Ruth 4
Ruth 4 gathers every thread of the story and ties it off. Boaz goes up to the gate of Bethlehem - the public square where elders sat, contracts were struck, and cases were heard - and there he waits for the one man who stands between him and Ruth: a kinsman nearer than himself, who holds the first right to redeem. Boaz flags him down, seats ten elders as witnesses, and lays the matter out: Naomi… selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech's (v. 3), and the right to buy it back belongs first to this nearer man. The nearer kinsman says yes - until Boaz names the rest of the price. To redeem the field is also to take Ruth the Moabitess… to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance (v. 5), and at that the man draws back: I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance (v. 6).3
So the redemption falls to Boaz, who does willingly and fully what the nearer kinsman would not. Before all the people and the elders he declares that he has bought all that was Elimelech's and has purchased Ruth to be his wife, that the name of the dead be not cut off (vv. 9-10). The whole gate answers with a blessing - The LORD make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah (v. 11) - calling down on this marriage the fruitfulness of the mothers of Israel and the line of Pharez. Then comes the quiet miracle the book has been moving toward: the LORD gave her conception, and she bare a son (v. 13).
The book that opened in famine, exile, and three graves ends with a child laid in an old woman's lap. The women of Bethlehem bless Naomi - Blessed be the LORD, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman… he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life (vv. 14-15) - and Naomi, who came home from Moab calling herself empty and bitter, becomes nurse to the newborn. The neighbours name him Obed. And then the narrator pulls the camera back, past Bethlehem, past this one household, to the end the whole story was for: Obed… the father of Jesse, the father of David (v. 17), with a closing genealogy that runs from Pharez straight to the throne. The despised foreigner has become the great-grandmother of Israel's greatest king - and for the reader who knows where the line runs after David, the threads reach further still.2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Ruth 4:1-8I Cannot Redeem It, Lest I Mar Mine Own Inheritance
1Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat him down there: and, behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by; unto whom he said, Ho, such a one! turn aside, sit down here. And he turned aside, and sat down. 2And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, Sit ye down here. And they sat down. 3And he said unto the kinsman, Naomi, that is come again out of the country of Moab, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech's: 4And I thought to advertise thee, saying, Buy it before the inhabitants, and before the elders of my people. If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it: but if thou wilt not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know: for there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I am after thee. And he said, I will redeem it.
The whole book has been moving toward this morning, and it begins with a man taking a seat. Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat him down there (v. 1). The gate of an Israelite town was not merely a way in and out; it was the civic heart of the place - the courthouse, the marketplace, the council chamber, all at once. Here elders sat to judge cases, here contracts were struck and witnessed, here the business of the community was done in the open where everyone could see. So when Boaz goes up to the gate and sits down, he is not loitering; he is convening court. And the narrative wastes no time: behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by. The very man Boaz needed walks into view, and Boaz calls him aside - Ho, such a one! turn aside, sit down here. The odd phrase such a one is the storyteller's way of leaving the man unnamed, and the silence is eloquent: the one who will not redeem loses even his name in the telling, while Boaz, who will, is named in nearly every line. Then Boaz took ten men of the elders of the city (v. 2) and seated them too. Ten was the number that made a matter fully witnessed and binding. Everything that follows will be done lawfully, publicly, and beyond dispute.3
With the court seated, Boaz lays out the matter - and he does it with great care, because he is a man working within the law, not around it. Naomi… selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech's (v. 3). Elimelech's field, left behind when the family fled to Moab, must be redeemed back into the family so the inheritance is not lost; and Israel's law gave the first right and duty of redemption to the nearest kinsman. Boaz is scrupulously honest about the order of that right: If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it… for there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I am after thee (v. 4). He does not hide the nearer man's claim or quietly step over it; he names it plainly and offers the nearer kinsman the first refusal he is owed. The word rendered advertise simply means to disclose, to lay the matter open before him. And on the face of it the offer is attractive - a parcel of land for the buying - so the nearer kinsman answers at once: I will redeem it. He says yes before he has heard the whole of what redemption will cost. The reader, who has been with Boaz and Ruth all along, can feel the hinge of the story tighten: there is more to this redemption than a field.
5Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance. 6And the kinsman said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance: redeem thou my right to thyself; for I cannot redeem it.
