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R U T H IV 5 A N D T H E D U T I E S O F T H E GO D EL The narrative contained in Ruth iv 1 ff. describes Naomi in the process of selling property to someone outside the immediate family, and Boaz is depicted as urging the near kinsman to redeem it, since he has prior claim to the land. At first, the kinsman accepts the offer (Ruth iv 4), but when Boaz informs him that in addition to redeeming the property he must also take Ruth as his wife he declines lest he should impair his own inheritance (Ruth iv 6). While it is not explained how his own inheritance would be affected, it is probably to be assumed that any son born of the le virate marriage would inherit not only the property which the levir was administering on the widow's behalf but also a share of the kinsman's own, personal estate. 1 The problem that remains to be resolved, however, is why Boaz should tell the kinsman that when he redeemed the property he would also be obliged to marry Ruth (iv 5), since there was certainly no law prescribing marriage to a childless widow as one of the duties of the g^el. Boaz was here, apparently, bringing together two quite separate and distinct customs which were not usually related to each other. Normally, when a kinsman redeemed his relative's property, no levirate marriage was involved; on the other hand, when levirate marriage occurred there was generally no question of redeeming property, since the land bequeathed by the husband would be administered by the levir until a child was born and became the legal heir. Why, then, did Boaz bring together these two customs by telling the kinsman: " T h e day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you are also buying Ruth 2 the Moabitess, the widow of the dead, in order to restore the name of the dead to his inheritance" (iv 5)? Boaz's requirement could not have been something imposed by him quite arbitrarily, since the elders in the legal assembly would surely have objected to his demand, and the kinsman himself would have insisted on his right to redeem the land without marrying the widow. If there was any way in which the kinsman could have separated the two customs, he would no doubt have availed himself of the opportunity to do so. 3
Vetus Testamentum XXXIII, 2 (1983)

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Some scholars have suggested that it was inevitable that Ruth should be acquired along with the estate, for in Israel the widow would have been regarded simply as part of the property of her deceased husband. 4 However, it is by no means certain that women in Israel were regarded as " p r o p e r t y " in this way, 5 and besides, Ruth iii 10 suggests that, far from being automatically acquired along with the estate of her husband, Ruth was free to marry whom she wished. Moreover, if it was customary for the widow to be acquired together with the property, it is curious that the kinsman did not realise this when he initially agreed to redeem the land (Ruth iv 4). It would seem, rather, that Boaz's request involved something which had not originally been anticipated by the kinsman, for when the latter hears that he would have to marry Ruth he immediately declines the offer (Ruth iv 5 f.). D. R. G. Beattie 6 seeks to solve this difficulty by reading qant (with the Kethibh) instead of qnith (with the Qere) in Ruth iv 5, and he translates the verse: " O n the day you acquire the field from Naomi's hand, I am acquiring Ruth the Moabite, the wife of the deceased, to raise up the name of the deceased over his inheritance". According to this interpretation, Boaz, having urged the kinsman to redeem the land, now announces his own intention of marrying Ruth with the implication that he would then beget an heir for Mahlon who would eventually claim the land which the kinsman had spent his money to redeem. The kinsman's change of mind, therefore, was due to the fact that he would be acquiring the land for a limited time only. However, this explanation is unsatisfactory, for if the kinsman was willing initially to undertake the obligation of redeeming the property (Ruth iv 4), Boaz's announcement that he himself would marry Ruth must have made the proposition all the more attractive, since the kinsman would then have had the advantage of using the land for his own benefit (albeit for a limited period) without the added incumbrance of supporting the widow. Beattie's explanation cannot, therefore, be accepted, and the fact that there is strong Versional support for reading the Qere in Ruth iv 5 (cf. L X X , Syr.) suggests that the usual rendering of this verse is preferable. It is here suggested that the solution to the difficulty lies in the recognition of the fact that levirate marriage in Israel was, from the beginning, concerned not only with raising offspring for the widow, but also with the maintenance of the estate within the family by

