On the road to Emmaus, the disciples explain their shattered expectations: 'we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.' Their language reveals what Jesus' death seemed to have destroyed.
'Redemption' carried biblical memories of God's acts of deliverance and therefore had significance beyond private spiritual improvement.
Israel's Scriptures use redemption language for God's rescue of his people, most memorably in the Exodus and in promises of restoration. By the first century Jewish hopes for God's intervention took varied forms, but Roman domination made questions of national deliverance concrete.
Luke does not say that every Jew expected the same political program. The Emmaus disciples themselves, however, clearly connect Jesus with hoped-for redemption and interpret his crucifixion as an apparent collapse of that hope.
The historical background explains why the disciples are so confused by a crucified Messiah. They expected redemption; they have just watched the expected redeemer apparently defeated by imperial power.
Jesus' subsequent explanation does not abandon Israel's Scriptures. Instead, he teaches them to understand suffering and glory as belonging within the Messiah's scriptural mission.