Ruth 4:6

The kinsman draws back. The Rabbinic commentator thought that he was afraid of dying by God's judgment for marrying a Moabite, as Mahlon and Chilion had perished. But his motive seems to have been an unwillingness to encroach on his own property for the sake of a son by Ruth, who would be heir of the newly acquired land and would not be accounted his child.

7-10. In the case described at Deuteronomy 25:9 the woman removes the shoe of the man who declines to act; here the man himself takes it off: there, by that symbolic act, she takes away the right he will not exercise; here, he renounces it. At Psalms 60:10; Psalms 108:10 the shoe thrown over the land is a sign that possession is taken: see on Amos 2:6; Amos 8:6. Similar customs have existed amongst the Hindoos, the ancient Germans, and the Arabs. When an Arab divorces his wife, he says: 'She was my babuj (slipper) and I cast her off.' Boaz declares it to be his purpose to prevent the name of the dead from being cut off: if Ruth should bear a son he would be the representative of Mahlon, and men would remember the father's name whilst they called the child Ben-Mahlon, Mahlon's son.

11, 12. No Hebrew woman could desire a better fortune than to resemble the two wives of Jacob from whom the entire people had sprung. And the wish of the Bethlehemites for Boaz was that he might win a name which should be famous amongst them as the head of a powerful and illustrious house. Perez, whom they go on to mention, was the child borne by Tamar to Judah, when the latter unwittingly did her the justice (Genesis 38) which Boaz was so willing to render to Ruth. The cases were also parallel as regards the respective ages of the man and the woman.

13-16. It was an honour and a mark of divine favour to have a son, a discredit and curse both to husband and wife to be without: 'He who has not left a son to be his heir, with him the Holy One—blessed be He—is angry.' This son would take upon him all the duties of near kinsman to Naomi. He would be a 'restorer of life' (RV), reviving the fainting soul, inspiring fresh hope, joy, courage (Psalms 19:8; Proverbs 25:13; Lamentations 1:16). His mother had been better to Naomi than seven (i.e. any number of) sons. And now the grandmother puts the child in her bosom, to indicate that he belonged to her (Genesis 30:3; Genesis 50:23), as a Roman father took up the child from the ground and thus owned him.