6) An Eternal Name

We’ve just finished Ruth 3 where Ruth and Naomi have received an assurance from Boaz that one way or another, he’ll guarantee that Naomi would have an heir to carry on her husband’s name. Of course, we’re rooting for Boaz to be the one who marries Ruth. But there’s a closer kinsman that Boaz has to clear this with first. So now we’re sitting on the edge of our seats to see how this meeting with the closer kinsman and the elders in the city gate turns out!

4:1 Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat him down there: and, behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by; unto whom he said, Ho, such a one! turn aside, sit down here. And he turned aside, and sat down.

In the ancient Middle East, the city gate was the equivalent of the town square – it was where everything important happened.

It was where business was done, contracts were formalized, Abraham bought a burial plot in the city gates, it was the hub of concourse.

That’s where the elders of the city sat to settle disputes, where magistrates judged, where people gathered for information.

If you wanted to meet somebody, you sat in the city gate because sooner or later, that was where everyone would come through.

And in the New Testament, Jesus said, I am the door, by me if any man enter in he shall be saved. Jesus is where the judgment is made, where we get the important information we need for life, where we meet those who are true citizens of the kingdom.

Boaz went up to the gate, since the town was uphill from the threshing floor (3:3). He no sooner takes up his position to lookout for the nearer kinsman than, behold, he providentially shows right up – it’s looking like God is really in this!

He calls out to the man, and the Hebrew word translated, such a one, is the author’s substitute for the name that Boaz used – something like how we might refer to someone as a “So-and-So” if we’re wanting to leave their name out. So Boaz himself didn’t literally call his kinsman, “Hey Such-a-One, come here for a moment!” Boaz knew the man’s name and used it. But the writer of this book, for whatever reason, chose not to record the man’s name for all time. He substituted the phrase such a one to retain his anonymity. And that’s interesting, because Boaz did right by his kinsman and is forever remembered. The one who didn’t is forever forgotten.

And in Revelation 3:5, Jesus says of His people, they shall be clothed in white raiment [like wedding garments], and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. At the end of time, all the saved will have new names by which they are known to God and the angels for eternity, while the lost are blotted out and remain Nameless Ones forever.

2 And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, Sit ye down here. And they sat down.

This is the passage that Jewish rabbis would later use to determine that ten was the minimum number for a minyan, a quorum to meet as a synagogue.

Just hours earlier, Boaz had awakened in the middle of the night to find Ruth sleeping under the covers at his feet.

Some have suggested that Naomi was actually trying to use Ruth to entice Boaz into consummating a deal to be their Goel under the cover of darkness. But we can see now that Boaz is dealing with this in the full light of day.

3 And he said unto the kinsman, Naomi, that is come again out of the country of Moab, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech's:

Just to review, the word Kinsman here is the Hebrew word “Goel”, a special title that we commonly call a “Kinsman Redeemer”. It was the family member who had the legal right to either buy back a poor relative’s pawned property, or to redeem the relative himself from debtor’s slavery, or to avenge a murdered relative by hunting down and executing his killer, or, as custom had come to dictate by the time of this story, to marry the widow of a relative who had no brothers to marry her and give her a child to inherit the dead brother’s estate and care for the aging widow.

The Kinsman Redeemer would need to have the means to redeem his kinsman. A poor uncle who was no better off would have to defer to a cousin who had the wealth to buy back the property. And if there were no closer heirs to save the property, it could become a part of the redeemer’s heritage for all generations – so there was an economic incentive in some cases for a near kinsman to perform this duty.