Boaz, a relative of Naomi's late husband, acts as kinsman-redeemer and marries Ruth. Their son Obed becomes the grandfather of David, quietly placing a Moabite woman in the direct ancestral line of Israel's greatest king and, later, of Jesus.
Further context
2 min readNaomi's plan is legally precise and socially reckless. Boaz is a guardian-redeemer, a relative with the right and the responsibility to buy back family land and, in some circumstances, to marry a childless widow so that the dead man's name continues. She sends Ruth to the threshing floor at night, washed and perfumed, to wait until he has finished eating and drinking and lies down, and then to uncover his feet and lie down herself.
He wakes at midnight and finds a woman lying there. Her answer is a legal claim rather than a seduction: spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a guardian-redeemer of our family. She is asking him to marry her, using an idiom for protection and marriage, and she is doing it at night on a threshing floor at harvest, which is exactly where a woman's reputation could be destroyed.
His response tells the whole story of how she was regarded: the LORD bless you, my daughter. This kindness is greater than that which you showed earlier. You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor. All the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character.
He also raises the complication immediately. There is a nearer relative with a prior claim, and the matter has to go through him first.
The next morning he takes it to the town gate, where legal business was done, sits down with ten elders as witnesses, and puts the land to the closer relative, who accepts. Then he adds the condition: on the day you buy the land from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property. The man withdraws at once, saying it would endanger his own estate, and the transfer is sealed by taking off a sandal and handing it over, which the narrative pauses to explain as an old custom that needed explaining even then.
The child born to Ruth and Boaz is Obed, and the women of the town say to Naomi that he will renew her life and sustain her in old age, because her daughter-in-law who loves her and is better to her than seven sons has given him birth. Naomi takes the child and lays him on her lap.
The closing lines make the point of the whole thing. Obed is the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David. The great-grandmother of the greatest king of Israel is a Moabite widow who gleaned in somebody else's field, and Matthew names her in the genealogy at the head of his Gospel.
All of this happens during the period when everyone did as they saw fit, which is the same span of years as the civil war over the Levite's concubine. Ordinary decency was also going on.