Redeeming Love (Ruth #4)

I have the immense privilege of walking through Ruth chapter 4 today, concluding our series. Four chapters, a very short book — and a wonderful story. I’ve enjoyed it enormously. It has opened my eyes to some things that had been sitting in the back of my head for years without my realizing they needed unpacking.

Two things before we start.

First, this has been on my mind the entire time I’ve been preparing: God’s word is sharper than any two-edged sword. I believe it is a nearly perfect discipline to sit and contemplate the difficult things in Scripture. Hebrews 4:12 says:

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

That ought to rest on all of us today. We think we understand certain things when in fact we do not — and God, who is merciful, graciously gives us the understanding He desires us to have.

Second, I admitted this morning that I was a little nervous, and someone told me something that helped. It is not only my responsibility to open God’s word. It’s also on you — to bend your hearts, to ask God for a clean heart so you can understand what happens here. That made me feel considerably better, and I think it’s true.

Where We Are

Over the last three weeks we’ve covered a committed love, a generous love, and a providential love. Today: a redeeming love.

Open your Bible to Ruth 4. It’s nearer the front than I usually find myself — I confess I spend too much time in the New Testament and neglect the Old. Some of you may be guilty of the same. You shouldn’t be. It’s all one contiguous story.

And if you can, keep a paper copy with you — one that won’t die on you or distract you with notifications, one that can’t lose signal. A phone Bible is far better than no Bible. But there’s something to be said for paper.

Now Boaz had gone up to the gate and sat down there.

Let’s not get far before some explanation.

We open chapter 4 with Boaz about to handle business. At the end of chapter 3, Naomi told Ruth, “Sit still, my daughter, until you know how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest until he has settled the matter today.” He said he would take care of it. Naomi knows he will.

A city gate in those days served several functions. Boaz going up to the gate isn’t a matter of walking through an entrance. The gate was the official place where parties conducted business and were heard.

He has just left Ruth in the early morning, sent her home with provision for Naomi, walked off the threshing floor, out through the fields, and straight to the gate. He is set on the one thing his heart now desires.

But keep chapters 1 through 3 in mind. Boaz is a man of conviction. He knows what needs to happen, and he is not going to get what he wants the easy way. He will do it the right way. He is a man of integrity.

And here he is, waiting for an unnamed kinsman redeemer.

Two Concepts: Goel and Levirate Law

The Hebrew word is goel — kinsman redeemer. That person had to be the nearest living male blood relative. The term derives from a word meaning to redeem, or to buy back.

The word applies to the nameless relative in our first account — our first goel — and also to Boaz himself, our second goel. Remember that: Boaz is also a kinsman redeemer.

The second concept is levirate law — the levirate principle, sometimes called the levirate doctrine. It’s worth refreshing that this was an aspect of the law held in principle, and in some respects a form of cultural pressure. It was not a hard and fast rule applied identically in every case. There was nuance, as cultures tried to hold true to God’s word while adapting their own customs and characteristics around it.

There were four responsibilities attached to a goel:

1. Buy a fellow Israelite out of slavery — Leviticus 25.
2. Avenge the blood of a murdered family member — Numbers 35:19.
3. Buy back family land — Leviticus 25:25.
4. Marry a childless widow to carry on the family line — Deuteronomy 25:5–10.

Hold on to points three and four.

The Transaction

And behold, the redeemer of whom Boaz had spoken came by. So Boaz said, “Turn aside, friend; sit down here.” And he turned aside and sat down. And he took ten men of the elders of the city and said, “Sit down here.” So they sat down.

Then he said to the redeemer, “Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our relative Elimelech. So I thought I would tell you of it and say, ‘Buy it in the presence of those sitting here and in the presence of the elders of my people.’ If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if you will not, tell me, that I may know, for there is no one besides you to redeem it, and I come after you.” And he said, “I will redeem it.”

Then Boaz said, “The day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance.”

Then the redeemer said, “I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it.”

The Gate, the Sandal, and the Witnesses

I want to highlight the importance of witness and ceremony here — the gate and the sandal.

The follower of God has rigor built into his life. We don’t give easy yeses. In the presence of these gathered elders, the people will know exactly what has transpired. It is a public testimony that the action is proper and legal. The goel could change his mind — people do — but this has been witnessed, and the community can hold him to account.

That’s not so different from a couple of ceremonies you know well: weddings and baptisms.

