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bluewatsons · 8 years

Text

Bernard S. Jackson, Law and Narrative in the Book of Ruth: A Syntagmatic Reading, SSRN (August 8, 2016)

Abstract

This article addresses the methodological problems presented by the legal, literary and historical issues presented by the Book of Ruth. It argues for the primacy of a syntagmatic approach, dealing with the legal problems in the form and sequence in which they are presented in the text, and giving primacy to what the narrative itself appears to imply about legal practices rather than interpreting them in the light of other legal and narrative sources. But the text is a literary narrative, which requires us to ask such questions as what the audience is assumed to know, about both background facts and legal practices, and about the knowledge and assumptions of the different characters at each stage in the plot. Moreover, we should not assume a purely passive audience, for whom knowledge is either transparent or non-existent. Rather, we may use the model of a modern “whodunit”: the very interest of the audience is maintained by requiring active participation in working out what is really going on as the plot proceeds, and not least in focusing on the deliberate ambiguities (such as what happened on the threshing floor) with which the narrator presents us. The primary “whodunit” arises at the very beginning of chapter 1: what happened to Elimelekh’s land when the family moved to Moab, and is resolved only in the proceedings at the gate in chapter four.

1. Introduction

It is probably a mistake to look for a single model of the relationship between law and narrative in the Hebrew Bible. We need, first of all, to confront two basic jurisprudential issues: what is the status and character of (a) the normative (esp. Pentateuchal) sources, and (b) the “legal” practices which appear to be reflected in the narratives? As against the very common assumptions of many commentators on Ruth, who (i) treat Torah law as “statute” in the modern sense,2 and (ii) seek to explain apparently deviant practices in the narratives as non- (or less) normative (perhaps reflecting different periods or locales), I would argue that the narratives may sometimes reflect even local practices taken in those localities to be normative,3 while Torah law is in fact presented not as positive law (in modern terms, the binding law of the State) but rather as a religious view of what the law ought to be — but which the Bible itself attests was very frequently not applied.

I may add that there is a fundamental distinction between the presentation of law in legal and narrative sources: the former look at one institution at a time, while narrative presents a more realistic account of how several institutions (here redemption, inheritance and marriage) may interact in practice – in terms of modern legal education, a problem-oriented rather than a conceptual approach.4 But there are also historical questions: when was the narrative — if considered a unity — written, and for what purpose? Our answers to these questions, notwithstanding their difficulty, may ultimately influence our view of the legal and literary questions. The legal questions in the Book of Ruth (arguably the most elaborate “legal narrative” in the Bible) cannot be addressed in isolation from the literary and historical questions.

However, the relationships between these legal, literary and historical approaches also present complex methodological problems.5 Taken separately, we may think that each is approachable via its own, separate and appropriate, disciplinary methods. But linguistic theory suggests a more integral approach, that of three inter- related axes:6 the syntagmatic axis is the line of the plot, the sequence of events of the narrative, comparable to the syntax of a sentence; the paradigmatic (“associative”) axis is the use within the syntagmatic axis of elements of meaning (including, in our context, legal meanings) drawn from elsewhere, comparable to the semantics of a sentence; the pragmatic axis focuses on the users of the text (including its authors), and their communicative purposes. All three of these axes are represented in the Hebrew Bible in different texts: narratives, laws and historical accounts. Without addressing the conceptual problems of such a trilogy, we may identify, for present purposes, the Book of Ruth as our narrative,7 various pentateuchal laws, esp. in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, as our laws, and passages in Ezra and Nehemiah, dealing with intermarriage, as our historical account. But how, methodologically, do we go about addressing their interrelationship? Not, I would suggest, by putting them all into a single pot and stirring. For each of these sources is, quite simply, a text, and we need to address separately the syntagmatic, paradigmatic and pragmatic axes of each text independently, as best we can, before we can attempt any synthesis.8 For each, there is a different set of “intertexts” which contribute to its paradigmatic axis. But whereas we have direct access to each text, we do not have direct access to the manner in which it may have constructed its intertexts. It is by close attention to the syntagmatic axis of the text that we may best attempt such reconstructions.

This article attempts a primarily syntagmatic approach to the Book of Ruth: I deal with the legal problems in the form and sequence in which they are presented in the text, giving primacy to what the narrative itself appears to imply about legal practices. But that text is a literary narrative, which require us to ask such questions as what the audience is assumed to know, about both background facts and legal practices, and about the knowledge and assumptions of the different characters at each stage in the plot. Moreover, we should not assume a purely passive audience, for whom knowledge is either transparent or non-existent. Rather, we may use the model of a modern “whodunit”: the very interest of the audience is maintained by requiring active participation in working out what is really going on as the plot proceeds, and not least in focusing on the deliberate ambiguities with which the narrator presents us.

2. Bethlehem>Moab>Bethlehem and the demise of Elimelekh’s family

The very first verse of the book confronts us with a puzzle on a vital issue: Elimelekh and his family leave Bethlehem, because of a famine. But we are not told what happened to their land. Here is the initial “whodunit”, to which clues will emerge later in the story. For the moment, we may note the following possibilities: (a) Elimelekh sold it or borrowed money for the journey and left it in the hands of a creditor as security, before his departure to Moab; (b) he did nothing, hoping quickly to return and relying on the goodwill of neighbours — but the text says that when he left he already had an intention lagur in the countryside of Moab, which suggests a substantial, if not permanent, period of absence; (c) he left it in the hands of a relative to look after in his absence. Westbrook9 favours (a), though noting that later, in the legal climax of the story (4:3), Boaz tells the closer relative that Naomi makhrah.10 He explains this in purely literary terms: legal accuracy is required only when significant for the story; here Naomi is the character whose role is emphasised throughout the story. She is “the last link with the ancestral land” which is “no longer in the family”. Hence, a redemption from the stranger to the family will ultimately be required. But this transaction of redemption from the original purchaser, Westbrook correctly observes, “is not recorded ... it takes place off-stage, so to speak” and this because “it is not essential to the narrative”. We shall return to this issue when considering the legal climax in detail. But we may ask what assumptions the narrator’s audience will have made. They too are left in the dark. But they would have realised that there is an issue here: as in a modern detective story, there is a gap to be filled, a Rumsfeldian “known unknown”, not an “unknown unknown”.

Elimelekh dies in Moab. Following Daube,11 Westbrook notes that according to the Deuteronomic levirate law a deceased’s sons will normally have inherited his land jointly, as if “living together” on an undivided estate — on the model, as Daube (followed by Westbrook) argued, of the Roman consortium.12 But neither Daube nor Westbrook apply this model to the succession to Elimelekh. Westbrook’s reason is his assumption (which we will contest later) that Elimelekh had already alienated the land before leaving Moab, so that there was no land for the sons to inherit: “Thus the two sons, Maxlon and Chilion, never came to own the family property at all.”13

Subsequently, the two sons take Moabite wives.14 Again, an obvious question arises (and was debated by the Rabbis): did the Moabite wives “convert”?15 Here, we are dealing not so much with a deliberate unknown in the plot (like the puzzle of the first verse), but rather with something unnecessary to state, in the light of the social knowledge of the time. There is considerable biblical evidence to suggest that a woman was presumed, on entering into the household of her husband, to have adopted the domestic cult of that household.16 Conversion, in this period, was, like many other aspects of family law, “weakly institutionalised”.17 Like marriage and divorce, it was very much a matter of coming and going. This, so far as we know, did not involve any ritual formalities, nor is it clear that it entailed a fixed religious “status”. It could equally be reversed, when circumstances changed.

