Ruth 4:1-12

THE COUNCIL AT THE GATE OF BETHLEHEM, Ruth 4:1-12.

Closely connected with the customs and the law of levirate marriage was another law concerning the redemption of property. Jehovah claimed the land of Israel as his, and commanded that it should never be sold by his people. Therefore an inheritance was not allowed to pass permanently into the hands of another family than that whose original possession it was. If through poverty one was obliged to sell a piece of land from the family estate, (as Naomi, see Ruth 4:3,) it was the duty of the nearest kinsman to redeem it. He who acted as redeemer in such cases purchased, properly speaking, not the land itself, but the use of it until the next year of Jubilee. See the law, as detailed in Leviticus 25:23-34. But in case the kinsman performed the double part of buying the property and marrying the widow, then the inheritance would pass to the offspring of that marriage, and thus the kinsman would build up his brother’s house.

This chapter affords us a life-picture of an ancient court of justice assembled to arbitrate a case under the above-mentioned law. Every circumstance serves in some measure to illustrate the simplicity of that age.