Goel #82

Goel is not a separate root word but the active participle of the verb ga’al, “to redeem” — so goel means, literally, “one who redeems.” In Israel’s law it named the near kinsman responsible for stepping in on a relative’s behalf: buying back land a poor family member had been forced to sell, purchasing a relative out of slavery, avenging a killing within the clan, or otherwise restoring what a family had lost. Strong’s H1350 covers both the verb and this participial form; “goel” itself carries no separate number.

Biblical Usage

Leviticus lays out the underlying law: if an Israelite grows poor and sells part of his land, “if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother sold” (Leviticus 25:25). The book of Ruth puts the custom into a story — Ruth appeals to Boaz at the threshing floor, “spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman” (Ruth 3:9), and after Boaz acts, the women of Bethlehem bless Naomi that God “hath not left thee this day without a kinsman [goel]” (Ruth 4:14).

The word also describes God himself. Job, in the middle of his suffering, declares, “I know that my redeemer liveth” (Job 19:25), and Isaiah has the LORD say to Israel, “I will help thee… and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 41:14).

Theological Significance

Because a goel had to be both a near relative and someone able to pay the price of redemption, the role fit naturally onto Israel’s understanding of God as the one who, though transcendent, had bound himself in covenant close enough to his people to redeem them himself. Boaz’s redemption of Ruth and Naomi’s family line, a genealogy that leads to David, has long been read by interpreters as an illustration of this pattern, though the book of Ruth itself simply presents him as a man honoring an existing custom.