Redemption in the Tanakh and the New Testament

From Exodus to Resurrection — and Still Going

May 23, 2026

Illustrated ancient study hall with wooden benches, open scrolls, and warm light streaming through stone arch windows in blush pink and cream watercolor tones

A student once asked his teacher, “If Messiah has already come, why does the world still look like this?”

The teacher replied, “Because redemption is not an event you missed. It’s a story you’re still inside of.”

Here’s a question I want you to wrestle with before we go anywhere: when you say the word redemption, what do you actually mean?

If your honest answer is something like “going to heaven when I die,” then we have some beautiful, slightly uncomfortable work to do together today. Not because that’s wrong exactly, but because it’s about as complete as describing a symphony as “some notes that eventually stop.”

The Bible’s vision of redemption is enormous. It is cosmic, communal, and historical. It starts with a burning bush and a people groaning under whips in Egypt, and it ends with heaven and earth made new and God finally, fully dwelling with His people. Everything in between, including the cross, including the resurrection, including you right now with your Bible open, is part of that one unfolding story.

That’s what we’re excavating today.

WORD STUDY

גָּאַל — Ga’al (Hebrew) To redeem as a kinsman-redeemer. This is the word for a near relative who steps in to rescue family, buying back land, freeing a slave, vindicating the wronged. It’s personal. It’s relational. It costs the redeemer something. When God calls Himself Israel’s go’el in Isaiah 43, He’s not signing a legal document. He’s claiming family.

פָּדָה — Padah (Hebrew) To ransom or rescue, often with the idea of a price paid. This word carries the weight of exchange, something is given so someone can go free. It runs all through the Exodus narrative and lands in Nehemiah 1:10 with full force: these people were bought, and they know it.

ἀπολύτρωσις — Apolytrosis (Greek) The Greek New Testament word, translated liberation or release through payment. Paul reaches for this word in Romans 8:23 and it carries the whole weight of both Hebrew words at once, freedom, purchase, and personal rescue all together. The New Covenant didn’t invent redemption. It completed the sentence the Tanakh had been writing for centuries.

I. THE EXODUS: WHERE REDEMPTION LEARNS ITS SHAPE

Every time the Bible talks about redemption after Exodus 6, it’s in conversation with Exodus 6. That’s not an exaggeration. The Exodus becomes the template, the pattern God returns to, riffs on, and ultimately fulfills in Messiah. So we have to start here.

“Therefore, say to Bnei-Yisrael: I am ADONAI. I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt, I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will take you to Myself as a people, and I will be your God.” Exodus 6:6–7 (TLV)

Read that carefully. God doesn’t say “I will rescue you and then you can figure out the rest.” He says I will bring you out, I will deliver you, I will redeem you (padah, ransomed), and then, this is the sentence everyone forgets: I will take you to Myself as a people and I will be your God.

The goal of the Exodus is not escape. The goal is relationship. Freedom is the vehicle. God’s presence is the destination.

That’s why the book of Exodus doesn’t end at the Sea of Reeds (or Red Sea). It ends with the Tabernacle, the dwelling place of God right in the middle of the camp. The whole long second half of the book that most people skim? That’s the whole point. Deliverance was always headed toward dwelling.

And knowing that changes how you read everything that comes after it.

II. REDEMPTION FROM EXILE: THE PATTERN GETS BIGGER

Here’s where a lot of Christian readers lose the thread. They learn the Exodus, they skip to the New Testament, and they miss about seven centuries of God re-teaching the same lesson in a new key.

After the Babylonian exile, after Israel has been carried off and the Temple has been burned and the whole project looks like it fell apart, the prophets start talking about redemption again. But now the scale is bigger.

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name — you are Mine.” Isaiah 43:1 (TLV)

This is Second Isaiah, Isaiah 40–55, written to a people in exile who have every reason to think God has abandoned them. And what does God reach for? The same word. Ga’al. I have redeemed you. Kinsman. Family. I haven’t walked away. I am coming.

Then there’s Nehemiah, centuries later, praying after the return from exile. Listen to what he says:

“They are Your servants and Your people, whom You redeemed by Your great power and by Your strong hand.” Nehemiah 1:10 (TLV)

The Exodus happened over a thousand years before Nehemiah prays this prayer. Why is he still talking about it as the operative fact of Israel’s identity?

