TEXT [Commentary]

IV.   Boaz Provides for Elimelech’s Family (4:1-22)

A.   Boaz Successfully Gains Ruth and Pledges to Provide for Elimelech’s Family (4:1-12)

1 Boaz went to the town gate and took a seat there. Just then the family redeemer he had mentioned came by, so Boaz called out to him, “Come over here and sit down, friend. I want to talk to you.” So they sat down together. 2 Then Boaz called ten leaders from the town and asked them to sit as witnesses. 3 And Boaz said to the family redeemer, “You know Naomi, who came back from Moab. She is selling the land that belonged to our relative Elimelech. 4 I thought I should speak to you about it so that you can redeem it if you wish. If you want the land, then buy it here in the presence of these witnesses. But if you don’t want it, let me know right away, because I am next in line to redeem it after you.”

The man replied, “All right, I’ll redeem it.”

5 Then Boaz told him, “Of course, your purchase of the land from Naomi also requires that you marry Ruth, the Moabite widow. That way she can have children who will carry on her husband’s name and keep the land in the family.”

6 “Then I can’t redeem it,” the family redeemer replied, “because this might endanger my own estate. You redeem the land; I cannot do it.”

7 Now in those days it was the custom in Israel for anyone transferring a right of purchase to remove his sandal and hand it to the other party. This publicly validated the transaction. 8 So the other family redeemer drew off his sandal as he said to Boaz, “You buy the land.”

9 Then Boaz said to the elders and to the crowd standing around, “You are witnesses that today I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelech, Kilion, and Mahlon. 10 And with the land I have acquired Ruth, the Moabite widow of Mahlon, to be my wife. This way she can have a son to carry on the family name of her dead husband and to inherit the family property here in his hometown. You are all witnesses today.”

11 Then the elders and all the people standing in the gate replied, “We are witnesses! May the LORD make this woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, from whom all the nation of Israel descended! May you prosper in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. 12 And may the LORD give you descendants by this young woman who will be like those of our ancestor Perez, the son of Tamar and Judah.”

NOTES

4:1 friend. Lit., “you certain someone/someplace” (peloni ’almoni [TH6423/492, ZH7141/532]); cf. 1 Sam 21:3; 2 Kgs 6:8; Dan 8:13. If he did not know the man’s name, the narrator could have used “friend,” “sir” (so LXX) or the like here. By using this phrase, which is even used to designate “someplace,” the narrator may be creating a reading with a force ranging from that of the colloquial expressions “hey there, fella” to “hey what’s-your-face.” The use of this term in place of other options for addressing the near kinsman therefore could imply the unimportance of this man’s identity—Boaz was extraordinary, but his relative was just “some guy.” Another option deserves consideration, however—namely that the phrase isn’t addressing the kinsman at all, but rather describing the unnamed place where Boaz suggested they sit and chat with the ten elders (cf. DCH 296). This could be rendered, “come, sit somewhere here.” In light of the fact that the other two uses of this phrase refer to places and the phrase in Ruth immediately follows the word “here” (poh [TH6311, ZH7024]), I find this option slightly more attractive than the traditional translation of it as a way of addressing the kinsman.

4:3 selling the land. Sakenfeld (1999:71) suggests that rather than selling the actual land, Naomi sold her right to redeem the land, which she couldn’t afford to buy and which Elimelech probably sold before leaving. This is possible, but if Naomi had owned the land, it may have lain fallow, being useless to her and Ruth in the harvest; lacking the means to farm the land, the women would have had to sell in order to have money to survive.

4:5 you marry Ruth. Lit., “you acquire Ruth.” The NLT correctly follows the Qere of MT here, reading qanitah [TH7069, ZH7864] (you acquire) rather than qaniti (I acquire). The MT preserves similar Kethiv/Qere readings at 3:3-4 (“you/I go down,” and “you/I lay down”), perhaps indicating the preservation of archaic forms in which the –ti ending marks the second-person fem. sg. (cf. Joüon-Muraoka §42f; Judg 5:7). The Qere here is supported by the LXX (ktēsasthai se [TG4771, ZG5148]), Vulgate, and Syriac (which adds that the other kinsman refused to marry Ruth because he lacked faith).

