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heads; because your ransoming draweth nigh.' He does not point tliem to the time when tlie ransom wliich He came into the world to ]iay (Mk 10", Mt :20-') is at length to he paid for tliem ; neither does He promise them some other deliverance, ditlerent from that and disconnected with it, whieli they might expect some time in the nndcfined hut distant future. He saj-s ' yu<ir ransoming,' inti- mating that it was already theirs in sure e.xpecta- tion ; He speaks of it as ' drawing nigli,' recognizing that it was eagerly looked for. He is, of course, pointing to the complete realization of the ransom- ing of which He speaks in the actual d<'liverance which shall be experienced. IJut when He speaks of this deliverance as a ' ransoming' He is equally, of course, referring it as its result to a ransom- paying which secures it ; and can we doulit that what was in His mind was His own promise that He would give His life a ransom in the place of many ?
This declaration of our Lord's (Lk \iV-^) may lead us to the two or three passages (all, like it, occur- ring in Luke's Gospel, 1"* 2^* 24'-') which differ from the other instances in which the terms denot- ing 'ransoming' are employed in the NT, in that they do not have the great basal assertion of our Lord (!\Hc 10", Mt 20'-") behind them, but give expression to hopes nourished on the promises of the Old Covenant. 'We read of Zaeharias, on the birth of his prophetic son, praising the God of Israel, because ' he hath visited and wrought ransoming (Xinpwan) for his people' {Lk 1**) ; and of Anna, the prophetess, on seeing the infant; Jesus in the Temple, giving ' thanks unto God, and speak- ing of him to all them that were looking for the ransoming (XiVpucns) of Jerusalem' (2^) ; and of the two disciples, sorrowing over Jesus' death, sadly telling their unknown Conipanion,|as they journeyed together to Emmaus : ' We hoped that it was he that should ransom (XurpoCir^ai) Israel ' (24-'). Ob- viously these passages stand somewhat apart from those which embody the apostolic conception of the nature of the saving work of Christ. They repre.sent rather the anticipations of the faithful in Israel with respect to the salvation promised to God's people. Their interest to us is due to the use in them of the same terminology to express Israel's hope which afterwards was employed by the apostles when they described Christ s work as at its root a ransom-paying. As we can hardly ascribe to these aspirations of saints taught by the OT revelation so clearly cut and definitely con- ceived a conviction that the Divine deliverance for which they were waiting was to be specihCally a ransoming, as we have ascribed to the apostolic writers with respect to the deliverance wrought by Christ, the question easily arises whether we have notoverpressed the apostles' language, and whether it would not be better to interpret their declara- tions from the vaguer, if we should not rather say the looser or at least the broader, use of the same terms in these earlier passages which represent a usage going back into the OT.
Such has been the method of many expositors (the typical instance is commonly taken from H. Oltramare on Ro 3-''; cf. the corrective in Sanday- Headlam on the same passage). Following it, they have felt entitled or bound to empty the language of the apostles, wluch literally expresses the idea of ransoming, when speaking of the work of Christ, more or less completely of all such impli- cation, and to read it as conveying merely the broad idea of delivering. This method of dealing with the apostolic usage is, however, quite mis- leading. The language of the ajjostles is alto- gether too definite to permit such a process of evacuation to be carried successfully through with respect to it. Their teaching as to the nature uf our Lord's work as an act of ransoming is not
conveyed exclusively by the implication of the ransouung terms which they prevailingly employ in speaking of it ; thej' use other terms also, of similar meaning, side by side with them (of. Ac 20=», 1 Co (i-" 7^, thil :?'•', 2 P 2', Rev 5" 14"'') ; and they often ex]iound their meaning in the sense of ransoming in great detail. It must not be permitted to drop out of sight that something hajipened between the ])rophetic jjromises of the Old Covenant reflected in the anticipations of the early daj-s of the gospel, and the dogmatic ex- positions of the nature of the work of Christ by the apostles, which was revolutionary precisely with respect to the concejitions held by God's peojile of the nature of His great intervention for their deliverance. "We cannot interpret the apostles' exposition of the meaning of the death of Christ and the manner in which it produces its effect — which was to them the most tremendous of experienced facts — wholly within the limits of the anticipations of even the most devout of Israelites who, at the best, only dimly |)erceived the necessity of a suffering Messiah (Lk 20^''). We must expect a precision in delining the mode of God's deliverance of His people to enter in after the experience of it as a fact, which could not exist betore ; and that the more, liecau.se a model which necessarily dominated all their teach- ing had been given His followers by our Lord Himself (Mk 10", Mt 20=") for interpreting the nature of His work and the meaning of His death. F. J. A. Hort is certainly right in saying, when speaking of 1 P 1'^ : ' The starting point of this and all similar language in the Epistles is our Lord's saying in Mt 20-» ii Mk 10"' (cf. also B. V. Westcott, Ephesians, 1906, p. 140, and even, thougli more cautiously, A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, p. 331). Moreover, the primary assumption of this method of determining the apostolic usage of these terms is not unquestion- able— to wit, that, in their earlier use, running back into the OT, the implication of purchase has dropped wholly out of sight, and only the broad sense of delivering has been retained. It is at least noticeable that the OT persistently employs terms with the implication of purchase, when speaking whether of the great typical deliverances from Egypt and the Captivity or of the greater deliverance typified by them which Jahweh was yet to bring to His people. This is no more a phenomenon of the LXX than of the underlying Hebrew ; and it does not appear that it is due to a complete decay of feeling for the implication of purchase intrinsic in these terms. No doubt they are sometimes used when we see nothing further necessary for the sense than simple de- liverance, and sometimes in parallelisms together with terms of simple deliverance. They are also used, however, when the implication of purchase is express. And we are not encouiaged to think that they had ceased to bear their intrinsic mean- ing to the writers of the OT, even when applied to the greater matters of destiny, whether of the individual or of the nation, by such a passage, say, as Ps 49'-" : ' None of them can b}- any means redeem (nis, Xi/rpoSo-flai) his brother, nor give to God a ransom (ie3, i^L\a<Tiia) for him : (for the redemption [p'"]?, TTjf rtfiijf ttj^ Xurpujffecos] of their life is costly . . .)' ; or by such a passage as, say, Is 43'*' : ' Fear not, for I have redeemed thee (^'B^X3, i\tn-pua-dfir]v) ; . . . I have given Egypt as thy ransom (^n??, S.\)yay/j.a), Ethiopia and Seba for thee. ... I have loved thee ; therefore will I give men for thee, and peoples for thy life.' The truth seems to be that the language of ransoming .•iiid redemption is employed in the OT to describe the deliverances which Israel had experienced or was yet to experience at the Divine hands, not