Ruth 4:7

in former time in Israel Cf. 1 Samuel 9:9, which begins similarly. Driver (Introd.8, p. 455) thinks that the present verse is also an explanatory gloss, because it is not needed in the narrative, and has the appearance of being a later addition; see, however, the Introduction, p. xiv.

a man drew off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbour This old custom was not altogether intelligible in the writer's day, so he gives an explanation of it. When property was transferred, as in the present case, to take off the sandal and hand it to the person in whose favour the transfer is made, gave a symbolic attestation to the act and invested it with legal validity (Driver, Deut., p. 283). The same symbolism was used on other occasions, and with varying significance. Thus, when a deceased husband's brother declined to contract a levirate marriage, the widow loosed his sandal from off his foot in token that he renounced his rightto make her his wife, Deuteronomy 25:9; cf. the Arabic form of divorce, -she was my slipper and I have cast her off" (Robertson Smith, Kinshipetc., p. 269); the action implied at the same time a feeling of contempt, which is probably denoted by the expression in Psalms 60:8; Psalms 108:9 [5]. The drawing off of the sandal also symbolized among the later Arabs the renunciation of an oath of fealtyto a sovereign: his authority was withdrawn as the sandal from the foot (Goldziher, Abhandl. z. Arab. Philologie, i. p. 47).

[5] Cf. the story told by Burton, Land of Midian, ii, p. 196 f.: a man who owned 2000 date-palms was asked by the leader of a band of robbers to sell them; and when he suggested that an offer should be made, the robber, taking off his sandal, exclaimed -with this!" For the Jewish practice of Chalîtzah, i.e. -removal" of the shoe, see Oesterley and Box, Rel. and Worship of the Synagogue(1907), p. 294 f.