4:7-8 The procedure here involved a sandal, which is similar to that in the levirate law of Deut 25:5-10, but the details of the actions are notably different. Matthews (2004:240) mentions variations in the law over time as the reason for the difference in sandal procedure, or that it was a land-oriented custom, not a levirate one. He also admits “There is no sense in this passage that the next of kin is humiliated by this exchange.” He didn’t lose social standing either. The story of Ruth and Boaz has come down to us in part because it is not merely a story of obedience to levirate law—Boaz’s actions show khesed [TH2617, ZH2876] and go beyond the law’s requirements. The ritual shoe removal also marked the woman’s assumption of the “right to her freedom and full control of her destiny” (ABD 4.567). This feature, however, didn’t apply here, since Ruth was already free (cf. 3:10) and did not take her sandal off.

4:7 Now in those days. The content of this verse shows an awareness that a significant amount of time had passed between its writing and the events recounted in the book. Its language suggests that it is late (cf. Bush 1996:27-28), and it is probably to be regarded as an editorial comment added to the story for the benefit of the reader.

4:11 Rachel and Leah. In the blessing here, Rachel (the younger sister) precedes Leah. Similarly in Gen 48:20, Ephraim (the younger brother) preceded Manasseh. Rachel perhaps precedes on the lips of the Bethlehem crowd because of her association with the town (Gen 35:16-19). Judah and Perez (ancestors of Boaz and Elimelech) were, in fact, descendants of Leah (Gen 29:31-35).

4:12 Tamar and Judah. Berger (2009b:447) takes this parallel beyond Genesis and Ruth, suggesting that literarily, David recalls Judah and Tamar in his sin involving Bathsheba (2 Sam 11), and that the author of Ruth used this literary means to cast David’s actions as an aberration from his bloodline—with the heightened irony that Ruth’s actions were an aberration from her bloodline (cf. Lot and his daughters).

COMMENTARY [Text]

Ruth 4:1-2 sets the stage for the scene: After leaving the threshing floor, Boaz had stationed himself by the town gate in order to spot the kinsman he needed to speak with (cf. 3:12-13). The gate was the appropriate place for this because in the ancient Near East town business and legal transactions centered around the gate (cf. note on 3:11). When he spotted his kinsman, Boaz suggested they sit for a formal discussion and brought ten elders from the gate as witnesses. No written documents are mentioned in the discussion that follows, only the attestation and symbolic actions of the participants and witnesses. This does not preclude written records but does suggest that they were not crucial for legitimizing the proceedings.

It is likely that greetings, pleasantries, and small talk preceded Boaz’s first words here, as is the traditional custom in the Middle East. Boaz then began (4:3) by raising the issue of Elimelech’s land. Land belonging to Elimelech had not been mentioned or implied in the story up to this point. It seems likely, however, that Israelite readers envisioning Elimelech would have readily understood him as a land owner—all Israel had inherited land ever since the conquest. What is surprising is that the land was not mentioned until now. This, I think, is a clever move by the author, who reserved this fact until this moment to surprise us with Boaz’s skillful negotiations. As suggested in the commentary on 3:6-15, Boaz sought to do more than Ruth asked (which was only for marriage) by incorporating her future with the legal issues of land, where the go’el [TH1350B, ZH1457] had certain rights and responsibilities.

In ancient Israel, land was generally to stay in the possession of the tribe and family to which it had been allotted. In the case that land was sold outside of its original family, the Lord had commanded that it would revert (with some few exceptions) to the original owning family in the Year of Jubilee (Lev 25:8-34). In the event that a family line was cut off from Israel—that is, it had no heirs—the nearest kin had the right and was expected to fulfill the obligation to redeem the land. If the nearest kin could not fulfill the obligation, the right would pass to the next kin—the next go’el. In 4:4, Boaz outlines the status of the land and points out that he is second in line to redeem it—this other kinsman is first. And the kinsman readily agreed to fulfill the obligation.

