Ruth 3

RUTH’S APPEAL TO BOAZ TO REDEEM HER, Ruth 3:1-18.

To understand the incidents of this chapter we must have before us the ancient custom and laws of levirate marriage, so called from the Latin word levir, a brother in law. We meet the first instance of it in Genesis 38:8, where Judah calls upon his younger son Onan to marry Er’s widow, and thus preserve his brother’s name. The custom, however, was not peculiar to the Hebrews solely, but has been found to exist in several eastern countries. The Mosaic law on the subject is given in Deuteronomy 25:5-10, and is in substance as follows: If a man die and leave no children, his brother is under obligations to marry the widow, and she has a right to demand it of him. This obligation, however, is not absolutely binding. If the levir refuses to take her, he is brought before a council of the elders and publicly alleges his dislike to take her, and there his brother’s wife unlooses his shoe from off his foot, and spits in his face, and says, So shall it be done unto the man that will not build up his brother’s house. From this book of Ruth we see that the levirate law was so construed that in case the deceased husband had no surviving brother the obligation to marry his widow devolved upon his next nearest kinsman. The Hebrew word for this kinsman is גאל , goel, which means a redeemer. Its root is the exact equivalent of the Greek λυω , to loose, from which comes the New Testament λυτρον , a ransom. “The meaning of the word is profoundly set forth in the various grand historical unfoldings of its idea.

According to the social philosophy of the Mosaic law no member of the national organism was to perish, no branch of the tree was to wither; whatever had been dislocated by natural events was to be reset; whatever had been alienated must be redeemed. This applied to lands as well as to persons; and the duty of redemption rested, as within the nation, so within the families into which the nation branched out. No one could redeem any thing for a family who did not belong to it by blood relationship. The great Liberator of Israel is God. He frees from servitude. For that reason the Messiah, who delivers Israel is called Goel Redeemer. When he appears he will come as Israel’s blood-relation and brother, as Christ truly was.

“The dismal counterpart of the goel as redeemer and deliverer is the goel as blood-avenger. He owes his origin to the opinion, which slowly and painfully disappeared in Israel, but which is still partially prevalent in the East, and inspires many current superstitions, that the blood of the slain cannot be put to rest and liberated until his murderer has been killed. The duty of this blood-revenge rests upon the blood relatives, not only on the brother, strictly so called, but on the nearest relative whoever he may be. So far this terrible usage becomes instructive with reference to the beneficent national custom which made it the duty of the blood-relative not to let the house of his kinsman die out; for this also was a blood-redemption, not unto death, however, but unto happiness and peace. The goel was no judge, but a comforter, a dispenser of life and love.” Cassel.