Public Redemption Opens Into a Royal Genealogy

“Ho, such a one!” translates peloni almoni, a rhyming Hebrew phrase meaning “so-and-so”, used of a place in 1 Samuel 21:2. Boaz surely knew the man’s name; the Book of Ruth withholds it, and a man who would not preserve a dead kinsman’s name loses his own. “Went up” to the gate follows Ruth’s going “down” to the floor.

Ten elders form a quorum, the number later Jewish law required for a public benediction at a marriage. Boaz gathers them himself and seats them, which makes him convenor as well as party to the case.

This is the first the reader hears of land belonging to Naomi. “Selleth” may mean she is offering the right to redeem it, or the use of it until the Jubilee. “Our brother” is a kinsman’s word; Elimelech was a relative of both men, not a sibling.

“Advertise thee” is 1611 English for inform, literally “uncover thine ear”. Boaz sets out the order of redeemers in law: this man first, Boaz second, “none… beside thee”. The kinsman agrees at once when it is only a field, a sound investment that would stay in his line.

The Hebrew text reads “and from Ruth… I have bought”, qaniti, while the margin reads “thou must buy”. On either reading the land and the widow now come together. “Raise up the name of the dead” is the language of levirate marriage in Deuteronomy 25:7, applied to a kinsman who is not a brother-in-law.

A son born to Ruth would inherit Elimelech’s field, so the redeemer would pay for land that his own children would never keep. “Mar” is shachat, to ruin, the verb for the flood’s destruction in Genesis 6:13. He is not refusing Ruth as a Moabite; he is counting.

The Book of Ruth pauses to explain a custom already old in its own day, “in former time”, which shows the book was written, or finished, well after the events. In Deuteronomy 25:9 the widow pulls off the shoe of the brother who refuses and spits in his face; here the shoe is simply handed over, with no shame attached.

“Buy it for thee” is the formal release. The shoe, na’al, stood for the right to walk on land, as in Psalm 60:8, “over Edom will I cast out my shoe”. By drawing it off, the kinsman hands Boaz the right to tread the field as its owner.

Boaz names every holding of the family, Elimelech’s and both sons’. “Ye are witnesses” turns the crowd at the gate into the legal record, since no deed is written. The sons are listed with Chilion first, the reverse of 1:2, a variation no one has explained with any confidence.

Here, for the first time, the reader learns that Ruth was Mahlon’s wife. Boaz uses the same verb for acquiring the land and the woman, qanah, which in marriage contexts means to take as wife. “Cut off from… the gate of his place” means cut out of the town’s memory, where a man’s name was spoken.

Rachel is named before Leah although Leah was the elder and Judah’s mother; Rachel was buried near Bethlehem (Genesis 35:19). “Build the house” plays on banah, to build, and ben, a son. “Do thou worthily” is literally “make chayil”, strength or wealth, the same word that called Ruth a virtuous woman in 3:11.

Pharez was born to Tamar, a foreign widow, by Judah, her father-in-law, after Judah failed to give her his youngest son (Genesis 38). Another widow is now being given, properly, to a kinsman, and the clan of Bethlehem descends from Pharez (verse 18).

Ten years of marriage in Moab produced no child (1:4–5). Here the Book of Ruth says in so many words that the LORD gave conception, one of only two places in the book where the narrative itself, not a character, reports the LORD acting. The other is 1:6, when he visited his people with bread.

“A kinsman” is go’el, but here the women mean the newborn, not Boaz: the child will be Naomi’s redeemer. The women who asked “Is this Naomi?” in 1:19 speak again and answer her bitterness with a blessing.

“Restorer of thy life” is literally “one who brings back thy soul”, using shuv, the return verb that runs through chapter 1. Seven sons was the ideal full family (1 Samuel 2:5). The women do not name Ruth; they describe her by her love.

Naomi lays the child in her bosom, the gesture of a mother or a guardian. “Nurse” is omeneth, a caretaker or foster mother rather than a wet nurse; the masculine form is used of Mordecai raising Esther (Esther 2:7). Some have read it as a form of adoption.

This is the only child in Scripture named by the neighbours. Obed means “servant” or “worshipper”. The women say the son is born “to Naomi”, which is legally true: he carries Elimelech’s line. The name David appears here for the first time in the Bible.

“The generations of Pharez” uses the toledot heading of Genesis, placing a short book about two widows among the records of the patriarchs. Hezron went down to Egypt with Jacob (Genesis 46:12), so the list begins before the Exodus.

Ram appears as Aram in Matthew 1:3–4, and 1 Chronicles 2:9–10 gives the same line. Amminadab means “my kinsman is generous”, and his daughter Elisheba married Aaron (Exodus 6:23), which ties Bethlehem’s line to the priesthood.

Nahshon was prince of Judah in the wilderness and brought the first offering at the altar’s dedication (Numbers 7:12). Jewish tradition made him the first to walk into the Red Sea. Salmon is spelled Salmah in the Hebrew of this verse and Salmon in the next.

Boaz is the seventh name in the list and David the tenth, positions of honour in a ten-name genealogy. Matthew 1:5 gives Salmon’s wife as Rahab of Jericho, which would make Boaz, like his son, the child of a foreign mother.

Jesse was a Bethlehemite with eight sons (1 Samuel 16:10–11). The Book of Ruth ends on David’s name, the last word in the Hebrew. Three generations from a Moabite widow to the king, and Deuteronomy 23:3 barred a Moabite from the congregation to the tenth generation.