The Line of David

Boaz acted at once, as Naomi predicted. He went to the gate, the place of public business, and called the nearer kinsman with ten elders as witnesses. Elimelech's land was for sale, and the kinsman was willing to redeem it. Then Boaz explained that the buyer must also take Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead on his inheritance.

The kinsman refused, fearing he would endanger his own inheritance, and passed his right to Boaz. As the text explains, in former times a man confirmed such transactions by taking off his sandal and giving it to his neighbor. Boaz declared that he had bought all that was Elimelech's, Chilion's, and Mahlon's, and that he had purchased Ruth to be his wife so that the name of the dead would not be cut off. The people and elders said, We are witnesses. They blessed the marriage, naming Rachel, Leah, and the house of Perez.

Yahweh enabled Ruth to conceive, and she bore a son. The women praised Yahweh, who had not left Naomi without a near kinsman, and said the child would be a restorer of life, born to the daughter-in-law who loved her and was better than seven sons. Naomi became his nurse, and the neighbors named him Obed. The book closes with a genealogy from Perez to David: Obed was the father of Jesse, the father of David. A Moabite woman's loyalty became part of the line of Israel's great king. In the New Testament, Matthew lists Boaz and Ruth in the family line of Jesus Christ, saying Boaz became the father of Obed by Ruth (Matthew 1:5).