Marriage - Ruth 4

Chapter 4 ends the book of Ruth and is very technical about ancient Israel land rights. Boaz sends Ruth home in the morning and promises to get this matter squared away in the morning, so when morning comes, Boaz parks himself at the city gate and waits for the kinsman that is nearer to Naomi than Boaz so they can talk business. When the guy shows up Boaz calls him over and also asks 10 “elders of the city” to listen as witnesses so this can be a formal legal meeting. Boaz explains that Naomi is trying to sell the land that belonged to her dead husband and this other guy has the first right of refusal, and does he want to redeem it himself? The guy answers, “I will redeem it.” Boaz says, “great, not only do you get to buy the land, but you have to marry Ruth and raise up a son in the name of her dead husband.” I bet Boaz knew that the guy would be interested in the land, but once you have to start talking about raising kids that aren’t your own, then people have to stop and think for a minute.

The guy changes his mind, he can’t redeem the land because marrying Ruth and raising children for her dead husband could mess up the inheritance thing he has going with his own children, so he declines and says that Boaz can redeem the land and marry Ruth. Exactly what he wanted. All the elders agree that this is a binding resolution.

Boaz marries Ruth and she has a son by him, and Naomi helped to raise him and his name was Obed. It gives a genealogy from Obed to Jesse to David. I’m not sure if this is straight forward in that David is coming in only 2 more generations, or if it’s just cut out the other parts to get to David really fast, but we’ll see.

I think I like this story more now than I did before studying it. I didn’t realize that Boaz was older, I didn’t know that both Boaz and Ruth had such upstanding character and acted so honorably in so many circumstances and it was fun, heartwarming, and something to look forward to for me, in this life or the next.