Now Boaz names the rest of the price, and the whole transaction changes shape. What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance (v. 5). The field does not come alone. Bound up with it is the widow of the man who once owned it, and the duty to marry her and father a son who will carry the dead man's name and inherit the dead man's land. To redeem the parcel is to take on Ruth, and a child not one's own, and a name not one's own to perpetuate. The phrase raise up the name of the dead reaches back to the levirate law, where a near kinsman was to give a childless dead man an heir so that his name be not put out of Israel (Deut. 25:5-6). What had looked like a simple acquisition is in fact a costly, self-spending obligation - the buyer pays the price, but the inheritance ends up belonging to a child reckoned to another man. This is the moment the story has been waiting to spring.
And the nearer kinsman draws back. I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance (v. 6). His reasoning is purely practical, and it is not even wicked - it is simply self-protective. A field, bought outright, would enlarge his estate and pass to his own children. But a field that comes with Ruth and the duty to raise up Mahlon's heir is a different thing entirely: he would lay out the redemption price, yet the land would ultimately go to a son legally counted as the dead man's, not his - and meanwhile his own existing inheritance would be stretched thinner among more claimants. He weighs the cost against himself and finds it too high. Redeem thou my right to thyself, he tells Boaz; for I cannot redeem it. Notice the exact line he will not cross: he is willing to redeem what profits him and unwilling to redeem what costs him. He wants the blessing without the burden, the inheritance without the self-giving. And in stepping back to guard his own, he hands the whole right - field, widow, and dead man's name - over to the one man in Bethlehem who will pay the full price and count it no loss.
7Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things; a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbour: and this was a testimony in Israel. 8Therefore the kinsman said unto Boaz, Buy it for thee. So he drew off his shoe.
The narrator pauses to explain a custom his first readers may already have half-forgotten: Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing… a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbour: and this was a testimony in Israel (v. 7). To draw off a shoe and hand it over was the old, binding way of sealing a transfer of right - a public, physical gesture that said, before all witnesses, I relinquish my claim; it is now yours. The foot that would have walked the land lets the shoe go. It is the ancient equivalent of a signature on a deed, an act everyone present could see and remember. So when the nearer kinsman says, Buy it for thee, and drew off his shoe (v. 8), the matter is settled in the eyes of the elders and the whole town. The right of redemption has passed, lawfully and irrevocably, from the man who would not pay the cost to the man who will. There is something quietly fitting in the picture: the one who steps back loses even his shoe, while the one who steps forward gains everything that shoe represented.1
Ruth 4:9-12Ye Are Witnesses This Day
9And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ye are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech's, and all that was Chilion's and Mahlon's, of the hand of Naomi. 10Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.
Where the nearer kinsman calculated and withdrew, Boaz stands up and declares. And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ye are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech's, and all that was Chilion's and Mahlon's, of the hand of Naomi (v. 9). He redeems the whole of it - not a fragment but the entire estate of the dead house, every claim that perished with Elimelech and his two sons. And then he names the rest, the part the other man refused: Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife… that the name of the dead be not cut off (v. 10). Notice he does not hide that she is a Moabitess. He says it plainly, before the whole town, claiming her fully and openly as his own. And twice in two verses the same words ring out - ye are witnesses this day. This is the opposite of the secret, self-protective reasoning of verse 6. Boaz wants every elder and every passerby to see exactly what he is taking on and exactly what it will cost him. There is nothing grudging here, nothing done in a corner. The redemption is total, it is public, and the redeemer is glad to be seen paying for it.
11And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are witnesses. The LORD make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel: and do thou worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Bethlehem: 12And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah, of the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young woman.
The whole gate answers Boaz with a blessing, and it is richer than it first appears. The LORD make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel (v. 11). The people pray that Ruth - the Moabitess, the outsider - would take her place beside Rachel and Leah, the matriarchs from whose twelve sons the whole nation was built. It is a stunning thing to ask for a foreigner: that she be reckoned a builder of the house of Israel. Then they reach for one more name: let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah (v. 12). Pharez was the son of Judah by Tamar - another woman who, like Ruth, came into the line of promise from outside the expected path, through an irregular and unlikely union (Gen. 38). The blessing is doing something deliberate. It binds Ruth's marriage to the very lineage of Judah, the kingly tribe, and it does so by naming the other outsider-women already woven into that line. The townsfolk cannot know how far their words will carry - be famous in Bethlehem, they say, not yet knowing that Bethlehem will be famous forever for what is being set in motion in their hearing. They mean to bless a marriage. They are in fact pronouncing a blessing over the cradle of a dynasty.
