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Verse 1
. Then went Boaz up to
the gate
We have often had occasion
to remark that the gate or entrance to any city or town
was the place where the court of justice was ordinarily
kept. For an account of the officers in such places, See
Clarke on Deuteronomy
16:18.
Ho, such a one!-sit down
here.
This familiar mode of
compellation is first used here. The original is
shebah poh, peloni almoni! "Hark ye, Mr.
Such-a-one of such a place! come and sit down here."
This is used when the person of the individual is
known, and his name and residence unknown.
almoni comes from alam, to be silent or
hidden, hence the Septuagint render it by κρυφε
thou unknown person: peloni comes from
palah, to sever or distinguish; you of
such a particular place. Modes of compellation of
this kind are common in all languages.
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Verse 2
. He took ten
men
Probably it required this number
to constitute a court. How simple and how rational was
this proceeding! 1. The man who had a suit went to the
city gates. 2. Here he stopped till the person with whom
he had the suit came to the gate on his way to his work.
3. He called him by name, and he stopped and sat down.
4. Then ten elders were called, and they came and sat
down. 5. When all this was done, the appellant preferred
his suit. 6. Then the appellee returned his answer. 7.
When the elders heard the case, and the response of the
appellee, they pronounced judgment, which judgment was
always according to the custom of the place. 8.
When this was done, the people who happened to be
present witnessed the issue. And thus the business was
settled without lawyers or legal casuistry. A question
of this kind, in one of our courts of justice, in these
enlightened times, would require many days' previous
preparation of the attorney, and several hours' arguing
between counsellor Botherum and counsellor
Borum, till even an enlightened and conscientious
judge would find it extremely difficult to decide
whether Naomi might sell her own land, and
whether Boaz or Peloni might buy
it! O, glorious uncertainty of modern law!
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Verse 3
. Naomi-selleth a
parcel of land
She was reduced to
want; the immediate inheritors were extinct, and it was
now open for the next heir to purchase the land, and
thus preserve the inheritance in the family according to
the custom of Israel.
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Verse 4
. I thought to
advertise thee
Both Dr.
Kennicott and Father Houbigant have
noticed several corruptions in the pronouns of
this and the following verses; and their criticisms have
been confirmed by a great number of MSS. since collated.
The text corrected reads thus: "And I said I will reveal
this to thy ear, saying, Buy it before the inhabitants,
and before the elders of my people. If thou wilt redeem
it, redeem it; but if thou wilt not redeem it, tell me,
that I may know; for there is none to redeem it but
thou, and I who am next to thee. And he said, I will
redeem it. And Boaz said, In the day that thou redeemest
the land from the hand of Naomi, thou wilt also acquire
Ruth, the wife of the dead, that thou mayest raise up
the name of the dead upon his inheritance;" Ruth
4:4,5.-See Kennicott's Dissertations, vol.
i., p. 449; Houbigant in loco; and the Variae
Lectiones of Kennicott and De Rossi.
This is Boaz's statement of the case before the kinsman,
and before the people and the elders.
I will redeem
it.
I will pay down the money which
it is worth. He knew not of the following condition.
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Verse 5
. Thou must buy it
also of Ruth
More properly,
Thou wilt also acquire Ruth. Thou canst
not get the land without taking the wife of the deceased
and then the children which thou mayest have shall be
reputed the children of Mahlon, thy deceased kinsman.
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Verse 6
. I cannot redeem
it for myself
The Targum
gives the proper sense of this passage: "And the kinsman
said, On this ground I cannot redeem it, because I have
a wife already; and I have no desire to take another,
lest there should be contention in my house, and I
should become a corrupter of my inheritance. Do thou
redeem it, for thou hast no wife; for I cannot redeem
it." This needs no comment. But still the gloss of the
Targum has no foundation in the law of
Moses. See the law, Deuteronomy
25:5-9.
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Verse 7
. A man plucked off his
shoe
The law of such a case is given
at large in Deuteronomy
25:5-9. It was simply this: If a brother, who had
married a wife, died without children, the eldest
brother was to take the widow, and raise up a family to
the brother deceased; and he had a right to redeem the
inheritance, if it had been alienated. But if the person
who had the right of redemption would not take the
woman, she was to pull off his shoe and spit in his
face, and he was ever after considered as a disgraced
man. In the present case the shoe only is taken
off, probably because the circumstances of the man were
such as to render it improper for him to redeem
the ground and take Ruth to his wife; and because of
this reasonable excuse, the contemptuous part of
the ceremony is omitted. See Clarke on Deuteronomy
25:9.
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Verse 11
. We are
witnesses.
It is not very likely
that any writing was drawn up. There was an appeal made
to the people then present, whether they had seen and
understood the transaction; who answered, We have
witnessed it. If any minutes of court were kept,
then the transaction was entered probably in some such
words as these: "On --- day of ---, Boaz bought the land
of Elimelech from Naomi his widow, and took Ruth, her
daughter-in-law, to wife; ---, who had the nearest
right, refusing to buy the land on the conditions then
proposed."
The Lord make this
woman-like Rachel and like Leah
May
thy family be increased by her means, as the tribes were
formed by means of Rachel and Leah, wives
of the patriarch Jacob!
Which two did build the
house of Israel
We have already seen
that ben, a son, comes from the root
banah, he built; and hence eben, a
stone, because as a house is built of
stones, so is a family of children. There
is a similar figure in PLAUTUS, Mostell. Act i.,
sec. 2, ver. 37.
___________________Nunc etiam volo Dicere, ut homines
aedium esse similes arbitremini. Primum dum parentes
fabri liberum sunt, Et fundamentum
liberorum substruunt.