Maxlon and Khilyon both die childless — without, we may note, any suggestion of a levirate marriage between the first widow and the surviving brother.18 There is no mention here, or in Naomi’s subsequent dialogues with her daughters-in-law, of Elimelekh’s land; at this stage, it appears to be regarded as a lost cause.19

After the deaths of Maxlon and Khilyon, on the point of return to Bethlehem ten years after the family’s emigration, Naomi seeks initially to persuade both her daughters-in-law to return to their Moabite homes, with the argument (1:11-13):

Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? Turn back, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain (tei‘ageinah) from marrying?

The allusion is not to levirate in its “classical” (Deuteronomic) form, at least if Naomi has in mind a subsequent husband who is not a kinsman of Elimelekh, and so producing only a half-brother, and this on the maternal side, to Maxlon and Khilyon.20 But Naomi’s argument that her daughters-in-law —themselves, rather than Naomi, here implied to be the levirate widows — would have to wait for such a child to grow up is evocative of Tamar having to wait for Shelah (Gen. 38), a story which itself culminated in an even more “deviant” form of levirate (here performed by the older generation, even if Judah was not aware that he was performing it).21

In fact, the main argument for the “deviant” nature of levirate in both Gen. 38 and Ruth is based on the unsupported premise that “If brothers live together” in Deut. 25:5 is to be understood as “If and only if brothers live together”. Westbrook argues that there are three situations where levirate is necessary because the estate is undivided:22 [I] “when the father is alive and the brothers are still living in his house” (Judah’s family, in Gen. 3823); [II] “immediately after his death, when the brothers, by not dividing the inheritance, maintain the same situation as if the father were alive” (Deut. 25)24; and [III] “where land has been alienated, but the nearest relative (who would theoretically be the deceased’s brother if he died without issue) buys it back” (in Westbrook’s view, the situation in Ruth).

Orpah accepts Naomi’s invitation (1:14) and returns home; indeed, Naomi can say to Ruth (1:15) that Orpah has gone back (shavah) to “ her people and her god(s?)”. She plays no further part in the story. She has apparently renounced any inheritance rights she may have had.25 Ruth, however, insists on staying with Naomi. Some have seen her famous roadside declaration (1:16) to Naomi as a conversion:

... where you go I will go (eilekh), and where you lodge I will lodge (alyn); your people shall be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there will I be buried.

Ruth here makes a series of distinct affiliative declarations: to Naomi’s household and its place of residence, her people, her religion and (in relation to burial) her tribe. Attention is normally directed to the four-words ameykh ami ve’elohayikh elohai, here and in most English translations rendered as: “your people shall be my people, and your God my God”. But the fact that this part of the utterance (alone) includes no verb may prompt us to consider whether it is inevitable to give it a future sense (in line with eilekh and alyn). Why not “your people are still my people and your God my God”? If so, we are not required to assume that Ruth was previously “unconverted”.

What, then, was the relationship between religion and ethnicity, not least in the light of Deuteronomy’s ban (23:4) on entry into the qahal of the Lord of an “Ammonite and a Moabite” (later interpreted by the Rabbis as restricted to male Ammonites and Moabites and thus not applicable to Ruth26). The dual character of ameykh ami ve’elohayikh elohai is important: Ruth declares her affiliation both to Naomi’s people and her religion. And, as the narrative proceeds, there is no hint of any suspicion of religious deviance on the part of Ruth,27 even though her ethnicity as Moabite remains a constant theme.28 But this does not require us to ask how Deut. 23:4 was interpreted by the narrator of Ruth;29 there is no invocation of its terminology in Ruth. As far as Ruth’s initial reception on arrival in Bethlehem is concerned, we are told that “the whole town was stirred because of them” (1:19), but Naomi is greeted and Ruth otherwise ignored. Naomi replies to the townspeople’s concern by complaining at God’s treatment of her: “I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty (reyqam)” (1:21-22). Elimelekh’s land apparently remains, to her, a lost cause. And clearly, she is not in a position to retake possession of the ancestral estate, as the next chapter, on Ruth’s experience in gleaning, clearly shows.

3. Boaz and Ruth: Gleaning and the Threshing Floor

Chapters 2 and 3, the scenes in the gleaning fields and on the threshing floor, are full of unresolved sexual innuendo. The two women arrive at Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. Though the narrator first mentions Boaz, Elimelekh’s wealthy kinsman (2:1), it is Ruth who suggests to Naomi not merely that she should go gleaning,30 but should do so “after him in whose sight I shall find favour” (2:2),31 rather than Boaz specifically. But she “happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz” (2:3). When Boaz arrives and sees Ruth, he asks his servant supervising the reapers what is the household affiliation of Ruth: “to whom (lemiy) does this young woman (hana‘arah hazot) [belong]?” (2:5), and is told: “It is the Moabite maiden, who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab” (2:6) and that she had asked permission to glean (2:7). Boaz bids her glean only in his field, keeping close (lit. “cleaving”, from badaq) to his own na‘arot (2:8-9). He adds that he is commanding his young men (na‘arim) not to touch her (2:9).32 Ruth expresses her surprise, again foregrounding her origins as a nokhriya (but not mentioning Moabite): “Why have I found favour in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, when I am a foreigner?” (2:10). Boaz replies that he “fully” (hugad hugad) knows the story of her goodness to Naomi (2:11),33 including, by implication, that she is a Moabite, and stresses the reward she deserves from “the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings (taxat kenafav) you have come to take refuge” (2:12) – at the very least, an acknowledgement that she has accepted the protection of the God of Israel in preference to any Moabite deity. Ruth thanks him, asking for his continuing favour (xen), and drawing attention to the fact that she is not a shifxah of his (to whom, impliedly, he owed a duty of support: 2:13). Boaz’s generosity to her continues when at mealtime he personally ensures that she has sufficient bread, drink (xomets34) and roasted grain (qaliy35) (2:14). Moreover, he instructs his men to facilitate her gleaning well beyond normal practice, by deliberately either pulling barley from the (already made-up) bundles or dropping grain from their hands as they cut it36 (2:15-16). The details are debated, but these instructions appear to go far beyond the gleaner’s entitlements37 — an initial manifestation of Boaz’s xesed towards Ruth (2:20), which Naomi, on hearing of it, attributes to divine guidance (2:20).38

On returning to Naomi in the evening, Ruth is able to demonstrate Boaz’s generosity in the form of the ephah of barley she had been able to bring away (2:17-18). Naomi asks where she had gleaned, and, on being told that it was in the field of Boaz,39 reveals to Ruth that Boaz is a relative (2:20).40 Ruth reports that Boaz had told her to keep close (again using badaq) to his own young men, using the same terminology as in 2:8 but here changing the gender to na‘arim (2:21); Naomi responds that it is good that she should go out with Boaz’s na‘arot, changing the gender back. The (preferential) arrangement Boaz had proposed continues until the end of barley and wheat harvests (2:23). W are not told whether Ruth in fact attached herself to the na‘arim or the na‘arot, but the narrator appears to want to hint here that Ruth may not have been averse to at least some degree of flirtation with the men, to maintain Boaz’s interest.

Thus encouraged, Naomi seeks to convert the relationship with Boaz into something more permanent (3:1). She knows that Boaz will be spending that night on the threshing-floor (3:2), and presumably, from what she suggests, also knows that he will be alone. Commentators have rightly wondered why the wealthy Boaz is there alone, doing the work himself.41 The narrator must have meant the original audience to have asked themselves the same question. Might they have wondered (I would suggest) whether Boaz and Naomi are in fact in collusion over this? After all, the narrator never has Naomi and Boaz meet until after the birth of Obed, itself a concealment which gives rise to suspicion.