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allowing the first-born son of the levirate union to inherit the estate of the deceased brother. I have argued elsewhere that this was the meaning of the statement in the levirate law of Deut. xxv 5-10 that the first-born son would succeed to the " n a m e " (son) of the deceased brother "so that his name (semo) may not be blotted out of Israel". 7 The name of the deceased must be revived in property and person. This factor is crucial for our understanding of the situation described in Ruth iv 1 ff. The narrative depicts a childless widow (Naomi) who was connected to some property which was in danger of being lost to the family. If the levirate marriage were here performed, but the property sold, then the " n a m e " of the deceased could not have been revived, for any children born of the union would not have had any land attaching them to their deceased father. Thus that the kinsman in Ruth iv 5 should be given the double responsibility of redeeming the property of the deceased relative and marrying the widow is not surprising, for one obligation was intrinsically related to the other. 8 If the kinsman married the widow of his relative without redeeming the property, then the task allotted to himnamely " t o restore the name of the dead to his inheritance" (Ruth iv 5)would have proved impossible, for there would have been no land for any sons born of the levirate union to inherit. Thus by insisting that the kinsman should undertake the double obligation of marrying the widow and redeeming the property, Boaz was simply making explicit what had always been implicit in the levirate duty. 9 But if the two obligations were connected in this way it remains to be explained why the kinsman did not realise that he would be obliged to marry Ruth when he originally accepted the responsibility to redeem the property. If the two duties were intrinsically related, then the kinsman would have known that a widow was to be acquired along with the property before Boaz's announcement to this effect (Ruth iv 5), and if this were the case then his later change of mind would be unaccountable. It may be suggested, therefore, that the kinsman knew at the outset that by redeeming the property he would have to marry the widow, but it is probable that he had assumed that the widow in question was Naomi. 1 0 The kinsman's assumption would not have been without foundation since, strictly speaking, it was indeed Naomi and not Ruth who should have married the redeemer of the property. But since Naomi was past child-bearing age (Ruth i 11-13), it is probable that she

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had renounced her right in favour of Ruth. The kinsman, therefore, initially accepted the responsibility of redeeming the land and marrying the widow, since he would have reasoned that Naomi, owing to her advanced age, would not conceive another child, and the land would ultimately have been his own. Thus the new information which Boaz imparts to the kinsman and which occasions his change of mind (Ruth iv 5) is not that a widow would have to be acquired along with the property (since this would already have been understood) but that the widow in question was in fact Ruth and not Naomi. This would then account for the kinsman's change of mind, for it would be more likely that Ruth would conceive a son, and the kinsman's refusal was based on the assumption that this son would eventually inherit not only the property which he had redeemed but also, in all probability, a share of his own personal estate. Bangor, North Wales Eryl W. Davies

1 Cf my article, i n h e r i t a n c e Rights and the Hebrew Levirate Marriage, Part 2 " , VT31 (1981), pp 258f 2 Emend with BHS to gam ^et-rt (cf Vulg ) 3 H H Rowley, " T h e Marriage of R u t h " , The Servant of the Lord (revised edn, Oxford, 1965), 187, explains the predicament of the kinsman as follows " T o beget children by R u t h without marring his estate the kinsman could have con sidered, to buy Naomi's land without taking R u t h he could also have considered It was the bringing of these two things into relation with one another that made both impossible for h i m " 4 So, e g , E Neufeld, Ancient Hebrew Marriage Laws (London, 1953), pp 31, 239f 5 Cf M Burrows, The Basis of Israelite Marriage (New Haven, Conn , 1938), pp 9ff 6 " K e t h i b h and Qere in Ruth iv 5 " , VT 21 (1971), pp 490-4, cf , further, his article, " T h e Book of Ruth as Evidence for Israelite Legal P r a c t i c e " , VT 24 (1974), pp 262-4 See also the lengthy discussion by J M Sasson, Ruth A New Translation with a Philological Commentary and a Formalist-Folklorist Interpretation (Baltimore and London, 1979), pp 119-36 7 "Inheritance Rights and the Hebrew Levirate Marriage, Part 1 " , VT 31 (1981), pp 141f 8 Cf Cruveilhier, " L e Levirat chez les Hbreux et chez les Assyriens", RB 34 (1925), 531 9 This is preferable to the view of Rowley (pp 188-90), that the introduction of the land into the levirate obligation was simply a clever and shrewd manoeuvre on the part of Boaz to place the next-of-kin in such a dilemma that he would be forced to renounce his prior rights as the nearest kinsman 10 Cf W Rudolph, Das Buch Ruth Das Hohe Lied-Die Klagelieder (Gtersloh, 1962), 67

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