Emily Ohl

All of you – or at least most of you – heard me read my Torah portion earlier. My Torah portion, Bamidbar, is mainly a census: G-d tells Moses and Aaron to count up all the Israelites who can fight so that they can form an army. The part that I read is about how G-d declares that the Levites will serve G-d instead of the firstborn males as is traditional. There are more firstborn than Levites, so some families pay to buy back their firstborn.That part is often referred to as the redemption of the firstborn.

My haftorah portion, on the other hand, is basically a long metaphor comparing how Hoseah’s wife Gomer was unfaithful to him to how the Israelites were unfaithful to G-d by worshiping idols. G-d wants the people to stop and atone for their misdeeds.

These two portions seem to have nothing to do with each other, but there is a commonly made connection between them: at the beginning of Hosea, there’s a line that says that the people of Israel will be innumerable whereas, in Bamidbar, they are clearly numbered. (Well, the ones who can fight, at least.) I have managed to connect them in another way: redemption.

As part of writing this d’var, I looked at several different definitions of the word redemption. The three most common ways that I have found to interpret redemption are, first, making up for something bad one has done (so basically atonement), second, deliverance from sin, or third, buying something back, which is the case in Bamidbar. The first two both apply to Hosea: The Israelites are told to seek redemption, and G-d is willing to deliver the Israelites from sin.

I read a lot, and some of the books I’ve read have types of redemption in them. For instance, in Starless by Jacqueline Carey, one of the characters is a bodyguard whose charge dies in his care. Vironesh, the character, wants to redeem himself from that mistake. In that case, redemption is synonymous with atonement.

In The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book, by Kat Milford, a character defines redemption as “turn from evil, return to good”, also like atonement. I suppose redemption in the financial sense doesn’t come up as often in the books I read.

I also found several official definitions of atonement. Oxford Languages says that it means either (1) the act of saving or being saved from sin or (2) the action of regaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or the clearing of a debt.

My pocket dictionary defines the verb redeem as one of five possibilities (1) buy back (2) pay off (3) turn in for a prize (4) free, as from sin (5) aone for. Etymonline, a website where one can find out the origins of words, says that redemption comes from a Latin word meaning “a buying back or off, a releasing, or a ransoming”. In the mid-14th century, it was taken to mean “deliverance from sin”. 

To be honest, I hadn’t expected there to be so many different definitions of redemption. Before learning all of this, I mainly thought of redemption as a synonym for atonement. Did any of you know all of the things redemption can mean?

All of the information I’ve gathered seems to come to this conclusion: Redemption can often mean to buy something back, to atone for an action you have committed, or to be freed from the consequences of that action. The mentions of it in the Tanakh, whether it uses the actual word or not, show that it has been an important thing for a long time, and will continue to be.

Now, I would like to ask you a few questions. For one, how do you define redemption? Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever bought something back, or tried to atone for a mistake you’ve made, or been freed from the consequences of something regrettable that you’ve done? You don’t have to say anything aloud, but please take a few minutes to think about it.

Thank you for listening. I hope this helps you to notice what significance redemption has in your lives.