The advice Naomi gives is that Ruth put on her best clothes that night (3:3) and make herself known to Boaz when he lies down on the threshing floor, after he has eaten and drunk. Then, she should “uncover his feet and lie down; and he will tell you what to do” (3.4). Ruth agrees (3:5), proceeds to the threshing-floor (3:6) and carries out Naomi’s instructions: “And when Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was merry, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain. Then [by implication, the drunken Boaz already being asleep] she came softly, and uncovered his feet, and lay down.” The language here is deliberately ambiguous: on the one hand, the uncovering of Boaz’s “feet” (margelotav,42 not just raglav43) in 3:7 (but first suggested by Naomi in 3:4) may be a sexual allusion,44 but equally may be a way of having the breeze wake up the drunken dormant Boaz.

Whatever the nature of the uncovering, it wakes Boaz up — in a state of terror (3:8);45 he turns over and finds a woman lying at his feet (shokhevet margelotav). In the dark, Boaz does not recognise her and asks “Who are you?”, to which she answered, “I am Ruth, your maidservant.46 She continues: “spread your skirt (ufarashta kenafekha) over your maidservant” (3:9) — a flirtatious double entendre,47 allowing Boaz to choose whether to treat it as a sexual invitation, as a request for a generalised future protection (“skirt” or “wings”, the latter evocative of Boaz’s blessing in 2:12: taxat kenafav),48 or (with Daube49) as a proposal of marriage.50 (Of these, we may note, both the first and the last, but hardly the second, are compatible with the body language: Ruth had, on Naomi’s bidding, clearly dressed up to seduce.51) Ruth concludes her invitation with a pointed “for you are next of kin” (lit., “redeemer”: go’el)” (3:9).52 By including this reference, however, Ruth makes it clear that her invitation (however interpreted) has a special family function: as Bledstein has put it, she is drawing his attention “to his assuming an obligation as a kinsman of Elimelekh to rear an heir, and to purchase the land in order to provide for Naomi.”53

Boaz responds positively and chastely, addressing Ruth as “my daughter” (bitiy), and blessing her for her renewed xesed — but now in preferring Boaz to even a rich young man (3:10). He agrees to Ruth’s proposal, stressing that Ruth is known as a “virtuous”54 woman (3:11). He acknowledges his status as a go’el, but notes that there is an even closer family member available to perform that role (3:12). He tells her to stay the rest of the night,55 and promises (on oath) to take care of the closer go’el in the morning: if the latter will “redeem you” (yig’aleykh), well and good; if not Boaz will do so himself (3:13).

Even so, Boaz has her spend the rest of the night lying down56 (shikhvi, v.13), at his feet (v.14). The fact that he has Ruth leave before dawn the next morning (“before one could recognize another”, 3:14) is equally ambiguous: Boaz wishes to preserve reputations whether or not sexual relations took place. He is afraid of gossip, specifically “that the woman came to the threshing floor” (3:14). The chapter concludes with Boaz giving Ruth (without any further explanation) six measures of barley (3:15), then departing, apparently before Ruth. On returning to Naomi, the latter then poses, according to the traditional text (3:16), an unintelligible question: “who are you, my daughter?” (miy at bitiy). This in fact is evocative of Boaz’s enquiry of his servant on first encountering Ruth in 2:5: lemiy hana‘arah hazot. Indeed, Holmstedt indicates that such a genitive is here expected, but nevertheless maintains the traditional text, explaining it as a use of miy to inquire about one’s condition.57 This “accusative of condition” in fact amounts to the same as the genitive reading, if by “condition” we read, from the context, that Naomi is asking whether there has already been a change in the status of Ruth.58 Ruth’s response comes initially from the mouth of the narrator (3:16): “Then she told her all that the man had done for her (asah lah)”, but some translations (such as JPS 1917) render asah lah more literally, not as “for her” but “to her”,59 which may suggest betrothal by intercourse. “For her” may be influenced by the continuation of Ruth’s explanation, now oratio directa: “These six measures of barley he gave to me, for he said, ‘You must not go back empty-handed (reyqam, cf. 1:21) to your mother-in-law’” (3:17), which in context may suggest a mohar (bride-price),60 here to be paid to Naomi. Naomi is content and assures Ruth that “the man will not rest, but will settle the matter today” (3:18). Such confidence gains in credibility if Boaz and Naomi have in fact been in collusion.

The narrator thus leaves it unclear what actually occurred on the threshing floor that night. Did they make love, and if so what would its significance be for the negotiations which were shortly to ensue? Rabbinic interpreters insist that the encounter remained chaste; modern commentators are divided on the issue. A point not generally appreciated, which mildly supports a chaste encounter, is the fact that threshing floors are not enclosed within buildings; they are in the open air.61 Indeed, Ruth herself appears somewhat unsure of the significance of what has occurred (more compatible with an ambiguous promise than the sexual act), to judge by Naomi’s reassurance: “Wait, my daughter, until you learn how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest, but will settle the matter today” (3:18).

4. The Legal Dénouement

Chapter Four consists of a legal dénouement (vv.1-10) and a recognition coda (or codas) (vv.11-22). In the course of it we find clues to two of the tantalising puzzles presented to us by the narrator in the earlier chapters: (1) what happened to Elimemekh’s land when they left Bethlehem?, and (2) what happened on the threshing-floor?

The presentation here continues to follow the syntagmatic axis of the plot, commenting on the legal issues as here presented and in relation to other legal sources, but not here seeking to interpret the former so as to harmonise with the latter.

4A Who is Peloni Almoni and how does he fit into the story?

The chapter commences with the strange summons from Boaz, as he sat at the gate, to the passing kinsman, whom he addresses as ploni almoni (ynml ynlp, hereafter: PA.)

4:1 And Bo‘az went up to the gate and sat down there; and behold, the next of kin, of whom Bo‘az had spoken, came by. So Bo‘az said, “Turn aside, Peloni Almoni62; sit down here”; and he turned aside and sat down.

4:2 And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, “Sit down here”; so they sat down.

Given the family relationship,63 it is inconceivable that Boaz did not know his name.64 Commentators have noted that names in the Book of Ruth have substantive connotations.65 But, with the apparent exception of Calum Carmichael,66 only rabbinic commentators appear to have applied this approach to ploni almoni. Here, Derek Beattie’s compilation of material proves extremely useful.67 There is general agreement that peloni is derived from )lp (thus, “hidden”, citing Deut. 17:8)68 rather than from hlp (from which the anonymity interpretation appears to be derived69). There is less agreement on the derivation of almoni: is it an allusion to hnml), a widow, or does it, like peloni, refer to the person of PA, in which case it may be taken as deriving from Ml) (mute70) or even from the verb Ml( (to conceal)?71 The issue is complicated by the use of the phrase in 1 Sam. 21:3 and 2 Kgs. 6:8 to refer to a secret military site,72 where there can be no allusion to widowhood, but where Ml) (mute) may make sense as a site concealed not only physically but through a regime of silence. Rashi takes the anonymity in Ruth to be a judgement on PA’s action: “His name is not written because he was not willing to redeem”, adopting )lp and Nwml) (widower), though he chooses to adopt (in two different versions) figurative interpretations of widow(er)hood.73 He is surely correct in seeking an interpretation which is prompted by the narrative plot. I would suggest, however, that the narrative link is not PA’s failure to redeem (especially on the analysis of 4:5 below), but rather in his wider role in relation to Elimekekh’s estate. In short, peloni almoni denotes that he has hidden something from a widow:74 we might here translate the phrase “(my75) widow scammer”. That the name alludes to PA’s role in the story76 is also supported by the conclusion of the levirate law in Deut. 25:10, where the household of the refusing levir will be named “the house of him that had his sandal pulled off”. But that latter title is premature at this stage of the story.

