Ruth4chapter 4

Ruth 4:1-2

The gate is where Deuteronomy 25:7 sends this exact case, and where Deuteronomy 21:19 and 22:15 send others, so Boaz opens the matter in the one place a ruling could be made and witnessed. The kinsman is addressed as Ho, such a one, which renders a Hebrew idiom that withholds a name, the same way a name is hidden at 1 Samuel 21:2 and 2 Kings 6:8. The law fixes no number of elders for a redemption, and Jewish practice settled on ten for causes of marriage and inheritance, which John Gill and Adam Clarke both report.

Ruth 4:3-4

The statute behind the offer is Leviticus 25:25, where a kinsman redeems the land of a poor relation, and the whole transaction runs on that law before a marriage is mentioned at all. Boaz names Naomi and the field and stops there, and the man answers I will redeem it before he knows what else is attached to it. How Naomi holds land to sell is disputed: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read a right to the use of it during her life rather than the title, and Albert Barnes reads a sale priced against the years remaining until the jubilee. Nothing is signed, because the elders and the inhabitants standing at the gate are the record.

Ruth 4:5-6

Boaz binds two laws together, the redemption of land at Leviticus 25:25 and the raising up of seed to a dead man at Deuteronomy 25:5, and neither statute asks one man to do both. The levirate law names a brother, and Boaz is no brother to Mahlon, so what he takes up here reaches past the letter of it. The kinsman gives his reason as marring his own inheritance and the text never says how, so Albert Barnes reads a son counted to Mahlon carrying the field back out of his line, while the Targum has him already married, which Adam Clarke reports and says has no footing in the law of Moses. The law allowed the refusal, and the chapter records it without a word against the man.

Ruth 4:7-8

Verse 7 stops the story to explain a custom to readers who no longer kept it, which places the writing of the book a long way after the events it tells. Deuteronomy 25:9 puts the shoe in the widow's hands with spitting and a name of reproach fixed on the house, and here the man draws off his own shoe and hands it over, with no shaming recorded. Albert Barnes reads the difference as the letter of that law giving way to a general form of transfer, and Keil and Delitzsch read Deuteronomy as the narrow case and Ruth as the wider custom; both passages stand as they are written. Matthew Henry gives the sense of the token, that the right to walk on the ground passes with the shoe that walked on it.

Ruth 4:9-10

Ye are witnesses this day falls twice in these two verses and nowhere else in Scripture, which is how a sale of this size closes with no document. Boaz names three dead men, Elimelech and Chilion and Mahlon, and states his purpose as raising up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, so the business at the gate is a name before it is a field. Ruth is called the Moabitess in the sentence that makes her a wife in Bethlehem, the fifth and last time the book says it of her. Matthew Henry reads Boaz here as a figure of Christ the redeemer buying back a forfeited inheritance, which is his reading and not something the New Testament says at this verse.

Ruth 4:11-12

Rachel and Leah are named over a Moabite bride, and Rachel died on the road to Ephrath, which Genesis 35:19 says is Bethlehem, so the blessing invokes a woman buried within sight of where it is spoken. Ephratah occurs here for the first time in Scripture, and Micah 5:2 addresses the same town by the same double name. The other name in the blessing is Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah in Genesis 38, so the elders set one irregular line over another, and Adam Clarke notes that the families of Bethlehem traced their descent from him. The genealogy at the end of the chapter starts from Pharez, which makes the last five verses the answer to this prayer.

Ruth 4:13

Twice in the book God is reported acting, and this is the second time: at 1:6 he gave his people bread, and here he gives conception, and everything between the two is done by people keeping faith with one another. The clause the Lord gave her conception occurs nowhere else in Scripture. Deuteronomy 23:3 bars a Moabite from the congregation to the tenth generation, and the book neither cites that law nor argues with it; Adam Clarke and John Gill report the old Jewish readings that hold the bar to fall on Moabite men, or on Moabites who stay in their own religion, and Ruth had left hers at 1:16. What the chapter puts in the place of a ruling is the blessing of the elders and the birth of a son.

Ruth 4:14-15

The women bless the LORD to the woman who told them at 1:20 to call her Mara, and the kinsman word they use of the newborn is the word that has belonged to Boaz since 3:9. Restorer of thy life and nourisher of thine old age answers her own summary at 1:21, that she went out full and the LORD brought her home empty, and it comes from the same townspeople who asked at 1:19 whether this was Naomi. Seven sons is the picture of a full house, as at 1 Samuel 2:5 and Job 1:2, and the phrase falls here for the first time in Scripture, set on a Moabite daughter in law. They leave Ruth's name out of the blessing and call her the one which loveth thee.

Ruth 4:16-17

And Naomi took the child: The neighbour women give the child his name and neither parent is recorded doing it, which is odd enough that John Gill cites Josephus making Naomi the namer on their advice. There is a son born to Naomi is said of a child who is legally the heir of Mahlon and the son of Boaz, and it closes the account the book opened when she lost a husband and two sons. Obed means serving, and verse 15 has already said whom he serves, the old age of the woman holding him. The name David enters Scripture in this verse, and the chapter ends on it.

Ruth 4:18-20

Now these are the generations: These are the generations is the formula Genesis uses ten times, from the heavens and the earth at 2:4 to Jacob at 37:2, and this verse is where it next falls in Scripture. Ten names run from Pharez to David, the same count as Adam to Noah in Genesis 5 and Shem to Abraham in Genesis 11. Nahshon fixes the middle of the list at the exodus, since Numbers 1:7 and 7:12 make him prince of Judah in the wilderness and Exodus 6:23 makes him brother in law to Aaron. From Nahshon to David is four names for something near four centuries, and Albert Barnes says the difficulties in this list remain unsolved; whether a Hebrew genealogy of this kind names every father or selects among them is where readers differ.

Ruth 4:21-22

Ruth never names the mother of Boaz and Matthew 1:5 does, saying Salmon begat Booz of Rachab, so a Canaanite woman of Jericho and a Moabite widow stand in one verse of the line of Christ. Albert Barnes suggests that a man whose own mother came in from outside Israel may have been readier to marry a woman who did the same, and he offers it as a suggestion rather than as something the text states. This same list is given four times in Scripture, here and at 1 Chronicles 2:10-12, Matthew 1:3-6 and Luke 3:32-33. A book that opened in the days when the judges ruled closes on the name of a king, and 1 Samuel 16 takes it up from there.