed. After all, it was Naomi who first encouraged Orpah
and
Ruth to find husbands of their own, houses of their own a
people
of their own, and gods of their own (Ruth 1:8-15). In other
words,
the Israelite widow wanted her non-Israelite daughters-in-law to
find
some semblance of normality and well-being again. It was Naomi
who
mourned the true depth of her calamity by stating to the women:
"I
went away full and the Lord has brought me back empty"; i.e., the
bayith and the sem of Elimelech were in danger of being wiped out in
Ruth,
for Boaz quickly recognized that Ruth was a woman of worth
(
help
(3:9).
The writer points out that Boaz was
Naomi's kinsman (2:1), a fact
Naomi
joyfully proclaims to Ruth (
(qarobh), the one
who was able to restore their family, ravaged by
famine
and death, to a state of equilibrium.27 It was Naomi who
engineered
Ruth's meeting with Boaz (3:2-5), and it was Naomi whom
the
women congratulated, not Ruth, because the Lord had provided
her
with a go'el.
Some of the other elements necessary for social
equilibrium
are mentioned also: sem
(
nephes (
of
the main themes of the book is God's kindness to the living as well
as
the dead by mercifully restoring Elimelech's family
to a state of
equilibrium,
a theme which is all the more dramatized when one
realizes
in genealogical perspective who Obed, Naomi's go'el, really
was.
One of the most interesting functions
of the go'el
was the responsi-
bility to restore
justice. Murder, manslaughter, and war are crimes
punishable
by the State in western society, i.e., by an external system
of
justice. Hebrew culture was much different. J. Pedersen discusses
the
difference:
24 M. Burrows, "The
Marriage of Boaz and Ruth," Journal
of Biblical Literature
59
(December 1940):445-454.
25 N. B. (as per Brichto's thesis) Naomi is grateful that Yahweh has not
forgotten the
living
remnants of the family as well as the dead; viz., the sem of Elimelech,
extended
through
Mahlon, and later extended through Obed (Ruth
The Cultural
Gyroscope 33
The law of restoration belongs to a
community which is not held together by
external powers above it, but by inner
forces creating the harmony.11
When
that harmony is disrupted by any of these crimes, it is again the
responsibility
of the go'el
to see to it that equilibrium is restored. Two
examples
may be cited.
Whenever possible, revenge was to be systematically
carried out
against
the individual who robbed the offended party of part of the
clan's
nephes as
stated in the Torah (Num. 35:19). Yet, because an
individual's
nephew extends through his bayith, sem, and personal
possessions
in Semitic cultures, there are instances in the Old Testament
where
the avenger of blood (go’el haddam) not
only kills the guilty
party,
but also all of his family, as well as confiscating or destroying
his
possession's. In.1 Kings
Baasha, leaving him no
kinsman to wreak counter-revenge. In a
similar
case, Yahweh directs the camp of
his
family and his personal possessions for disobeying his clear
command
(Josh. 7:lff.). Such total vengeance is difficult for western
minds
to comprehend and may underlie much of the Occidental
world's
attempts to see a different God in the Old Testament from the
God
revealed in the pages of the New Testament. To Hebrew minds,
however,
the disruption of social equilibrium meant simply that it had
to
be restored. The principle remained the same. Whereas western
societies
restore justice by means of external laws imputed by the
State,
ancient Israelite society restored justice by means of the divinely
appointed
agent of restoration (Lev. 25:25ff.).29
Ancient Near
Eastern Parallels
Although there are no cognate forms for ga'al in the contemporary
Near
Eastern texts which have been discovered so far,30 the redemption
of
property and persons is fairly commonplace.
In the Laws of Eshnunna,
for example, paragraph 39 states:
28 Pedersen, op. cit., p. .392;
29 Cf. T. B. Kiddushin 20b. In commenting on
Lev. 25:47, 48 R. Ishmael suggested
that
even though the human tendency is to reject an idolater who happens to be an
Israelite,
maybe Yahweh commanded his redemption so that he would not be absorbed
by
the heathens.
30 However, cf. H.B. Huffmon, Amorite
Personal Names in the Mari Texts (
John
Hopkins Press, 1965), p. 179, for an exception found in the Amorite personal
name
Ga'alalum.
34
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If a man is hard up and sells his house,
the owner of the house shall (be entitled to)
redeem (it) whenever the purchaser
(re)sells it.)39
This
law is similar to that of Leviticus 25, except for the conditional
character
of this law compared with the unconditional right in Leviticus
for
the original owner to redeem what was originally "given" to him
by
Yahweh. Khafajah text 8231 places another
qualification on the
reselling
of property. Under this legal code one cannot "redeem the
field
with money belonging to another person."33 Again, the Levitical
law
makes no such demand.
A closer parallel can be found in the
Laws of Hammurabi,34 where
the
sale of patrimonial land is banned altogether. Greenberg comments
that
this custom might have been based on a feudalistic economy in
which
all land belonged to the king and was held only as a grant or fief
by
his subjects: "They had possession, but not ownership of the
property
entrusted to them."35 In contrast,
own
the land himself (Lev. 25:23) and was unwilling for
up
a monarchy like their Near Eastern neighbors (1 Sam.
Several
other examples of property redemption could be cited, but
perhaps
Stamm's summary can suffice:
The ge'ullah, as a right or duty to
buy back lost family property or slaves, was not
limited to
sold, as well as persons. In
takes the place of the Hebrew ga'al.36
Yahweh never unconditionally gave the
to
be stewards of it as strangers and sojourners in it with himself,
according
to the covenant agreement they ratified through Moses.
There
is a world of difference, practically speaking, between giving
something
to someone and temporarily loaning it, until the time for
the
giving of a much greater gift.37
31 J. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton:
1969),
p. 163.
32 R. Harris, "The Archive
of the
Studies 9 (1955):
96,97.
33 Ibid., p. 97.
34
Pritchard, op. cit., p. 163.
35 Encyclopedia Judaica, S.v.
"Sabbatical Year and Jubilee," p. 577.
"Theologisches Handworterbuch des Alten Testament, S.v. "ga'al," by
J. Stamm,
cited
in D. Leggett, The Levirate and Go'el Institutions in the Old Testament (Cherry
Hill,
N.J.: Mack Publishing Co., 1974), pp. 63-65.
37 Heb. 12: 18-24.
The Cultural Gyroscope 35
Conclusion
It is hoped that this fresh treatment of
the word ga'el
as well as the
institution
for which it stands can clear away some of the misconceptions
orbiting
around it and allow it to be seen in a clearer light: a referent
for
the divinely appointed agent of restoration; a cultural gyroscope
in
an amphictyonic confederacy built on the cornerstone
of a firm
relationship
with Yahweh and extending through the family, tribe, and
providing
solidarity, security, and justice for
It is further hoped that the
anthropological concept of equilibrium
can
serve to provide an investigative framework broad enough in
perspective
to allow the institution to be seen more distinctly in its
various
spiritual, social, and economic dimensions. In this way others
continue
their investigations within a more scientifically accurate
schema.
:
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