Up to this point the transaction proceeds along typical lines. Then, in 4:5, Boaz made his gambit, and with his statement everything is changed. We need not assume that the kinsman’s response in 4:6 follows Boaz’s statement immediately. It is simply the next point of importance to the narrative. The kinsman had time to think, as did the witnesses, about what Boaz had just said. What Boaz asserted stood up to communal consideration. The reason for this is not explicit in the text.

This scene is associated by many with levirate law (e.g., Matthews 2004:235-237), that is, the obligation of a brother to wed his brother’s childless widow and produce an heir in the name of his brother (Deut 25:5-10; an exception to Lev 18:16). Besides the biblical reference to this custom, levirate marriage is known at Ugarit (Nougayrol 1955:16.144, wherein the childless ruler Arhalba ensures by a curse that his brother alone may wed his wife after his death), from the Middle Assyrian Laws (Tablet A, Law 33), and the Hittite law code (law 193).

There are enough differences, however, between the events in this scene in Ruth and the levirate laws of the Torah that it cannot be argued that the levirate law (Deut 25:5-10; cf. Gen 38) is in view in the book of Ruth. Elements not found in this scene include: brothers living together (Deut 25:5); the public statement by the widow (Deut 25:7); further pleading of the elders with the kinsman (Deut 25:8); the widow publicly removing the man’s sandal, spitting in his face, and making a second statement (Deut 25:9); and the public reproach on his house (Deut 25:10). The near kinsman here is not a brother and pulls off his own sandal (4:8), and although the narrator leaves him nameless (see note on 4:1), he does not portray any public scandal or ignominy for his house. There was not a legislated obligation for the near kinsman to raise up an heir to Ruth’s husband, Mahlon.

Nonetheless, the outcome of this scene is the intended outcome of an enactment of levirate law—a family line that was about to die out is perpetuated. And because Boaz’s actions were accepted by the leaders of his society, they must implicitly rest on some shared cultural value, at least, or perhaps even on an expected custom that was not a matter of law but resembled the levirate practice (“levirate-type custom” Bush 1996). As Houston (1980:70) suggests, it is impossible that Boaz simply enacted a fiat here to designate his child as Mahlon’s heir.

Consider again the actions of the unnamed kinsman in 4:4-6. He was initially willing to redeem the land. It seems unlikely in a small town like Bethlehem that he would not have heard, during the harvest, about the return of the two widows, Naomi and Ruth. He did not expect, however, that anyone would marry Ruth and raise an heir for Mahlon—this is true whether one reads 4:5 as asserting that Boaz will marry Ruth or as asserting that the other kinsman must marry Ruth (see note on 4:5). In the first place, he knew levirate law did not apply. Secondly, as Ruth was a Moabite, her status may have been fuzzy as pertained to any levirate-type custom that someone might propose—she might not be due the same treatment as an Israelite. This could remain a question for discussion by the town elders, should anyone venture to suggest it.[5] But if Boaz appealed to something less than a custom—shared values—then it may be that the invocation of these values in order to unite Ruth’s marriage with the issue of Elimelech’s land in the presence of ten elders of Bethlehem was the unexpected event that altered the kinsman’s response. Boaz mentioned in 3:11 that everyone in town knew that Ruth was a virtuous woman—thus even with only the shared value of preserving family lines (or perhaps a shared taboo against knowingly letting one die out), Boaz’s proposal could have been recognized as the moral high ground by that panoply of 12 men sitting near the gate. Numbers 27 and 36 reinforce these values, again without a levirate marriage obligation.

An additional clue that shared values, rather than a set custom (and certainly rather than levirate law), were the basis of Boaz’s negotiation is in his use of the word “acquire” in 4:5 and 4:10. This is highlighted by Sakenfeld (1999:73-74). Only here is “acquire” used of marriage. Boaz’s use of this word also ties together the redemption of land and the marriage of Ruth. At the gate, he cannot speak of “redeeming” her as in 3:12-13, since the go’el is not connected to marriage obligations. And typical terms for marriage have no resonance with the idea of purchasing land. This verb, however, overlaps both realms just sufficiently to drive home Boaz’s appeal to shared values in a rhetorical sense: How could anyone acquire the family land without also acquiring the social obligation to the family widow?