In our weakness and our impatience, we reach for the low-hanging fruit. A Christian couple thinks about eloping — why do we need those other people? Why do we need witnesses? This is just for us. Or a person coming to faith decides that a quiet, inward, personal contemplation is enough — I’ll just sit here and think it over and not tell anyone.

We make decisions in isolation, and without accountability to anybody.

That is exactly why witnesses matter. The people who testify and hold you to account are the ones in community who hold you together. I tell the people closest to me that I want them to take me to task when I start to deviate from what I’ve promised. I think that’s a wonderful thing, and it honors the One we ought to honor.

Two Redeemers, Two Hearts

Notice how Boaz plays this. He knows redeeming both the land and the line is not strictly required — so he opens with the land.

The first redeemer, the unnamed one, snaps it up. No hesitation. He wants that land. It adds to his wealth and his property.

But when pressed past the part he found appealing — into the area that was not so clear and carried familial and social cost — he folded immediately. “I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance.”

You could probably draw out a few sayings there. He wanted the field, not the wife. There are plenty of things we do the easy way that get us what we want in the moment but are not necessarily right.

The first goel just wanted the field. He did not want the responsibility of a person.

The second, better goel knew the value of both — and made a way for it to happen. He redeemed them to himself, out of his own desire to do so, while honoring and fulfilling the law.

To be fair, the first man does give a reason, though it isn’t a good one. Most likely it has to do with already having a son or sons who are of age, or nearly so, to take inheritance from him.

The Precedent in Genesis 38

These principles had been around a very long time. Look at Genesis 38:

And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, “Go in to your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, so whenever he went in to his brother’s wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.

Then Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, “Remain a widow in your father’s house, till Shelah my son grows up” — for he feared that he would die, like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father’s house.

Notice how closely that echoes what Naomi says to Ruth earlier in our book.

There’s far more to that story, and I’d encourage you to go read it. But the precedent set there gives wonderful context to everything happening in Ruth. This expectation had been part of Jewish life for a very long time — including a widow waiting on a son to grow up so she could marry him.

Why the Sandal?

Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging: to confirm a transaction, one drew off his sandal and gave it to the other, and this was the manner of attesting in Israel. So when the redeemer said to Boaz, “Buy it for yourself,” he drew off his sandal.

The sandal seems like an odd way to conclude business. But go back to Deuteronomy 25 — the laws concerning levirate marriage:

If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.

And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.” Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, “I do not wish to take her,” then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, “So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, “The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.”

You could try that the next time a business deal doesn’t go your way. Go for the shoe and spit in his face. Perhaps it would have more profound effects than we imagine.

What seems silly to us would have been profound to them. And notice — the first redeemer accepts his shame and removes his own sandal. Verse 7 tells us the custom had adapted over time; they had taken the principle and adjusted it. So by removing it himself, and perhaps sparing himself being spat on and preserving some reputation, he still stood firm in his refusal.

In front of the elders, that ceremony made the transaction legally binding and established Boaz’s right to act where the first redeemer would not.

And our man of integrity does not disappoint:

Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, “You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and to Mahlon. Also Ruth the Moabite, the widow of Mahlon, I have bought to be my wife, to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his native place. You are witnesses this day.”

And the people reply with a blessing:

“We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.”

How would you like that at your wedding? They pray immediately for a boatload of children. And it is a blessing. It’s wonderful.

Consider Ruth

Let me take a side step. The pastor Gary Hamrick put it this way, and I’m quoting him directly, because I did not think this up:

God took a pagan, a Gentile woman from Moab. She was the descendant of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his oldest daughter. Her people worshiped Chemosh through human sacrifice. She didn’t know God, she didn’t love God, and she did not worship God. She was widowed, destitute, and hopeless.

That sounds pretty bad.

But consider this. If the Jews in Jesus’s day had not been so blinded by their own cultural and religious pride — set apart, keepers of the law by their own strength — they would have seen this thousand-year-old message about God grafting in other peoples, redeeming them and saving them.

They had the lesson right in front of them and they couldn’t see it. Their hearts were not clean or bent toward what they ought to be doing, and not toward what God was doing in them.

What would our world look like if they had?

We heard two weeks ago about Ruth being a woman of character and substance. And are we, who desire to be saved, so unlike her? We lie at our Savior’s feet and ask. We bring nothing. We want our means secured, our futures made certain, our lives saved.