This takes us back to our initial unknown: what happened to Elimelekh’s land when the family originally left Bethlehem, and since? Why? What has ploni almoni done? If PA was Elimelekh’s closest77 (surviving) relative (which may well have meant his legal heir), might he not have regarded it as his role to “take care” of Elimelekh’s land in his absence,78 perhaps believing initially that this would be purely temporary and then, if he heard of the death of Elimelekh (at which point the family did not return to Bethlehem), increasingly regarding the land as his own. At the very least, he will have taken the profits from it, thinking that there would be no family claims on it.79 What happened on Naomi’s return? Either she did not know it was in PA’s possession, or felt unable to challenge that possession; had she been able to do so, she would not have been able to plead poverty on her return, nor would Ruth’s gleaning have been necessary. Conversely, PA, who must have heard of Naomi’s return, has made no move to contact Naomi, much less to regularise the situation. He has hidden something from a widow. It is this situation which Boaz now sets out to regularise. He does so by asking ten elders (4:2) to sit and observe. He does not ask them to adjudicate, nor is there any hint that they do so. Rather, he calls on them to “witness” the outcome (4:9).

4B Naomi’s position

Boaz immediately addresses PA:

4:3 Then he said to the next of kin, “Na‘omi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling (hrkm) the parcel of land80 (hd#h tqlx) which belonged to our kinsman Elim'elech.”

We may note initially that Naomi is not present at the gate.81 Boaz nevertheless seeks to represent her position, even though the narration contains no earlier indication of the two having been directly in touch. Clearly, however, they must have been,82 which supports the suggestion made above regarding collusion over the threshing-floor meeting.

Boaz’s statement poses a number of inter-related issues: (1) by what title does Naomi claim to be able to sell anything?; (2) does hrkm refer to a present or past sale, and what is its relation to the redemption proposal Boaz is about to make? (3) what legal rights is she in fact selling?; and (4) why is the land here referred to as hd#h tqlx, lit. the “section” of the land which had belonged to Elimelekh?

Westbrook83 provides some forceful arguments on these issues. On (1), he observes: “It is not clear that women could own property at all. The few references are obscure, and apply to women with sons”84 and elsewhere:

“there is no evidence in the Bible of a widow inheriting land; indeed all the indications are to the contrary.”85 One of the sources he cites is the story of the widow of Tekoa (2 Sam. 14:1-20) which, he notes, “hints that her husband’s male collaterals, who are the redeemers of blood, would inherit if she were left no sons”.86 He refers also to the “Bible’s grouping of the widow with the other classes of landless, the orphan and the stranger”. However, in a later publication, Westbrook argued that the broader issue of women’s property rights was irrelevant to analysis of the situation in Ruth, since “it states plainly in v.3 that Elimelech owned the land and Naomi merely sold it. If a woman did not have capacity to own land, it does not mean that she could not act as agent for her husband to acquire (or alienate) on his behalf: cf. Prov. 31.16”, comparing the position of slaves, wives in manu and children in potestate in Roman law.87 But whether Klmyl)l wnyx)l r#) can be interpreted as excluding ownership on the part of Naomi is debateable. But this leads to issue (2): Naomi can hardly be acting as agent for a dead husband. Westbrook is quite clear that hrkm refers to a past sale,88 not to the present situation on the return to Bethlehem.89 But that earlier sale, he argues elsewhere, was effected apparently by Elimelekh. Westbrook asks: “Why is the kinsman so eager? Because the land was sold when Elimelech and his family emigrated to Moab and that, as the opening verse of the book informs us, was at a time when there was a famine in the land. Elimelech’s land had therefore to be sold at a discount, and it is at that low price that the kinsman knows he can redeem.”90 The reference to Naomi in 4:3 is now regarded as an inaccuracy: if Naomi had inherited the land from Elimelekh, “it would be somewhat strange that she sold it while in Moab”.91 But the narrator does not include “tedious detail”:92 Naomi is mentioned in 4:3 because she is central to the plot, whereas Elimelekh is not.93

Westbrook concludes that despite the references to (the, admittedly, absent) Naomi in 4:3, 4:5 and 4:9, the transaction at the gate does not involve her. What in fact occurs, through the sandal ceremony in 4:8, is “a cession of rights from one redeemer to the next in line” and that the actual redemption (by Boaz from the original purchaser from Elimelekh) takes place “off-stage”.94 As for (4), the expression used in 4:3 regarding the object of Naomi’s “sale” — hd#h tqlx, Westbrook writes: “Boaz informs Elimelech’s nearest kinsman (and therefore his potential heir) that part of Elimelech’s land had been sold by his wife Naomi, and offers him the opportunity to exercise his right of redemption, that is, to buy it back from the present holder.”95 Yet despite rendering tqlx lit. “part of” (which prompts the question what had happened to the rest), he strongly maintains that Elimelekh’s estate had remained undivided: “The redeemer derives his right to redeem from his status as heir of Elimelekh96 and thus by redemption acquires the status of an undivided heir – the surviving co-heir of Mahlon and Chilion – to whom all the incidents of indivision attach, including of course the duty of levirate.”97 This appears to imply that on the death of Elimelekh the estate would in normal circumstances have descended to Maxlon and Khilyon as an undivided estate (“when brothers live together”, Deut. 25:5). However, that estate had been transferred to a third party, so that what Maxlon and Khilyon inherited was merely a right to redeem the (undivided) estate, but in the absence of the (now dead) Maxlon and Khilyon that right belonged to the nearest relative (PA), from whom Boaz would seek to acquire it.98 But that might appear to make the (legal) use of the expression tqlx all the more difficult.99

Underlying some of these matters of detail there are methodological assumptions. Westbrook (in common with most interpreters) interprets the legal events in Ruth in the light of external sources, and where they prove inconsistent regards them as errors either irrelevant to the narrative or indeed justified (only) by the narrative’s concerns. But there comes a stage when an accumulation of such errors will have put the credibility of the narrative into question. In my view, a syntagmatic approach to the legal issues in the narrative, viewing the narrated legal events in their own terms (and in their overall narrative context), should not only view them as a particular form of legal practice, but also take account of the competing views of the legal position attributed to different characters, representing their various interests (after all, that is how legal practice often works).100 Only thereafter should we compare it with the practices described or prescribed in other sources, and try to theorise the differences between them.101 We may now review the issues presented by 4:3 from that perspective.

(1) The issue of the title by which Naomi claims to be able to sell anything has largely been discussed in terms of inheritance rights.102 Daube takes 4:3 at face value: “Naomi, back at Bethlehem, is in control of what remains of Elimelekh’s realm, Ruth and the land. As regards the latter, this chimes with a pericope in the Second Book of Kings [citing 2 Kgs 8:1ff.], where a widow (with a son under age) resides on the estate, moves abroad during a famine, on her return finds herself dispossessed and is reinstated at the king’s behest; she is even reimbursed for the fruits the intruders took in her absence.”103 In what sense Daube thinks that Naomi is “in control” of the land is not entirely clear,104 though his reference to “what remains” (tqlx?) might suggest that part of it was indeed sold off before the departure for Moab — a possibility not inconsistent with the scenario here proposed regarding PA’s role (in relation to the rest). The comparison Daube makes is with the story of the Shunamite widow, which indeed bears comparison with the overall narrative of Ruth.105 The story in 2 Kgs is rightly associated with the ancient Near Eastern tradition of a special royal responsibility in relation to classes without natural protectors, notably including widows.106 But that tradition was one of the exercise of royal discretion, rather than any legal entitlement. And it is hardly the case that Naomi, on her return to Bethlehem, has no natural protector. PA (failing which Boaz) may be just such a person. Moreover, such protection, as in the case of daughters not entitled to an inheritance, would include an obligation (whether, at this stage of the tradition, moral, customary or legal, is far from clear) of maintenance107 (from the estate) from the family member who has inherited it (here, apparently, PA).108 It is possible that this is all that Naomi is claiming. However, the succession rights accorded widows in some of the Elephantine marriage contracts (discussed in detail by Yaron109) must also be taken into account in this context, as Lipinski110 has argued, especially if Ruth is taken to be a post-exilic work.

