My "Goel" Lives

“As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,

And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. 

Even after my skin is destroyed,

Yet from my flesh I shall see God;"

Job 19:25-26

Here Job tells his friends of the hope he has in his "Redeemer". In the original Hebrew the word for "Redeemer" is "Goel".  A Goel frees someone by either of two particular methods: the Goel may pay a debt for that person, or the Goel may fight to free the person. "It seems that Job found consolation not only in the fact that he had a Goel, a Redeemer, but that this Redeemer liveth. He does not say, 'I know that my Goel shall live, but that He lives,'—having a clear view of the self-existence of the Lord Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. And you and I looking back do not say, 'I know that He did live, but He lives today.' This very day you that mourn and sorrow for venerated friends, your prop and pillar in years gone by, you may go to Christ with confidence, because He not only lives, but He is the source of life; and you therefore believe that He can give forth out of Himself life to those whom you have committed to the tomb. He is the Lord and giver of life originally, and He shall be specially declared to be the resurrection and the life, when the legions of His redeemed shall be glorified with Him. If I saw no fountain from which life could stream to the dead, I would yet believe the promise when God said that the dead shall live; but when I see the fountain provided, and know that it is full to the brim and that it runneth over, I can rejoice without trembling. Since there is one who can say, 'I am the Resurrection and the Life,' it is a blessed thing to see the means already before us in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us look up to our Goel then who liveth at this very time." (Charles Spurgeon)