We have lessons in Ruth because we are Ruth. We are the bride. And we ask redemption and restoration from our glorious Boaz.

Ruth and Proverbs 31

Here’s a fascinating observation I came across while studying. The virtuous wife of Proverbs 31:10 is personified in virtuous Ruth — the same Hebrew word is used of her in Ruth 3:11.

They share at least eight character traits. And one wonders, in concert with Jewish tradition, whether King Lemuel’s mother might have been Bathsheba, who orally passed the family heritage of Ruth’s spotless reputation along to David’s son Solomon. Lemuel means “devoted to God” and could have been a family name for Solomon — much like Jedidiah in 2 Samuel 12:25 — who then may have penned Proverbs 31:10–31 with Ruth in mind.

Each woman was devoted to her family, delighting in her work, diligent in her labor, dedicated to godly speech, dependent on God, dressed with care, discreet with men, and delivering blessings.

God is good, and this whole thing is on purpose. Every sentence is on purpose. Don’t forget that.

The Line Redeemed

In week one we heard about the failure of Elimelech, whose death resulted from disobedience — and whose name means “God is my king.” He disobeyed God and God’s covenant. His sons died complicit in the same offense. His line was effectively blotted out.

But God sees all time from His throne. Psalm 33:

The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all the children of man; from where he sits enthroned he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.

Beginning to end, in a moment, God sees it all. You are never without care, and you are never alone.

So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.”

Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

How would you like it if the neighborhood women named your child?

And then the genealogy: Perez fathered Hezron, Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, Salmon fathered Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David.

Elimelech’s family is redeemed through the actions of the second goel. God sees all His people, all actions, all desires, all time from His throne, and He knows the beginning from the end.

So consider this. The restoration of Naomi’s namesake in Obed is the glorious redemption of the lineage that produces David — and from David, the one they waited on, the one we look back to for our own redemption. He is Christ our Lord, our God, our Savior, and our friend.

Christ’s line, despite the failure of Elimelech, is redeemed. Elimelech left the house of bread in disobedience — and God returns the lineage, through Boaz and his redemption, back to Bethlehem, the house of bread, by legal precedent kept through the grafting in of the Gentile Ruth, whom Boaz desired to redeem.

As Christ desires us.

Until I studied this book, that was hearsay rattling around in my head with a hundred other Bible trivia facts I thought were merely interesting. But when Christ in His mercy allows you to understand the totality of His work and His perfect timing, it is beautifully coherent. All of Scripture is knit together so tightly that we probably don’t yet grasp it formally or academically.

That ought to drop us to our knees in worship of the God who shapes the very moments of our day.

The Ultimate Kinsman Redeemer

J. I. Packer. R. C. Sproul. John Piper. Tim Keller. D. A. Carson. N. T. Wright. Michael Horton. John MacArthur. Douglas Wilson.

Why give you those names? Because that is a genuinely diverse group with varying opinions on a great many things. And they are solidified in this: the Redeemer in Boaz points to Christ.

In the New Testament, Paul describes Jesus as the ultimate kinsman redeemer. Galatians 4:4–5: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

Hebrews 2:14–15: “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity, so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.”

First Peter 1:18–19: “You know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”

Titus 2:13–14: “While we wait for the blessed hope — the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.”

First Timothy 2:5–6: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people.”

Isaiah 59:20: “The Redeemer will come to Zion, to those in Jacob who repent of their sins, declares the Lord.”

And remember what Jesus said in Matthew 5:17: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.”

By seeking the will of God first, Boaz — and then Christ — accomplished far more than any self-serving act of preservation could have. Seek first the kingdom of heaven.

What I Want for You

God’s love is committed. It is generous. It is providential. And it is redemptive.

Reflect on that today, and every day after, without stopping. You think you don’t have time — you do. Everything else gets cast aside when that doesn’t come first.

I know you have responsibilities. I know you have a family to take care of. But there is One who tends your soul and gives you strength, and He is your primary point and purpose. That’s Christ.

If you lost everything, you would still have Him.

You will get old and lose your sight. You will get old and lose the strength in your legs and arms, and eventually some of your understanding. You will lose your appetite. You won’t sleep. And all you will have left is the contemplation of Christ.

So take this book. Commit portions of it to memory. Know that Christ is with you. Keep Him on your heart and in your mind.

A clean heart — I want it for you. Until the glorious day when we see our Maker face to face.