Because redemption in the Hebrew Scriptures isn’t just a past event to be grateful for. It’s the ongoing ground of identity. Israel is a people who were bought. That never stops being true. That shapes how you see every subsequent act of God, including the exile, including the return, and yes, including Messiah.

The Prophets and the ‘Not Yet’

Jeremiah and Ezekiel both see the exile as catastrophe and as preparation. Jeremiah 31 promises a New Covenant, not carved in stone but written on hearts. Ezekiel 36–37 promises the Spirit poured out, dry bones raised, God dwelling with His people again.

These are not vague spiritual promises. They’re the prophets insisting that the full redemption story isn’t finished yet. Not with the Exodus. Not with the return from Babylon. Something bigger is still coming.

Keep that close. We’re going to need it.

RABBINIC INSIGHT

Rabbinic thought has always understood redemption as collective and ongoing. The rabbis did not read the Exodus as a one-time historical rescue that was now closed. They read it as a living reality, one that had to be re-experienced in every generation.

The Passover Haggadah says: “In every generation, a person is obligated to see themselves as if they personally left Egypt.” Not as if their ancestors did. As if they did. Redemption isn’t a museum exhibit. It’s a present-tense claim on your identity.

But perhaps the most stunning picture of how the rabbis understood God’s redemptive heart comes from the Talmud, Bava Qamma 60b. I studied this with Rav Carl Kinbar in his Rabbinical Writings course. It’s called A Fire in Zion.

Rabbi Isaac Nappaha is teaching, and he turns to Exodus 22:5: “If a fire breaks out and catches in thorns, the one who kindled the fire shall pay full restitution.” Then he does something breathtaking. He applies that legal principle directly to God.

The Holy One, Blessed Is He, said: “It is incumbent upon Me to pay restitution for the fire that I kindled.”

He then quotes Lamentations 4:11 — God kindled a fire in Zion that devoured its foundations, meaning the destruction of the Temple and the exile. And then he pivots immediately to Zechariah 2:5 — in the future, God says, I will be a wall of fire around her and the glory in her midst.

Read that again slowly. The same God who permitted the judgment is the one who shows up to rebuild. The fire of exile becomes the fire of restoration. God doesn’t abandon what He broke. He pays restitution. He comes back as the wall of fire around the very city He allowed to burn.

That instinct, the conviction that God is not finished, runs straight through every page of the Tanakh and straight into the New Testament, if you know how to look.

I am including the actual primary source here for you in case you’d like to read it.

Download A Fire in Zion

III. YESHUA AND THE NEW EXODUS

When the Gospel of Luke describes the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah appear and speak with Yeshua about what He is about to accomplish in Jerusalem. The word Luke uses for “accomplish” is exodus. Not metaphorically. That’s the actual Greek word. Luke 9:31.

That’s not a fluke. That’s an interpretive signal the size of a billboard: what is about to happen is a new Exodus.

John the Baptist calls Yeshua the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). Paul tells the Corinthians that Messiah our Passover has been sacrificed (1 Corinthians 5:7). The imagery is deliberate and dense. The New Testament writers aren’t inventing a new story. They’re insisting the old story has finally reached its climax.

Deliverance. Ransom. Kinsman-redeemer. All three words are doing their work in the cross. Yeshua is the go’el who steps in as family. He is the padah, the price paid for freedom. He is everything the Exodus was pointing toward.

The Resurrection as the Turning Point

The resurrection is not just the happy ending after the tragedy of the cross. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 calls the resurrection the beginning of something, the firstfruits of a harvest that hasn’t finished yet. Colossians 1:18 calls Yeshua the firstborn from the dead, which means more births are coming.

The resurrection isn’t personal salvation wrapped up with a fancy bow. It’s the launch of the new creation. It’s the first moment in history where a human body came out the other side of death permanently, physically, and gloriously changed. And Paul says in Romans 8 that all of creation is groaning, waiting for the rest of that harvest to come in.

Which means we’re living in the middle of the story. Not the beginning. Not the end. The middle, which is exactly where the Bible says we are right now.

Redemption Expands to the Nations

One more thing the New Testament does with the Exodus pattern: it blows the walls off of who can be inside it.

Isaiah 49:6 already said the Servant would be a light to the nations. Romans 11 goes to extraordinary lengths to insist that Gentile inclusion does not mean Israel’s replacement. It means the family got bigger, grafted together, one olive tree. When a family adopts a child, it doesn’t mean they are ‘replacing’ their other child. It means they are expanding their family.

