The recent question about problems which are solved by generalizations got me thinking about the Rabinowitz trick, which is used to prove a statement of Hilbert's Nullstellensatz, specifically, the inclusion of the ideal generated by an affine variety $V(J)$ over an algebraically closed field into the radical of $J.$
Let $0\neq f\in J,$ as above. In the course of the proof, one extends the given polynomial ring by a single indeterminate and writes its elements as, $$\sum_{i=1}^l h_ig_i + h(X_n\cdot f - 1),$$ where $h_i,h\in k[X_1,\dots,X_{n+1}]$ and $g_i\in k[X_1,\dots,X_n].$ One then applies the weak Nullstellensatz, to see that, indeed, every element of $k[X_1,\dots,X_{n+1}]$ can be written in the above form. Then, mapping back to the smaller polynomial ring, via $X_{n+1} \mapsto \frac{1}{f}$ yields the result, by simply clearing denominators.
My question is this: While the trick uses some exceedingly clever algebra, does it have some sort of deeper geometric meaning? Why does it make sense to try this in the first place?