RUTH 4

After the scene at the gate “the artist proceeds to construct a concluding movement of the greatest power and literary interest.” (Rauber)

4:1 Hubbard explains that the kinsman is called peloni 'almoni (“Mr. So-and-So”). The meaning of this is given by Sasson: “In a tale in which nanes enhance characters and prefigure their development, the potential redeemer is anonymous, for his future, unlike Boaz's, will ultimately be anonymous.” Jesus used a similar device by naming the poor man Lazarus in his parable but giving no name to the rich man.

4:1-2 The city gate was where most business was conducted.

4:3 The existence of any land belonging to Elimelech comes here as a surprise to the reader. The verb tense would usually indicate “she sold” but recent translations render it as “is selling” or “must sell.”

4:3-4 The custom of a relative purchasing an impoverished person's land in order to keep it within the family also appears in Jeremiah 32:7. The redeemer jumps at the chance to purchase Elimelech's land at a bargain basement price until he realizes that it will belong to any child he has with Ruth and will be in Elimelech's name, not his. Therefore he refuses. At least that is his stated reason. A minority opinion is that his real reason might have been a belief marrying into Naomi's family which has suffered so many deaths will be a bad omen regarding his own fate.

4:5 Miller suggests that one motive for the refusal was that the man thought the family was cursed due 

to all their untimely deaths and he didn't want any part of it. A little like Judah story with deaths of 

sons.

 

4:7 The sandal symbolized possession – see Joshua 1:3.

 

4:10 The gracious hero who lifts up a foreigner in the middle of the people may be looked on as a type 

of God's grace. Notice that Ruth here is still called “the Moabite.” I once had a middle-aged technician 

in upstate New York who lived in a small town where he had resided for all but the first few years of 

his life. He told me that the locals there still called him “that outsider.”

Sasson explains that the custom which “encouraged a man to beget a child on a widow so that 'the 

memory of the deceased may not be obliterated from among his kinfold” was related to the OT levirate 

marriage but not the same.

 

4:11-12 According to Sasson, the blessing on the couple is actually a royal blessing, as we see at the 

end of the story. In mentioning Rachel, “the artist has broken out of his small domestic world into the 

mainstream of the historical and imaginative splendor of Israel.” (Rauber) Perez was cited as an 

example partially because of his close association with Bethleham (I Chronicles 2).

 

4:13 The narrator himself only mentions God twice (1:6 and 4:13), and these instances thus bracket the 

book. Similarly, the fertility of Ruth is a complete reversal of the scene of emptiness that began the 

whole story.

 

4:14 Miller: Naomi is a picture of Israel out of fellowship with God until the son is born.

 

4:15 Oxley says that “seven sons was proverbially the perfect family" (as in I Samuel 1:8; 2:5).

 

4:16 Tiemeyer suggests that Naomi adopted the son because it was felt that Ruth the foreigner couldn't 

be trusted to raise him up in the proper way. Oxley says that Naomi's claim on the boy was not a legal 

one but based solely on love and joy.

 

4:17 Sasson considers first the adoption by Naomi of Obed and then the naming of the boy by the 

neighboring women rather by than their parents. He concludes, “In the ancient Near East, these acts 

symbolize the legitimacy of royal power.” And this is just what we will realize when we read the 

closing genealogical notice.

 

4:18-22 The ten generations listed here span over 700 years, and thus the genealogy must be a highly

 compressed one, as we note elsewhere in the Bible.

 

Conclusion: Rauber notes that the “whole construction [with v. 11] is a double cone in which a large 

past is made to focus in on the simple birth; then from the focal point of that birth expands an equally 

large future.” This cone will, in fact, expand even further in the NT as Ruth is mentioned prominently 

as an ancestress of the Savior.

In Matthew's genealogy of Jesus, she joins three other women (Tamar, Rahab and Bathsheba) all of 

whom are foreigners who engaged in dubious sexual behavior. The importance of the part-Gentile

 background of Jesus is obvious for one who was to be the Savior of all mankind, not just the Jews.

The other commonality (assuming that Ruth's meeting with Boaz on the threshing-floor would have 

certainly been frowned on as suspicious), however, is a little harder to explain unless it is to prepare 

Matthew's Jewish audience to accept Mary's unusual pregnancy.