Motivation for Koszul complex Koszul complex is important for homological theory of commutative rings.
However, it's hard to guess where it came from.
What was the motivation for Koszul complex?

In this answer I would rather focus on why is the Koszul complex so widely used. In abstract terms, the Koszul complex arises as the easiest way to combine an algebra with a coalgebra in presence of quadratic data. You can find the modern generalization of the Koszul duality described in Aaron's comment by reading Loday, Valette Algebraic Operads (mostly chapters 2-3).
To my knowledge the Koszul complex is extremely useful because you can use it even with certain $A_\infty$-structures arising from deformation quantization of Poisson structures and you relate it to the other "most used resolution in homological algebra", i.e. the bar resolution. 
For a quick review of this fact, please check my answer in Homotopy equivalent chain complexes
As you can see it is a flexibe object which has the property of being extremely "explicit". This helped alot its diffusion in the mathematical literature.