"I would also observe, that ye men are similar to
houses; ye parents are the fabricators of
the children, and they are the foundation of the
building."
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Verse 12
. Like the house of
Pharez
This was very appropriate; for
from Pharez, the son of Judah, by Tamar, came the family
of the Beth-lehemites and that of Elimelech.
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Verse 13
. So Boaz took
Ruth
The law of Moses had prohibited
the Moabites, even to the tenth generation, from
entering into the congregation of the Lord; but this
law, the Jews think, did not extend to women; and
even if it had, Ruth's might be considered an exempt
case, as she had been already incorporated into the
family by marriage; and left her own country, people,
and gods, to become a proselyte to the true God
in the land of Israel.
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Verse 16
. Naomi took the
child
This might do for Naomi, but it
was bad for the child. A child, unless remarkably
healthy and robust, will suffer considerably by being
nursed by an old woman, especially if the
child sleep with her. The aged gain
refreshment and energy by sleeping with the
young; and from the same means the young derive
premature decrepitude. The vigour which is
absorbed by the former is lost by
the latter. It is a foolish and destructive
custom to permit young children, which is a common case,
to sleep with aged aunts and old
grandmothers. Bacon's grand secret of the cure of
old age, couched in so many obscure and enigmatical
terms, is simply this: Let young persons sleep
constantly with those who are aged and infirm.
And it was on this principle that the physicians of
David recommended a young healthy girl to
sleep with David in his old age. They well knew that
the aged infirm body of the king would absorb a
considerable portion of healthy energy from the young
woman.
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Verse 17
. The neighbours gave
it a name
That is, they recommended a
name suitable to the circumstances of the case; and the
parents and grandmother adopted it.
They called his name
Obed
obed, serving, from
abad, he served. Why was this name given? Because
he was to be the nourisher of her old age, Ruth
4:15. And he must be by lying in her bosom,
even if services in future life were wholly left
out of the question. These neighbours of Naomi were
skilful people. See on Ruth
4:16. Other meanings, of which I not ignorant, have
been derived from these words; those who prefer them
have my consent.
He is the father of Jesse,
the father of David.
And for the sake
of this conclusion, to ascertain the line of David, and
in the counsel of God to fix and ascertain the line of
the Messiah was this instructive little book written.
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Verse 18
. Now these are the
generations
The Targum gives a
copious paraphrase on this and the following verses, I
shall insert the principal parts in their proper places.
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Verse 19
. Hezron begat
Ram
He is called Aram here by
the Septuagint, and also by St. Matthew, Matthew
1:3.
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Verse 20
. Amminadab begat
Nahshon
The Targum adds, "And Nahshon
was chief of the house of his father in the tribe of
Judah."
Nahshon begat
Salmon
In the Hebrew it is
Salmah, which Houbigant thinks was an
error of an ancient scribe, before any final letters
were acknowledged in the Hebrew alphabet: for then the
word would be written Salmon, which a scribe,
after final letters were admitted, might mistake for
Salmah, and so write it, instead of
Salmon, the vau and final nun in
conjunction () bearing some resemblance to.
The Targum calls him "Salmah the Just; he was
the Salmah of Beth-lehem and Netopha, whose sons
abolished the watches which Jeroboam set over the
highways; and their works and the works of their father
were good in Netopha."
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Verse 21
. And Salmon begat
Boaz
The Targum goes on, "And
Salmon begat Absan the judge; he is Boaz
the Just, on account of whose righteousness the people
of the house of Israel were redeemed from the hands of
their enemies; and at whose supplication the famine
departed from the land of Israel."
And Boaz begat
Obed
"Who served the Lord in this
world with a perfect heart."
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Verse 22
. And Obed begat
Jesse
"Who," says the Targum,
"also is called Nachash, because neither iniquity nor
corruption was found in him, that he should be delivered
into the hands of the angel of death, that he might take
away his soul from him. And he lived many days until the
counsel was remembered before the Lord, that the serpent
gave to Eve the wife of Adam, that she should eat of the
tree; by eating of the fruit of which they became wise,
to distinguish between good and evil: and by that
counsel all the inhabitants of the earth became guilty
of death; and by this iniquity Jesse the Just died."
Here is no mean or indistinct reference to the doctrine
of original sin: and it shows us, at least, what
the very ancient rabbins thought on the subject. I
should observe that these additions are taken
from the London Polyglot; they are not
found in that of Antwerp; but they are the same
that appear in the Targum of the great Bible printed by
Bomberg, at Venice, in 1547-49.
And Jesse begat
David
To this no comment is added by
the Targumist, as the history of this king is found in
the following book.
The ten persons whose genealogy is recorded in
the five last verses, may be found, with a trifling
change of name, in the genealogical list in Matthew
1:3-6, as forming important links in the line
of the Messiah. To introduce this appears to have been
the principal object of the writer, as introductory to
the following books, where the history of David, the
regal progenitor and type of the Messiah, is so
particularly detailed.
FOR the account of the birth of Pharez and his
brother Zarah, the reader is requested to refer to Genesis
38:12-30, and to the notes there; and for several
particulars in the genealogy itself, to the notes on Matthew
1:1-16and ; Luke
3:23-38, where the wisdom, goodness, and providence
of God, in the preservation of this line, are
particularly noticed.
MASORETIC NOTES ON RUTH
Number of verses in Ruth is 85.
Middle verse is Ruth
2:21.
We have already seen that Archbishop Usher places the
event mentioned here in A.M. 2686, about one hundred
years after the conquest of Canaan.
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