Our answers to the other issues posed by 4:3 may be summarised fairly briefly: (2) The hint regarding the history of the land in the name Peloni Almoni, as discussed above, argues in favour of taking hrkm as referring to a present transaction,111 and this is supported by analysis of the continuation of the text.112 However, the translation of the verb as “sells” is not inevitable; it can refer equally to a delivery without payment.113 (3) As for the nature of the rights which Naomi is transferring, there are two possibilities. Either she is claiming title to (at least part of) the land, as Elimelekh’s heir. If so, narrative may here be taken to indicate actual (if not necessarily universal) practice; insofar as the rules elaborated in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad (Num. 27) might appear to exclude114 the widow (albeit including daughters in the absence of sons), they may represent a different view of what law ought to be applied. Alternatively, Naomi may be claiming only her residual rights to support from the land, described by some in terms of a usufruct.115 (4) the significance hd#h tqlx may be either or both of two possibilities — the first being the hint derived from Daube’s presentation above, that part of the land had indeed been sold off before the departure for Moab; the second being that Elimelekh’s (surviving) interest had been inherited by his two sons, Maxlon and Khilyon, after whose deaths Ruth had inherited (if only a right to maintenance) from Maxlon, while Naomi had inherited the share of Khilyon, after the defection of Orpah (arguably, however, as mother).116 Or, we may conclude that there is a stronger case for a mother’s than a widow’s inheritance rights, and thus see Naomi as (claiming to) inherit the whole of Elimelekh’s estate as mother of both Maxlon and Khilyon.117 However, it is not inevitable that we seek an explanation of hd#h tqlx particular to the history of Elimelekh: the same expression is used in 2:3 of the field of Boaz, in which Ruth (providentially?) finds herself. Perhaps the local landholding system in Bethlehem was basically communal, with only the management and use of “portions” assigned to individual members of the community.118

4C The negotiations at the gate

Having set the scene in 4:3, by both identifying the object of the transaction as “the parcel of land (hd#h tqlx) which belonged to our kinsman Elim'elech” and indicating Naomi’s interest in it (to which, we may note, no objection is voiced), Boaz opens the negotiations thus:

4 So I thought119 I would tell you of it, and say, Buy (hnq) it in the presence of those sitting here, and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, redeem it (l)g l)gt M)); but if you120 will not, tell me, that I may know, for there is no one besides you to redeem it, and I121 come after you.” And he said, “I will redeem it.”

Neither the verb of acquisition (hnq) nor that of redemption have an explicit object. In context, however, the object, as specified in 4:3, is implied throughout: Elimelekh’s property (as described in 4:3).122 Moreover, the very form of the act of redemption is first specified by hnq. While the primary meaning of that verb is simply acquisition,123 the verb is frequently used for purchase, as in Jer. 32:8-9, the story of Jeremiah’s redemption of the land of his cousin Hanamel, apparently threatened by the Babylonian army besieging Jerusalem. No mention of a price is mentioned by Boaz, but that would be premature. Boaz, moreover, knows what his next move will be, even if PA agrees (as he does) in principle to purchase.

PA is being invited to perform an immediate transaction (“in the presence of those sitting here, and in the presence of the elders of my people”). What, then, is he being invited to buy or acquire from Naomi? In the last section two possible views of her entitlement were floated: full title to the land or rights of support from it. The latter appears far more credible as a proposition which might appeal to PA. He will give Naomi a lump sum (to be negotiated), and have no further obligations to her. On the “widow scammer” scenario sketched above,124 he is already in possession of the land and regards it as his inheritance (naxalah), which he indicates that he does not wish to prejudice (4:6). Such a contractual arrangement avoids formal difficulties inherent in the alternatives. If PA were being invited to buy the title from Naomi, comparable to Jeremiah’s pre-emption in 32:9-12, Naomi would surely need to be present, and something equivalent to the written formalities in Jer. 32 might be expected. The view that PA is being invited to acquire from Naomi125 the right to redeem the land from a third party126 — quite apart from the fact that Boaz had already referred to PA in ch.3 as the closest go’el — would also involve a formal act of cession from Naomi to PA, interpreted by some as the shoe ceremony of 4:8.127 Thus, we do not need to enter the question of whether a go’el from a third party keeps the land himself (as apparently in Jer. 32:8) or has to hand it back to the original owner.128

PA readily accepts. He is able thereby to rid his title (however it may have been understood in Bethlehem) of any suspicions regarding the circumstances of his original occupation. And he can now forget about the widow he has scammed. She has agreed, in effect, to be bought off.129 So long as no direct descendants of Elimelekh are born later, he will also be secure against any Jubilee reversion.130

But then Boaz turns the tables:

4:5 Then Bo‘az said, “The day you buy (Ktwnq) the field from the hand of Na‘omi, you are also buying Ruth the Moabitess,131 the widow of the dead, in order to restore the name of the dead to his inheritance.”

But the RSV, in common with many translations, has here taken positions on two difficult textual problems:

the person of the verb here rendered “you are also buying Ruth”. This adopts the qere reading: tynq, qaniyta.132 The ketiv (Leningradensis) is in fact in the first person (ytynq, qaniytiy): Boaz thus speaks of himself as buying/acquiring/marrying133 Ruth.

the Hebrew has no indication of an “also” (which would fit only with the choice of a second person verb); rather it has “from the hand of Na'omi and from Ruth ...” (t)mw). It has been suggested that this is a mistake for t) Mgw, but this reconstruction, found in Greek and Latin versions (and inspired by the use of the expression in 4:10), is regarded by the editors of the Biblia Hebraica Quinta as merely a (plausible) interpretation, in part harmonising the text with 4:10.134

A substantive criterion for determining the meaning is that this follow-up response of Boaz must be such as to take PA by surprise, as some have noted.135 Daube (who assumes the qere) infers from the exchange that where a childless widow has an interest in land to be redeemed, the go’el must marry her too.136 But if this is a matter of customary law, surely PA would not be taken by surprise. And if it is not a matter of customary law, but simply an additional condition which Boaz is now seeking to impose, he would surely have responded: thanks very much, I’ll take the land137 but not the lady. Daube therefore sees the surprise not in terms of ignorance or mistake (on the part of PA) as to the law, but rather of fact. PA assumed that the widow concerned was Naomi: only she had been mentioned by Boaz in 4:3-4.138 Naomi, PA calculated, was past childbearing age. Thus, “for a few years’ enjoyment of Elimelekh’s riches, he would leave his own [estate] heirless” (Daube assumes that PA has no children139 and would not in these circumstances be allowed to marry an additional, younger wife.140) Yet would we expect PA simply to concede, in the light of this? Was there a judicial system in force in Bethlehem which would have enforced Boaz’s view? We have noted already that the role of the elders was simply that of witnesses.

A more understandable reconstruction emerges from adopting the ketiv.141 Boaz tells PA: “The day you buy the field from the hand of Na'omi, [know that] I am marrying Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of the dead, in order to restore the name of the dead to his inheritance.”142 This refers back to the encounter on the threshing-floor. Here, too, the verb may either refer to a past event (either a betrothal or marriage by consummation143 the previous night: it is left to the audience to contemplate) or to a present performative act.144 The latter seems indicated by Boaz’s temporal link (Mwyb) between the redemption of the land and the woman. Whichever view is taken, Boaz is now revealing the fact that any redemption of the land by PA is likely to be short-term: everything will revert to a levirate heir who will “restore the name of the dead to his inheritance”.145 Not surprisingly, PA resiles, explaining:

4:6 Then the next of kin said, “I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it.”

