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Happy and blessed Thanksgiving to my U.S. readers this week! God has been so good to me this year, even in difficult circumstances. I pray you also find reasons for gratitude to the One who loves us so much. Amen! Here’s what I discovered from comparisons, causes, and conditions in Ruth 4.
Last Week’s Work
COMPARISONS
This time, I noticed four comparisons:
- Verse 11: … May the Lord make [Ruth] like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel.
- Verse 12: May [Boaz’s] house be like the house of Perez because of the offspring…
I think both the above comparisons are about Ruth bearing Boaz many children because the speakers mention Rachel and Leah, the sisters who competed to have children by Jacob (Israel). With them and their servants, he fathered ten of the twelve men whose families became the twelve tribes: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Joseph, and Benjamin. - Verses 14-15: [Obed] shall be [Naomi’s] restorer of life and nourisher of [her] old age.
Obed was born to take the place of his mother’s first husband, Naomi’s son Mahlon, and, as the only surviving boy in Naomi’s family, would be charged with taking care of her. - Verse 15: [Ruth] is more [valuable] to [Naomi] than seven sons…
I think this is a reference to all Ruth did for Naomi, returning with her from Moab and working so hard for her survival, including bearing Obed.
CAUSES/MOTIVATIONS
This time I focused on verse 6: The original redeemer said, I cannot redeem [Naomi’s property] for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance. In other words, the reason he couldn’t redeem the property (and acquire Ruth) was because if he did, his inheritance would be in jeopardy.
This is the huh? the Spirit directed me to dig into in this study. I suspect it relates to being forced to give up the firstborn of the marriage to Elimelech’s family as Obed was in vv16-17. I’m hoping I can get more clarity on that soon!
CONDITIONS/METHODS
The only condition I noticed was the legal one requiring the redeemer to marry Ruth and produce a son for Naomi’s family with her when he bought Elimelech’s property (v5). Just giving her the money for the property would provide support temporarily, but once she spent all the money, how would she survive? Having a son (through Ruth and the redeemer), though, enabled the property to come back to Naomi’s kin when the boy was old enough to own it (as I mentioned last week). At that point, he’d probably also become responsible for supporting Naomi (v15).
I also noticed the process through which Boaz acquired Ruth: assembling ten witnesses, discussing the situation with the redeemer in front of them, and receiving the sandal from the redeemer as proof he was renouncing his claim to the property and Ruth. That seems strange to us who memorialize important agreements with written contracts, but back then literacy was not so common. The shoe and the witnesses were the proof needed to enforce the agreement if necessary.
Dig-In Challenges
Next week we’ll begin refining our understanding of what we’ve discovered so we can interpret it as Ruth’s author and his audience would have.
Here’s how I’ll be working toward that this week:
- PRAY. Of course!
- REFINE by rereading Chapter 4. We know the overall writing type in Ruth is narrative, so now we’re just looking for instances of instruction, law, letter, poetry, and/or prophecy in chapter 4.
- REFINE: by considering historical context: We know from earlier research that this story is set in the days when the judges ruled, and everyone basically did what they wanted to do. We also know no author is named for this book, but the mention of King David in Chapter 4 indicates it was written after 1010BC. I’d like to see if I can find anything that further clarifies the redeemer’s statement about his own inheritance, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to find anything factual about that.
- REFINE: by examining key words and/or phrases (I’ll look at verse 6) using an interlinear Bible, and note what the Spirit reveals. Interlinear Bibles are available on several study websites and let us examine Ruth in the original Hebrew. They provide details about each word, including its meaning in context. I’ll be using the Blue Letter Bible Interlinear tool for this research.
This “refining” step is more involved than the “mining” we did earlier, and you might be busy (as I will) with Thanksgiving festivities, but I encourage you to use these tools and dig as much as you can this week. I pray the Spirit will bless your efforts, my friend!