Ephesians 2 says the dividing wall of hostility has been torn down, which in context means Jew and Gentile brought into one new humanity in Messiah.

This is not the New Testament erasing the Hebrew story. This is the Hebrew story doing exactly what its prophets said it would do. The nations were always in the plan. Israel was always meant to be a blessing to the families of the earth (Genesis 12). That’s not a New Testament innovation. That’s Genesis 12:3.

THE ALREADY / NOT YET

So where does that leave us? With a very important tension that a lot of Bible readers try to resolve too quickly in one direction or the other.

Already — What Is Done

Forgiveness of sin
Reconciliation with God
New covenant life
Gift of the Spirit
Death defeated in Messiah

Not Yet — What Is Coming

Resurrection of the dead
Full restoration of Israel
Peace among the nations
Renewal of all creation
God’s full dwelling with His people

Romans 8:23 puts it plainly: even those who have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait for the redemption of our bodies. Wait. We’re still waiting for redemption? Yes. The already-redeemed are still waiting for the fullness of what redemption means. That’s not a contradiction. That’s the shape of the story.

Acts 3:21 speaks of the restoration of all things that God announced through the holy prophets. Revelation 21–22 ends with heaven and earth made new, the New Jerusalem descending, and God finally, fully, permanently dwelling with His people.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s Exodus 6:7 at full resolution: I will take you to Myself as a people, and I will be your God.

One story. From Egypt to eternity. We are inside it right now.

IN THE COMMENTS THIS WEEK

1. Before today, how did you understand the word redemption? Was it mostly personal, mostly future, mostly about forgiveness, or something else? How did this teaching shift or expand that? Be specific.

2. The Haggadah tells Jewish people to see themselves as if they personally left Egypt, because redemption isn't just history, it's identity. If you are a Gentile believer grafted into this story through Messiah, what is your Exodus moment? The moment you moved from bondage to belonging, from outside the covenant to inside it? What would it look like to stop treating that as your past and start living it as your present-tense identity?

3. The Exodus always moved toward dwelling, God in the middle of the camp. If that’s still the direction redemption is headed, what does that do to how you think about where history is going? Take your time with this one.

FROM THE STUDY HALL

Here’s the thing about a story you’re living inside: you can’t fully see it from where you’re standing. The Israelites at the Sea of Reeds didn’t know they were at the beginning of a six-hundred-year chain that would end in Babylonian exile, restoration, the prophets, and then a carpenter from Galilee who would turn the whole thing inside out in the best possible way.

They just knew they were wet, scared and free.

You’ve experienced forgiveness. You’ve experienced the Spirit. You’ve experienced something genuine and real. And the world around you still looks like it needs a lot more redeeming. That tension is not a failure of your faith. It’s the correct reading of where we are in the story.

We are the generation living between the firstfruits and the harvest. Between the inauguration and the consummation. Between the already and the not yet. The call isn’t to pretend the not-yet is already here. The call is to live with hope, which is not wishful thinking but the confident expectation of what God has already announced He will do.

The study hall is open. Let’s hear from you in the comments.

Want to Go Deeper?

I did a full podcast episode on the topic of redemption here on She’s So Scripture. If you learn better by listening, start there and then come back to this study. The two work well together.

👉 Redemption Is a Pattern, Not Just a Moment

About the Author

Diane Ferreira is a Jewish believer in Yeshua, a published author, speaker, seminary student, wife, and proud mom. She is the founder of She’s So Scripture and She Opens Her Bible. She is the author of several books, including The Proverbs 31-ish Woman, which debuted as Amazon’s #1 New Release in Religious Humor, as well as Holy, Hormonal and Holding On.

She is currently pursuing her graduate degree in Jewish Studies in seminary, with her favorite topics being the early church and Biblical Hebrew. Diane writes and teaches from a unique perspective, bridging her Jewish heritage with vibrant faith in the Messiah to bring clarity, depth, and devotion to everyday believers.

When she’s not writing, studying, or teaching, you’ll find her curled up with a good book, crocheting something cozy, traveling, or playing her favorite video games.

Tree of Life (TLV) – Scripture taken from the Holy Scriptures, Tree of Life Version*. Copyright © 2014,2016 by the Tree of Life Bible Society. Used by permission of the Tree of Life Bible Society.

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