Rut 4:5

5. Thou must buy it also of Ruth The estate of Elimelech would have been Chilion and Mahlon’s had they lived. Chilion’s widow had gone to her mother’s house in Moab, and perhaps married again, so that she had no legal claim on the property; but Mahlon’s widow, Ruth, had clung to Naomi, and therefore while she lived had a share with her mother-in-law in Mahlon’s inheritance. Naomi was too old to expect a husband, (Ruth 1:12,) or to claim of her deceased husband’s kinsmen the duty of the levirate marriage. But not so Ruth, who was young and beautiful, and had a right to ask in marriage the man who redeemed the inheritance of Mahlon.

To raise up the name of the dead According to the law (Deuteronomy 25:6) the firstborn of the levirate marriage succeeded in the name of the deceased husband of his mother. Thus the family to whom the deceased belonged did not become extinct in Israel. See on Ruth 4:10.