Commentators, both rabbinic146 and modern,147 have encountered difficulty in explaining his reasoning. But the matter becomes clear when we take account of both the “widow scammer” scenario148 and the fact that PA, as the nearest blood relative, is not only the redeemer first in line but also the heir of Elimelekh.149 What he is saying here is that there is no point in his buying off Naomi’s maintenance rights (or paying them), if at the end of the day he is to be deprived of “my own inheritance” (ytlxn) (i.e. the estate of Elimelekh). Instead, he indicates that Boaz should assume the redemption obligation (of maintenance). The RSV’s “Take my right of redemption150 yourself” fails to give proper weight to the verb: “redeem for yourself (Kl l)g) my redemption (ytl)g, ge’ulatiy)” where ytl)g is parallel to ytlxn in the previous clause, both referring to the incidents of Elimelekh’s estate: take back my obligation of maintenance. No doubt he entertains the hope that no heir will in fact be born to the union of Ruth and Boaz.

4D The transaction

So Boaz proceeds to complete the redemption himself. This is preceded by the narrator’s explanation that he is using an ancient form of ge’ulah (4:7):

4:7 Now this was [the custom] in former times151 in Israel concerning redeeming (hl)gh) and exchanging (hrwmth): to confirm a transaction [lit. “every matter”: rbd lk], the one drew off his shoe152 and gave it to the other [lit. neighbour”: wh(rl],153 and this was the manner of attesting (hdw(th)154 in Israel.

Given the fact that the root l)g is used five times in the preceding verse, it would appear perverse to regard what follows as an instance of anything other than redemption,155 even if the details of this particular redemption do not fall squarely within the redemption scenarios which the laws (or other narratives) appear to contemplate. In context, Boaz is fulfilling the role which he challenged PA to perform, and which the latter declined. So what exactly is he redeeming, and from whom (and where does Naomi fit in)? All depends upon what happened to the land on Elimelekh’s departure and since. Normally it is assumed that the land is in the hands of a third party, whether sold (under pressure of debt) by Elimelekh before his departure from Moab or by Naomi while in Moab. But there is no mention of such a previous sale, and the idea that Naomi can have sold it while in Moab is far- fetched, both in terms of the logistics of such a transaction, and her claim to have returned reyqam (1:21). Moreover, if the transaction in ch.4 is a “redemption” of (Naomi’s?) “right to redeem” from PA,156 the narrative remains essentially incomplete: we are not told of any such redemption, nor may we assume that the third party would necessarily have agreed to it.157 Far more credible is the scenario of PA as “widow scammer”:158 he is in possession of the land and sees himself as Elimelekh’s legitimate heir. Boaz will now “redeem” Naomi’s rights to take the “fruits” of the estate, in order to provide for Naomi’s maintenance. Moreover, he knows that through producing an heir with Ruth, he will indeed “restore the name of the dead to his inheritance”: title to the land will then pass to his natural son.

How, then, does the transaction proceed?

4:8 So when the next of kin said to Bo‘az, “Buy it for yourself,” he drew off his shoe.

But who took off whose shoe and with what effect? Westbrook regards the act as that of PA, its effect being a cession of his right to redeem (from a third party). He argues: “The kinsman cast off his right with his shoe, and Boaz affirms his acquisition thereof by a formal declaration before witnesses at the city-gate.”159 But how then does this fit with the stress on ge’ulah in vv.6 and 7? Westbrook prefers to interpret the shoe ceremony by analogy with that in Deut. 25 (a paradigmatic, as opposed to the syntagmatic approach here advocated). He continues: “There is a slight analogy with the ceremony of Deut. 25.9: the removal of the shoe in that case could be said to be symbolic of release of control over the widow. But in the present case the levirate is clearly not at issue. The kinsman is avoiding putting himself in the position of being bound by that duty.” But the analogy is indeed “slight”, in that it is not the yabam who is taking off his shoe in Deuteronomy. But that is because, for Westbrook, the shoe ceremonies in the two sources fulfilled entirely different functions: “The ceremony in Ruth represents concession of a right” [viz., by the kinsman to Boaz]; “in Deuteronomy it represents failure to perform a duty. The two concepts are diametrically opposed.”160 Indeed, “The author of Ruth 4.7 at least was aware of the tension between the two cases, and felt the need to explain the difference historically ... the vagueness of the explanation suggests to us at least that it is a gloss.”161

I believe that we can explain the relationship between the shoe ceremonies in Ruth and Deuteronomy without such a diametrical opposition, if we take both the narrator’s explanation in 4:7 and the narrative context seriously. According to 4:7 the man redeeming took off his shoe and gave it to “his neighbour”. We know from Ruth that a levirate marriage could be viewed as a form of redemption. Deut. 25 does not tell us how a levirate marriage was constituted; the implication from Ruth 4:7 is that the levir took off his shoe and handed it to “his neighbour”,162 presumably the male family member with authority over the widow. If the levir refused, the humiliation which he must then endure as a punishment appears to be (doubly) talionic:163 on the one hand the spitting164 (representing the lack of semen); on the other, the (lack of the yabam’s) shoe: since the yavam has refused to take off his own shoe, to acquire the widow (and the property), he is shamed by a public de-shoeing performed by the widow.165 The narrative in Ruth thus complements rather than deviates from pentateuchal law: both are concerned with the linked issues of widowhood and the descent of family property (just as Num. 36 seeks to ensure that succession by daughters does not result in alienation of property from the tribe166); both entail forms of redemption (or its absence); both presuppose forms of acquisition (or its absence) through removal of the acquirer’s shoe.

In my view, the narrative context clearly indicates that it is Boaz who takes off his shoe, a view supported by both the Talmud (B.M. 47a) and Targum Ruth.167 Boaz thus acquires the immediate rights to the land, which he intends to use in support of Naomi, even though Naomi is not present. Neither, it seems, is Ruth present. The shoe ceremony is not the act by which Boaz acquires Ruth in levirate marriage.168 He has already acquired Ruth, whether on the threshing-floor or in his declaration (adopting the ketiv) in 4:5.169 But he goes on in vv.9-10 to have both these transactions confirmed by the elders and people in a formal act of witnessing:

4:9 Then Bo‘az said to the elders and all the people, “You are witnesses this day that I have bought from the hand of Na‘omi all that belonged to Elim'elech and all that belonged to Chil'ion and to Maxlon

4:10 Also Ruth the Moabitess,170 the widow of Maxlon, I have bought to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead in his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off171 from among his brethren and from the gate of his native place; you are witnesses this day.”

4:11 Then all the people who were at the gate, and the elders, said, “We are witnesses ...”

The two acts of redemption/acquisition, of the land in v.9 and Ruth in v.10, are clearly separated, although the same terminology of acquisition, here as in 4:5, is used in both.172 But the formulation of 4:9 appears problematic: why, especially in the light of the present argument, does Boaz claim to have “bought” “from the hand of (miyad: dym) Na‘omi” and why does he specify his acquisition as “all that belonged to Elim'elech and all that belonged to Chil'ion and to Maxlon”.173 First, we should note that the translation “I have bought” is debateable: on the one hand, there is no mention of a price, and the primary meaning of the verb is simply that of acquisition;174 on the other, the force of the tense here may well be performative.175 The declaration accompanies the shoe ceremony, and may be regarded as part of it. The elders and people “witness” (as eyewitnesses) the shoe ceremony, with Boaz declaring: “ I am hereby declaring ...”. As for the content of the declaration, we may note how closely it follows the proposition Boaz put to PA in 4:5, and which the latter rejected, using both qaniytiy (ytynq, the ketiv) and dym. As argued above, PA had been invited (in 4:4) to buy out (at least) Naomi’s rights to the “fruits” of the land. But in using the language of preserving the name of the deceased (in both 4:5 and 4:10) — language close to both the levirate law (Deut. 25:6) and the inheritance plea of the daughters of Zelophehad (Num. 27:4), where the context176 is very plainly succession to a portion of the promised land — Boaz appears to be claiming full title. Indeed, he now specifies that what he had meant by “the parcel of land (hd#h tqlx) which belonged to our kinsman Elim'elech” in 4:3 in fact encompassed “all that belonged to Elim'elech and all that belonged to Chil'ion and to Maxlon” 177 — thus also overriding any residual widows’ rights178 (even, per abundantia cautelae, those of Orpah!). In short, Boaz has scooped the lot. In other respects, too, some commentators have argued that he can hardly claim an unblemished moral high ground.179

