Meat for the Hungry

www.sarahbmartin.wordpress.com Ruth 4:1-10 Ruth waited, Boaz confronted, and the nearer kinsman declined. But why? Why was Boaz, the near kinsman, able to redeem, where the nearer one could not? Quickly assessing the opportunity, this closer relative realized having Ruth for a wife, would ruin his inheritance. He would be spending his own money to purchase something his children would not inherit. Elimelech’s field would accede to the child he fathered for Mahlon, and he was unable or unwilling to share his inheritance. Therefore, today we come to the most important lesson of this series.

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.