Meat for the Hungry

sarahbmartin.wordpress.com Before we can move our thoughts to the city gate and Boaz meeting with the closer relative, we must understand the Law of God in relation to the near kinsman. In Leviticus 25:25, God gave a close relative the right to redeem or buy back a possession a poor brother or kinsman had sold. With Deuteronomy 25:5-10, God conveyed His requirement for a man to marry his brother's widow, if they had no child to carry on the family name. When the surviving brother married the widow, the law would consider her firstborn son to be the son of her dead husband. A brother could refuse this familial obligation, but at great cost. The widow would then publicly shame him by spitting in his face and removing his sandal, thus disgracing his name in all Israel.