I argued above that a syntagmatic approach to the legal issues in the narrative should take account of the competing views of the legal position attributed to different characters, representing their various interests.180 Thus, Naomi does think that she has inheritance rights to Elimelekh’s estate, probably qua mother of Maxlon and Khilyon. However, she is not in a position to exercise control of the estate, and is willing to sell. Boaz recognises her position, in telling PA that ym(n hrkm (4:3), inviting PA to purchase ym(n dym (4:5) and ultimately claiming that he himself has acquired the entire estate ym(n dym (4:9). PA takes a different view: as the nearest male relative he claims succession rights to Elimelekh and his (childless) sons. Moreover, he has taken possession of the estate in the family’s absence, and may well have come to believe that they will never return. On the family’s return, he keeps quiet, until confronted by Boaz in the presence of ten elders. Boaz proposes a compromise solution (no doubt cleared already with Naomi, in the meeting between them about which the narrator keeps silent): at least pay Naomi off in lieu of maintenance from the estate, even though your longer-term rights will be limited by the emergence of a levirate heir from my marriage with Ruth — adopting the ketiv in 4:5, which entails also rejecting the view that twr t)mw means that Ruth also has rights in the land. PA declines. Boaz completes the transaction — with Naomi. We may note that whereas the procedure in the narrator’s legal historical note (4:7) indicates that the redeemer takes off his shoe “and gives it to his neighbour”, there is, despite the Talmudic tradition,181 no explicit mention in 4:8 of Boaz giving his shoe to anyone. The reason is that Naomi is not (physically) present — a diplomatic absence, perhaps, but again, I would suggest, co-ordinated with Boaz in advance. Instead, Boaz affirms in his simultaneous declaration that he is thereby acquiring ym(n dym (4:9). Westbrook argues that a redeemer was not required to return the land to its owner, but simply to make sure it remained in the family.182 Moreover, the terms of his purchase, “all that belonged to Elim'elech and all that belonged to Chil'ion and to Maxlon”, need no longer surprise us. He is acting in his own interest, but after co-ordination and agreement with Naomi. He is, no doubt, relying upon his reputation for xesed: he will take control (dym), but (we may assume?) will act in the interests of the widows.

But how does the local community view what has happened?

4:11 Then all the people who were at the gate, and the elders, said, “We are witnesses. May the LORD make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. May you prosper in Eph'rathah and be renowned in Bethlehem;

4:12 and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the children that the LORD will give you by this young woman.”

4:13 So Bo‘az took Ruth and she became his wife; and he went in to her, and the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son.

4:14 Then the women said to Na‘omi, “Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without next of kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel!

4:15 He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him.”

4:16 Then Na‘omi took the child and laid him in her bosom, and became his nurse.

4:17 And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Na‘omi.” They named him Obed; he was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

We may divide our analysis into two: the reactions of the men at the gate (4:11-12), and those of the women (4:14- 17) after the birth of the child (4:13). The narrator clearly separates the two, and it is reasonable to assume that “all the people who were at the gate” were men.

The men, after affirming their witnessing, pronounce a blessing on (the absent) Ruth in 4:11, but refer to her not by name and without the “Midianite” tag, which Boaz had (ostentatiously?) used in the previous verse. They invoke Rachel and Leah, both of whom, we may note, used surrogates (Bilhah and Zilpah184) in part to build up Jacob’s house. Such female surrogacy is a counterpart to the male surrogacy implicit in the Levirate law of Deut. 25; the writer of Ruth beautifully combines the two forms into a single narrative.185 They go on (4:12) to bless Boaz (directly) by invoking “the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah”,186 thus acknowledging the relevance of another unusual performance of the levirate (Gen. 38, also the result of a seduction).

In 4:13, the narrator has Boaz and Ruth consummate their marriage, associating this with full marital status (“and she became his wife”: h#)l wl iyhtw187) thus implying (if not conclusively) that this had not been done on the threshing-floor.188 A son is born.

It is at that stage that the voices of the women of the community are first heard. Addressing Naomi (not Ruth), they proclaim: “Blessed be the LORD, who has not left you this day without next of kin” (4:14), thus, no longer reyqam. Arguably, this refers to Boaz, though the next verse, without any apparent change of subject, refers to the child: “He shall be to you a restorer of life189 and a nourisher of your old age”. The role of the go’el (v.14) in saving the widow from poverty is also made explicit. Ruth too is commended for her devotion, but again without mentioning her name: “for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has borne him” (4:15).

In 4:16 Naomi in fact becomes nursemaid to (in effect) her grandchild, insofar as the child is regarded as that of Maxlon. This is evocative of the double role of Yokheved, after the baby Moses was taken into the Egyptian court (also a “multi-ethnic” partnership).190 Now, it falls to Naomi’s women neighbours to name the child, saying (in line with the surrogacy model), “A son has been born to Na'omi”191 (4:17). The fact that Ruth is not allowed to name her own child has been taken as a criticism, perhaps a residue of ethnic prejudice.192 Nevertheless, the child, we are told already, will be the grandfather of David.

5 The genealogical coda

Yet 4:17 is not the only genealogy of David provided by the Book. It concludes:

4:18 Now these are the descendants of Perez: Perez was the father of Hezron,

4:19 Hezron of Ram, Ram of Ammin'adab,

4:20 Ammin'adab of Nahshon, Nahshon of Salmon,

4:21 Salmon of Bo‘az, Bo‘az of Obed,

4:22 Obed of Jesse, and Jesse of David.

But this outcome is not in accordance with Boaz’s explicit declaration in 4:10, as normally understood: neither Elimelekh nor Maxlon’s names are preserved in this concluding genealogy; instead, Boaz, the natural father, appears. This is one argument used in favour of the view that this genealogical coda is a later Appendix to the book.193 However, the same “error” (in relation to the levirate) also occurs in the earlier reference to Perez in 4:12, where the elders and onlookers not only witness but also celebrate the outcome of the marriage of Boaz and Ruth with the words “and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the children that the LORD will give you [Boaz] by this young woman”. But Perez was intended by Tamar as a replacement for Er (and/or Onan), who equally are not mentioned in the genealogy. In fact, the whole genealogy could have been derived from the genealogy of “the children of Israel (= Jacob)” in 2 Chron. 2:1-15, which includes Judah, mentions Er and Onan (though only Er is said to have been slain by God because of his wickedness), records that “His [Judah’s] daughter-in-law Tamar also bore him Perez and Zerah” without attributing them to Er (2:4), and proceeds through Boaz (but without mentioning Ruth) and Obed without any mention of Elimelekh or Maxlon.194

Some seek to explain the problem by arguing that the marriage of Boaz and Ruth was not (for this reason) a levirate marriage.195 But our syntagmatic approach suggests a different solution: that just as Ruth attests to differences of view regarding women’s inheritance rights, so too may we find here an alternative approach to (or even a different interpretation of) the meaning of the levirate law,196 one in which the child so produced is regarded as that of the natural father (contrary, we have to accept, to the narrator of Gen. 38’s explicit statement “Onan knew that the offspring would not be his”: Gen. 38:9197), and thus that any property inherited from the deceased would belong to the natural father’s own line of descent. This, we may note, would not only render the statements regarding Boaz consistent; it would also be consistent with the ketiv but not the qere reading of 4:5 as regards PA’s reason for withdrawal. Moreover, the Mishnah itself explicitly endorses the alternative: “He who marries his deceased brother’s wife gains possession of his brother’s estate.”198

