Chapter XXII.
The several considerations of the death of Christ as to the expiation of our sins thereby, and the satisfaction made therein — First, Of it as a price; secondly, As a sacrifice.
I. The death of Christ in this business is a price, and that properly so called: 1 Cor. vi. 20, Ἠγοράσθητε τιμῆς, — “Ye are bought with a price.” And if we will know what that price was with which we are bought, the Holy Ghost informs us, 1 Pet. i. 18, 19, “Ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.” It is the blood of Christ which in this business hath that use which silver and gold have in the redeeming of captives; and paid it is into the hand of him by whose power and authority the captive is detained, as shall be proved. And himself tells us what kind of a price it is that is so paid; it is λύτρον, Matt. xx. 28, “He came to lay down his life λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν·” which, for its more evidence and clearness, is called ἀντίλυτρον, 1 Tim. ii. 6, “a price of redemption” for the delivery of another.
The first mention of a ransom in the Scripture is in Exod. xxi. 30: “If there be laid on him a sum of money, then he shall give for the ransom of his life whatsoever is laid on him.” The word in the original is פִּדְיֹן; which the LXX. there render λύτρα Δώσει λύτρα τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ. And it is used again in the same sense, Ps. xlix. 9; and in both places intends a valuable price, to be paid for the deliverance of that which, upon guilt, became obnoxious to death. It is true, the word is from פָּדָה, “redimere, vindicare, asserere in libertatem,” by any ways and means, by power, strength, or otherwise; but where-ever it is applied to such a kind of redemption as had a price going along with it, the LXX. constantly render it by απολυτροῦν and sometimes λυτρώσασθαι, otherwise by ῤύομαι, and the like.
It is, then, confessed that פָּדָה; in the Old Testament is sometimes taken for redemit in a metaphorical sense, not strictly and literally by the intervention of a price; but that λυτρώσασθαι, the word whereby it is rendered when a price intervened, is ever so taken in the New Testament, is denied. Indeed, Moses is called λυτρωτής, Acts vii. 35, in reference to the metaphorical redemption of Israel out of Egypt, — a deliverance by power and a strong arm; but shall we say, because that word is used improperly in one place, where no price could be paid, where God plainly says it was not done by a price but by power, therefore it must be so used in those places where there is express mention of a price, both the matter of it and its formality as a price, and speaketh not a word of doing it any other way but by the payment of a price? But of this afterward.
There is mention of “a ransom” in ten places of the Old Testament; “to ransom” and “ransomed” in two or three more. In two of these places, Exod. xxi. 30 and Ps. xlix. 9, the word is פִּדְיֹן, from פָּדָה, as before, and rendered by the LXX. λύτρον. In all other places it is in the Hebrew כֹּפֶר, which properly signifies a propitiation, as Ps. xlix. 9; which the LXX. have variously rendered. Twice it is mentioned in Job, chap. xxxiii. 24 and xxxvi. 18. In the first place they have left it quite out, and in the latter so corrupted the sense that they have rendered it altogether unintelligible. Prov. vi. 35 and xiii. 8, they have properly rendered it λύτρον, or a price of redemption, it being in both places used in such business as a ransom useth to be accepted in. Chap. xxi. 18, they have properly rendered it to the subject-matter, περικάθαρμα. Περικαθάρματα are things publicly devoted to destruction, as it were to turn away anger from others, coming upon them for their sakes.
So is κάθαρμα, “homo piacularis pro lustratione et expiatione patriæ devotus;” whence the word is often used, as scelus in Latin, for a wicked man, a man fit to be destroyed and taken away. Γρύζειν δὲ καὶ τολμᾶτον ὦ καθάρματε, says he in the poet.1 Καθαρμός is used in the same sense by Herodotus:2 Καθαρμὸν τῆς χώρης ποιευμένων Ἀχαιῶν, Ἀθάμαντα τὸν Αἰόλου, — “Athamas was made a piaculum, or a propitiation for the country.” Whence Budæus renders that of the apostle, Ὡς περικαθάρματα τοῦ κόσμου ἐγενήθημεν, “Nos tanquam piacula mundi facti sumus, et succedaneæ pro populo victimæ,” — “We are as the accursed things of the world, and sacrifices for the people,” 1 Cor. iv. 13; reading the words, ὥσπερ καθάρματα, not ὡς περικαθάρματα: the Greek scholiast, who reads it as we commonly do, rendering it by ἀποσαρώματα, as the Vulgar Latin “purgamenta,” to the same purpose, — such as have all manner of filth cast upon them. And Isa. xliii. 3, they have rendered the same word ἄλλαγμα, “a commutation by price.” So Matt. xvi. 26, Τὶ δώσει ἄνθρωπος ἀντάλλαγμα τῆς ψυχῆς, “a price in exchange.” Now, in all these places and others, the Hebrews use the word כֹּפֶר, “a propitiation,” by way of allusion; as is most especially evident from that of Isaiah, “I will give Egypt a propitiation for thee.” That is, as God is atoned by a propitiatory sacrifice, wherein something is offered him in the room of the offender, so will he do with them, — put them into trouble in room of the church, as the sacrificed beast was in the room of him for whom it was sacrificed And hence does that word signify a ransom, because what God appointed in his worship to redeem any thing that by the law was devoted, which was a compensation by his institution (as a clean beast in the room of a first-born was to be offered a sacrifice to God), was so called. And the word “satisfaction,” which is but once used in the Scripture, or twice together, Num. xxxv. 31, is כֹפֶר in the original. כֹפֶר, indeed, is originally “pitch” or “bitumen;” hence what God says to Noah about making the ark, וְכָפַרְתָּ, Gen. vi. 14, the LXX. have rendered ἀσφαλτώσεις τῇ ἀσφάλτῳ, — “bituminabis bitumine.” כִפֶּר. in pihel is “placavit, expiavit, expiationem fecit;” because by sacrifice sins are covered as if they had not been, to cover or hide being the first use of the word.