Ruth 4:13-22A Restorer of Thy Life · The Line to David
13So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and when he went in unto her, the LORD gave her conception, and she bare a son.
The marriage that the whole book has been moving toward is told in a single, unhurried line: So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife (v. 13). No wedding scene, no celebration described - just the quiet completion of the redemption begun in the gate. And then the narrator does something he has done only sparingly in the entire book: he names God as the direct cause of what happens. The LORD gave her conception, and she bare a son. All through Ruth, God has worked behind the scenes - in a “chance” field, in the timing of a harvest, in the heart of a kinsman - rarely named, always present. Here the curtain lifts for a moment and the hidden hand is shown plainly: the child is the LORD's gift. It is worth remembering that Ruth had been married for years in Moab and remained childless; barrenness, in this book's world, was a closed door no human effort could force. So when conception comes, it comes as something only God could give. The redemption of the land was Boaz's work; the life in the womb is the LORD's. And with that son, everything empty in this story begins to fill.
14And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the LORD, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel. 15And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of thine old age: for thy daughter in law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him.
The women of Bethlehem gather around Naomi, and their blessing is one of the tenderest turns in all of Scripture. Blessed be the LORD, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel (v. 14). Watch whom the blessing is for. It is Ruth who has borne the child, and Boaz who redeemed; but the women speak to Naomi - the one who came home from Moab insisting they call her Mara, bitter, and saying I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty (Ruth 1:21). To that woman, who was sure God's hand had gone out against her, the neighbours now say: the LORD has not left thee… without a kinsman. The very God she thought had emptied her has filled her again. And the child is not first praised as Boaz's heir or even as Ruth's son but as Naomi's redeemer - the one through whom her ruined line will go on, her name be kept alive in Israel. Then the women say the thing about Ruth that no one in this story would have predicted in chapter 1: thy daughter in law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him. In a world that counted sons as a woman's wealth and security, seven sons was the picture of complete blessing. To call one Moabite daughter-in-law better… than seven sons is to say her love has outweighed every ordinary measure of blessing there is. The foreigner who had nothing has become the source of Naomi's everything.
16And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it. 17And the women her neighbours gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi; and they called his name Obed: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David.
Now comes the image the whole book has been reaching toward, and it is wordless and complete: And Naomi took the child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it (v. 16). The woman who came home with empty arms now holds a living child against her heart. Trace the arc one more time. She went out from Bethlehem full - a husband, two sons, a future - and came back empty, a widow who had buried all her men, asking to be called bitter. The book has been the slow filling of that emptiness, and here it is full: a grandchild in her bosom, her own life restored. Then the neighbour women do a striking thing - they name the baby, and they name him for Naomi: There is a son born to Naomi. Biologically he is Ruth and Boaz's; in the logic of redemption he is the answer to Naomi's emptiness, the heir who keeps her line alive. They call him Obed, which means servant or worshiper. And then the narrator, in a single clause, swings the whole story open onto a horizon no one in the room can see: he is the father of Jesse, the father of David. The child in the bitter widow's arms is the grandfather of a king. What looked like one quiet household's private rescue turns out to be the hinge of a nation's history.
18Now these are the generations of Pharez: Pharez begat Hezron, 19And Hezron begat Ram, and Ram begat Amminadab, 20And Amminadab begat Nahshon, and Nahshon begat Salmon, 21And Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed, 22And Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David.
