What Is a Ransom?
In Mark 10:45 and Matthew 20:28, Jesus tells his disciples, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Yeshua’s reference to himself as a “ransom” has deep roots in the Torah and its system of atonement. According to Mark and Matthew, Jesus offers his own life as a substitutionary payment for the lives of others.
In first-century Jewish thought, committing sins put people in debt to God. This is why Jesus prays in the Our Father, “Forgive us our debts (ὀφειλήματα, opheilēmata), as we have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:7). Yeshua is not speaking of financial obligations, but rather the indebtedness of sin. The giving of his own “life” (ψυχή, psuchē) as a ransom payment denotes the elimination of those debts.
The Gospels’ language of a “ransom” (λύτρον, lūtron) comes from the notion of exchange payments in ancient Israel’s atonement system. According to Exodus, every Israelite who is numbered in a census must provide a monetary payment “to make atonement for your lives” (Exodus 30:15). In the Greek translation of the Torah known as the Septuagint, God tells Moses, “If you take the count of the children of Israel ... each will give a ransom for his life (δώσουσιν ἕκαστος λύτρα τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ) to the Lord” (Exodus 30:12 LXX). In Exodus, this “ransom” is a payment of half a shekel (see Exodus 30:13); in the Gospels, Jesus himself resolves to “give his life as a ransom” (δοῦναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ λύτρον). The parallel language in Exodus and the New Testament suggests that Yeshua will offer his life as an atoning payment to God in exchange for the sin-debt of all his people. Thus, through his ransoming death on the cross, Jesus "will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).
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