Texts like Eph 1:7 (“redemption through his blood”) and 1 Pet 1:18-19 (“you were redeemed . . . with the precious blood of Christ”) can scarcely be made to support the theory of Jesus’ death to support the theory of Jesus’ death as a ransom price paid, since both texts do not use the Gk construction of a genitive of price. (Tuckett, “Atonement in the New Testament,” in Freedman, ed. Anchor Bible Dictionary 1:519)
Similarly Paul’s language of Jesus “redeeming” those under the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us (Gal 3:13; 4:5) can only with difficulty support the view that Jesus’ death is being interpreted as a ransom price paid in a substitutionary sense. Far more important for Paul hwere seems to be the representative nature of Jesus’ death. (ibid. 521)
The nearest one gets to an idea of a price being paid is in Mark 10:45, where Jesus’ death is said to be a lytron anti pollon, “a ransom for many.” The use of anti (“in the place of,” “for”), if pressed, does suggest ideas of substitution and equivalence, and the ransom idea in lytron could be said to reinforce this. However, one should not read too much into this. There is for example no talk of “sin” where and one should not necessarily interpret the verse as implying a view of Jesus’ death as an expiatory sacrifice for sin with a substitutionary idea of sacrifice implied. This probably confuses categories unnecessarily. (ibid. 521)
According to the Gospels, Jesus thus draws on a plethora of images from the OT by way of communicating the saving significance of his death. With echoes from Isa 52:13-53:12, the phrase “for many” unavoidably signals the vicarious nature of Jesus’ death on behalf of humanity. Interpreters often take Jesus’ reference to “RANSOM” (λυτρον lytron) in its usual sense in Greek literature, where it pertains to the “price of release” of a new slave or prisoner of war. In the OT, the connection between “ransom” and “atonement” is more straightforward (e.g., Exod 21:30), but when the Lord is named as the one who ransoms (e.g., Exod 30;12, 16; Ps 49:15; Hos 13:14) there is no hint that actual payment is involved. Rather, God ransoms by liberating (λυτροομαι lytroomai) the people from Egypt (Exod 6:6; 16:13), a claim echoed in Luke 1:68; 2:38; 24:21. Similarly, the sayings at the Last Supper trade on images and language from Israel’s covenant sacrifice (Exod 24:8), the restoration of Israel that signals the end of exile (Zech 9:9-11), and the hope of covenant renewal (Jer 31:31-33). In these myriad ways, Jesus’ death marked the long-awaited restoration of God’s people, Jew and Gentile. In his exposition of his own death, Jesus pushed back into Israel’s history and embraced fully Israel’s hope of redemption. The new exodus, God’s decisive act of deliverance, was inaugurated in Jesus’ mission, the climax of which is his death on the cross. (Joel B. Green, “Atonement” in The New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, 1:346)
Neither in the Gospels nor otherwise in the NT, however, do we find story lines portraying God as the subject and Jesus as the object (i.e., God punishing Jesus in his death). (ibid.)
