Ruth 4:10

"Moreover 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."

"Ruth the Moabitess have I purchased." This statement stands in respect to the legal proceedings before the village court and does not mean that Boaz, in any ordinary sense, was purchasing Ruth. What is meant is that Boaz was buying the land from Naomi and that the land purchase also included the right and the obligation for his marriage to Ruth.

The proceedings here procured for Boaz only the right to marry Ruth; "the actual marriage is recorded in Ruth 4:13."[12]

Leon Morris noted that this magnanimous and unselfish action on the part of Boaz tells us something about God: "(1) God must feel at least as compassionate toward all the Ruths of Moab and Babylon and of every other land as His creature Boaz felt towards Ruth; and (2) God must actually be a God of redemption, with the desire and the power to redeem all outcasts into fellowship with Himself."[13]