Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Ruth · About this commentary
The Sandal
Ruth 4:5-8
5 Then Boaz said, “On the day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you must buy it also from Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead on his inheritance.” · WEB
The second condition changes the arithmetic, and a man declines to spend his estate on someone else's name.
On the day you buy the field from Naomi, you must buy it also from Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead on his inheritance. The land came attached to an obligation — the levirate duty of Deuteronomy 25:5–6, under which the first son born would carry the dead man's name and inherit the field.
The redeemer's calculation is now different, and he does it out loud. I can't redeem it for myself, lest I endanger my own inheritance. He would pay for land that would pass to a child counted as Mahlon's rather than his own, and the money would leave his estate permanently. His refusal is not villainous; it is arithmetic, and he says so.
The contrast is the point of the scene. Boaz will do the same sum and reach the same total, and act anyway.
Verse 7 is the narrator stepping forward to explain a custom his readers no longer practice: a man took off his sandal and gave it to his neighbor, and this was how transactions were confirmed. The law made the sandal a mark of shame when a brother refused Deuteronomy 25:9; here it is simply a receipt, handed over without reproach.
settled What this mark means