The book does not end with the baby in Naomi's lap. It ends with a list of names - and the list is the point the whole story was for. Now these are the generations of Pharez (v. 18), and then ten names march down to a single one: Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David (v. 22). This is why Ruth was written. Not finally to give us a beautiful love story in a barley field - though it is that - but to answer a question Israel would one day ask about its greatest king: where did David come from? And the answer runs back through a Moabite widow gleaning grain at the edge of a stranger's field, and through one man's willingness to pay a redeemer's price. The genealogy is shaped with care: ten generations, with Boaz standing seventh, the place of honor. And it deliberately begins with Pharez - the very name the elders blessed in verse 12 - tying the end of the book back to that blessing in the gate. The townsfolk prayed Boaz's house would be like the house of Pharez; the genealogy shows the prayer answered beyond anything they imagined. A line that nearly died with three graves in Moab does not merely survive. It arrives at a throne.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Ruth 4 with Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the verb gaal and the noun goel behind “redeem” and “kinsman” (vv. 4-6), for the legal idiom of the shoe drawn off in verses 7-8, and for meshiv nephesh, the “restorer of thy life” the women pronounce over Naomi in verse 15.
- Ruth 4 ↔ Genesis 38 · Deuteronomy 25 · Matthew 1 · Ephesians 1 & 5Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Ruth 4 to the rest of Scripture - the levirate duty of Deuteronomy 25:5-10 worked out in the gate; the blessing's reach back to Tamar and Pharez (Gen. 38) and Rachel and Leah; the kinsman-redeemer read beside the One who gave himself for the church (Eph. 5:25-27) and purchased the redemption of the purchased possession (Eph. 1:14); and Ruth herself named in the royal line in Matthew 1:5.
- Ruth 4 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Ruth 4 - the legal procedure at the city gate, the force of “raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance” (vv. 5, 10), the reason the nearer kinsman fears to mar his own inheritance (v. 6), the custom of the drawn-off shoe, and the structure of the closing ten-name genealogy.
Where this echoes in Scripture
I Cannot Redeem It, Lest I Mar Mine Own Inheritance
- Deuteronomy 25:5-6her husband’s brother... shall take her to him to wife... that his name be not put out of Israel.The levirate duty behind verses 5-6 - the near kinsman raising up an heir so the dead man’s name endures.
- Leviticus 25:25If thy brother be waxen poor... then shall his kinsman... come to redeem it, and redeem that which his brother sold.The law of the <em>goel</em> Boaz invokes in verses 3-4 - the kinsman’s duty to buy back the family land.
- Romans 8:3For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son...The nearer kinsman who <em>could not</em> redeem (v. 6) - a picture of every lesser deliverer the One who could redeem replaces.
- Ephesians 5:25-27Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it... that he might present it to himself a glorious church.The greater Kinsman of verse 5 - the One who paid the whole price to redeem the bride.
- Exodus 6:6I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments.The same verb that drives this scene (vv. 4, 6) - the LORD Himself as the <em>goel</em> of His people.
Ye Are Witnesses This Day
- Genesis 38:27-29Tamar... and behold, twins were in her womb... his name was called Pharez.The house of Pharez named in verse 12 - another outsider drawn into the line of Judah, as Ruth now is.
- Genesis 29:31-35Leah... bare Jacob... Rachel... God hath taken away my reproach.Rachel and Leah of verse 11 - the mothers who built the house of Israel, the company the gate prays Ruth will join.
- Micah 5:2But thou, Beth-lehem Ephratah... out of thee shall he come forth... that is to be ruler in Israel.The Bethlehem of verse 11 - the town the gate blesses, named centuries later as the birthplace of the Ruler to come.
- Ephesians 1:14the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.The redemption Boaz declares in verses 9-10 lifted to its height - the inheritance and the people bought back together.
- Acts 20:28the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.The purchase of verse 10 answered in Christ - a people bought, at the redeemer’s own cost, to be His own.
A Restorer of Thy Life · The Line to David
- Ruth 1:20-21call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty.The emptiness reversed in verses 14-16 - the woman who came home empty now has a child laid in her bosom.
- Psalm 23:3He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.The same Hebrew as “restorer of thy life” (v. 15) - the <em>nephesh</em> brought back, life revived in one who was failing.
- Matthew 1:1The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.Where the genealogy of verses 18-22 finally leads - the line of David running on to Christ.
- Matthew 1:5-6Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; and Jesse begat David the king.The closing genealogy taken up in the New Testament - Ruth the Moabitess named in the ancestry of the King.
- Isaiah 61:3To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion... beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning.The restoration of verse 15 lifted to its height - the Redeemer who turns emptiness and mourning to fullness and joy.