Ruth 4:7

"Now this was the custom in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning exchanging to confirm all things: a man drew off his shoe and gave it to his neighbor; and this was the manner of attestation in Israel."

In some ways, this is the most important verse in the book, because the "critical community" have made it the basis of late-dating the writing of it until post-exilic times. There are many reasons why this action on the part of Biblical enemies is not merely inaccurate and totally unjustified, but is also extremely ridiculous and contrary to overwhelming evidence elsewhere in the Book of Ruth!

"In former time in Israel." In the first place this does NOT mean five hundred years earlier. The words were just as appropriate when Samuel, as we believe, wrote Ruth, as they could possibly have been at any other time. The date of Samuel's authorship was at a time after he had anointed David to be the king of Israel instead of Saul, namely, about 1000 B.C., and the custom referred to, according to Dr. LaGard Smith was between the times of the Judges Abdon and Samson, both of whom were a century or more before Ruth was written. "In former time" can refer to one century as well as it can to five centuries.

Besides that, it is the opinion of some very dependable scholars that the verse is a gloss, inserted into the text at some later time following the writing of the book. S. R. Driver admitted that, " Ruth 4:7 may be an explanatory gloss."[7] And, even if that should not be allowed, Hubbard pointed out that "The verse seems to be more of a literary device than any kind of an historical reference."[8]

"This was the custom." This is not a reference to levirate marriage, which was not a custom but a divine law. Even the drawing off of a shoe or sandal is not connected with levirate law, for, in that law, the disgrace of the brother who refused to marry his brother's widow was humiliated by the widow's spitting in his face. Nothing like that is found here. "Here the drawing off of the shoe was no disgrace but the confirmation of the surrender (or transfer) of the right of redemption."[9]

WHAT HAD ACTUALLY CHANGED?

It appears to us that Matthew Henry solved this problem by his observation that, "In those former times it was not the custom to pass estates (from one party to another) by writings,"[10] but by the ceremony visible in this passage. If the change to the method of transferring by written records came with the introduction of the monarchy under King Saul, which seems most likely, then there is nothing whatever in this passage to suggest any later date for the writing of the Book of Ruth than that which we have suggested in the introduction. Certainly the transfer by written records is visible in the times of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 32:10ff), and in all probability much earlier. Certainly writing was well known in the times of Moses, and it will be remembered that the young man Gideon met on the highway gave him the written records of the names of magistrates of Succoth (Judges 8:13ff, RSV).