In either of the cases mentioned above (either an appeal to shared values, or to an existing levirate-type custom), the opportunity for the kinsman changed drastically once Boaz brought in the idea of an heir for Mahlon. Rather than gaining the right to permanently incorporate the land into his own estate, the kinsman would only gain land-use rights for a limited period (cf. Matthews 2004:237; Nielsen 1997:83-85), and he may (see note on 4:5) also have been forced to take Ruth as a wife and raise an heir himself. In addition, if he felt the weight of Boaz’s appeal, he could not bring himself to publicly retain the right to the land, while refusing to honor Elimelech’s line by marrying Ruth, a woman in good standing. In other words, in addition to the shared value of preserving a family line, there seems an ethical balance between getting use of the land and raising the heir. The kinsman’s response in light of the new development was “I cannot do it” (4:6).

Again we are left without details as to how many wives or children the man already had (so also with Boaz), and how long the kinsman had the use of this land if he did redeem it. Some have suggested (e.g., Bush 1996:245-246) that the man overstated his case when he said he would “endanger [his] own estate.” But the text tells us so little about his situation or what his responsibility would entail that it seems better to think of the unnamed kinsman as an average person acting in a typical way, rather than to think of him as a moral failure. Further, it would be somewhat disconcerting for the reader if he had excelled in virtue and insisted on marrying Ruth—what then of Boaz? It is a tribute to Boaz’s outstanding virtues that this foil (the unnamed kinsman) need not be a villain, but an average person. And to reinforce this view, I suggest that Boaz may here be compared and contrasted with Abram in Genesis 12:10–13:2. In that narrative, Abram became rich by duping Pharaoh with a ruse regarding Sarai, his wife; he did this out of fear. Pharaoh didn’t know that something much bigger was at work in Abram’s life than just being connected to an attractive woman, and he protested when he found out that Sarai was actually Abram’s wife. Boaz’s gambit gained him Elimelech’s field along with a virtuous woman, and in the scope of the narrative, the unnamed kinsman (like the pharaoh of Gen 12) was just an average person, acting normally. In contrast to Abram, Boaz did not undertake his clever actions out of fear, but in order to ensure that Elimelech’s family line was not lost.

With the whole matter on the table, once the kinsman had made his decision, he passed his sandal to Boaz as a symbol of the transfer of the right to buy the land (4:7-8, see note). Boaz immediately exercised his new right, and he recapitulated in his joyful declaration the terms of the transaction: Though not first in line to claim the land, he claimed it with a pledge to raise up an heir for Elimelech through Ruth (4:10). The town rejoiced with blessings on the couple that gave a sense of full acceptance of the marriage and of Ruth’s place as a wife and mother in Israel (4:11). This is evident in the references to Rachel and Leah (recognized as the mothers of the 12 tribes). The blessings also mention Bethlehem and Ephrathah, both names connected to Rachel’s death and burial (Gen 35:16-19).

The closing verse of this scene (4:12) makes an important allusion that highlights the virtue of what Boaz had done. The women mention not just the founder of the tribe, Judah, but begin with Perez and speak of Tamar, his mother. Their story is recorded in Genesis 38. Tamar was, in fact, Judah’s daughter-in-law, but his son (and her first husband), Er, was evil, so the Lord killed him (Gen 38:7) before he and Tamar had a child. Although in Judah’s day the laws given at Sinai were not in effect, some other levirate law or custom prevailed, and Judah gave his second son, Onan, to be Tamar’s husband. Onan’s well-known actions provide an additional foil against which Boaz’s virtue can be seen: Onan, although he had intercourse with Tamar, refused to allow himself to impregnate her because he knew the child would be his brother’s heir (Gen 38:9). This disrespect toward his deceased brother contrasts greatly with Boaz’s noble desire to raise up an heir for a more distant relative to whom he was not so obligated. In the continuation of Genesis 38, Tamar can be seen as a contrast to Ruth; regarding this comparison, see the commentary on 3:6-15.

In addition to the allusion present in 4:12, the words of the townswomen also foreshadow or even forecast the coming resolution: They call for the Lord to bless Boaz and Ruth with children, an affirmation of the stated intent of the new couple’s union. The next scene naturally looks to the fulfillment of this wish.