6 Law, narrative and history

In his work on the Book of Ruth, Westbrook has some very pertinent remarks regarding the relationship between law and narrative:199 in opposition to diachronic approaches, he seeks to “show that the narrative presents the two institutions, redemption and levirate, in a working form, and that the combination of the two itself allows us a clearer picture of Israelite conceptions of inheritance and family property”.200 As for redemption of land, “Here again we find very old regulations whose practice is evidenced in the narratives: Ruth 4; Jer. 32.6ff.”201 And this should have an impact on the way we read the pentateuchal laws themselves: for example, the Deuteronomic law is wrongly assumed to be “a comprehensive account of the laws of levirate”.202 At the same time, Westbrook undoubtedly provides the most sophisticated legal analysis of the issues in the Book of Ruth in the light of the pentateuchal sources (and Jeremiah 32). My methodological difference with him, as reflected in the present study, is that I have attempted a closer reading of the syntagmatic unfolding of these legal issues (in their narrative context) and have attempted, so far as possible, to let them speak for themselves (as they would to a popular audience).203 I suggest that only after we have looked at each text (including the legal texts) independently, giving full force to the syntagmatic reading, are we able properly to assess their inter-relationship.204

Daube offered a different approach. He suggested that we regard Ruth, like Susanna, as a Rechtslegende, designed to advocate a change in the law, here: “a relaxation in the province of ‘redemption’: there is to be an acknowledged proviso that, should the childless widow owner be over a certain age, a junior dependent may be substituted.”205 The object of the author of Susanna, he argued, was to advocate (ultimately successfully) a change in the procedure for the courtroom examination of witnesses, from collective to individual examination.206 But there is a difference between Susanna and Ruth: there is really only one issue in Susanna: the miscarriage of justice and its righting.207 Ruth is far more complex, and more than one candidate could be proposed for its object, if viewed as a Rechtslegende. Daube’s approach, however, rightly alerts us to the pragmatic axis208 of the reading of the story: the object of its writers in their historical context.

Others have sought to address this question (which necessarily raises also the issue of dating). Two radically different approaches have been proposed. The first focuses on the Davidic genealogy, and takes the story to be an attempt to rebut political opposition to his dynasty, perhaps within the reign of Solomon. This is the view ultimately, but tentatively, supported by Hubbard, after an exhaustive review of the issues and the then literature.209

The second dates the book as post-exilic,210 and locates the setting as post-exilic politics, particularly Ezra’s attempt to expel foreign (even, apparently, converted) wives. Put in such a simplistic form, however, the thesis would be subject to the same critique as that raised against Daube’s proposal: the Book of Ruth is too complex to be reduced to the single issue of intermarriage.

We need to revisit the post-exilic historical sources and ask whether there is a link between landholding and intermarriage in sources reflecting the tensions between the “returnees” from the Babylonian exile and the “remainees” (e.g. Ezra 10:3, 8).211 Is the narrator of Ruth implying that even the returnees claiming their ancestral estates may have brought with them foreign wives? And is he arguing that the social tensions of the time may be resolved peaceably, by intermarriage between “returnees” and “remainees”? And, if so, where (if at all) does the Davidic genealogy fit into the argument? Is it being suggested that those in power in the postexilic community who traced their ancestry to Judah (e.g. Zerubbabel, 1 Chron. 3:19) should know that the supreme example of political authority in the line of Judah, David, himself had Moabite blood flowing in his veins?

For the moment, I can only direct attention to some points made in recent studies of early Second Commonwealth history, to which elements in the Ruth story may perhaps allude. First, there is evidence that remainees took possession of estates of the deportees (later returnees). Jer. 39:10 indicates that this may have occurred as early as 615 BCE, and at royal initiative.212 Grabbe observes: “... we are left largely in the dark about what happened to those who had continued to live in Judah during the exile and had taken over land vacated by those in captivity. ... the most direct statement is found in Neh 5:1-5”,213 adding that those who had remained “Presumably ... would have quietly taken over any land abandoned because the owners had ... been deported to Babylonia.”214 Blenkinsopp indicates that the “potential for unrest will also have been increased, especially among the subsistence farmers of the Judaean highlands, by bad harvests and other calamities alluded to in the same sources”, citing, i.a., Neh. 5:3, where the same term for famine, ra’av, is used in Ruth 1:1.215 He writes:216

Once the possibility of a return to Judea could be contemplated, the appropriation of the real estate of the deportees by those who remained in the land promised to emerge as a major source of conflict. Disputes about title to individual estates were, moreover, inevitably linked with conflicting claims ... based on appeal to tradition. The Judeans who had never left the land argued pre-emptively that they were the true inheritors since the deportees had “gone far from Yahweh” (Ezek. 11:14-15217; 33:23-24). The logic of this argument seems to be that the deportees had been expelled from the cult community, no doubt on account of their sinful behaviour, and had therefore lost title to their real estate and at the same time, had forfeited the right to inherit the land promised to them ... ...

The diaspora Jews, represented by Ezekiel, refuted this by pointing, in time-honoured fashion, to the many and various “abominations” of the native Judeans ... since the land promise was conditional on religious fidelity, a point often overlooked, whatever claim they might have had has been invalidated ...

But how closely are these theological accusations linked to intermarriage? Blenkinsopp, in the continuation of this passage, is quite clear: “It is this counterargument which underlies the rejectionist attitude towards the local inhabitants in evidence throughout Ezra-Nehemiah, nowhere more clearly than in Ezra’s reaction to the marriages of golah Jews with native women (Ezra 9:1-15).”218 Indeed, Ezra (9:1-2) mentions the Moabites specifically in this context:

After these things had been done, the officials approached me and said, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations, from the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Per'izzites, the Jeb'usites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons; so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost.

Moreover, Nehemiah records that Deut 23:4, with its explicit mention of Moabites, was the specific prompt for the ban on intermarriage.219 The link between marriage and property in the promised land is clear also in the history of the estate of Zelophehad.220 And Ezra (10:3, 8) prescribes property confiscation as a sanction for non-compliance with his summons to the assembly of the benei hagolah at which he would promulgate his decree to divorce the nashim nokhriyot.221 The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), we may note, also presents a land/property issue, combined with an accusation of foreign whoring, in the relationship between a returning exile and those who had remained at home, with a similar peaceable — if unresolved — resolution.222

Much work still remains to be done in analysing the relationship between the syntagmatic, paradigmatic and pragmatic axes of the Book of Ruth.

Notes

Raymond’s interest in biblical law was first stimulated by attending lectures by David Daube during his undergraduate degree at Oxford (where he and I became good friends); he went on to Jerusalem to study for his master’s with Reuven Yaron (himself a pupil of Daube) before proceeding to Yale for his PhD on ancient Babylonian marriage laws. Both Daube and Westbrook have made notable contributions to the analysis of the Book of Ruth (albeit in wider contexts, which Ruth specialists have not always noted) and Yaron’s work on both inheritance and redemption also proves relevant. This article pays particular attention to the contributions of these much-missed colleagues influenced by Daube, and is intended as a forerunner to a monographic treatment, where the huge secondary literature will be discussed more fully.

Thus importing into their hermeneutics a (non-necessary) logical assumption that “if X” means “if and only if X”, as in the view that “if brothers ...” in the levirate law (Deut. 25:5) entails “if and only if brothers ...”. See further infra, text of paragraph including n.24.

Thus, arguably, as “law” from a modern legal realist viewpoint.

On these general issues, see my contribution to the Festschrift for Jean Louis Ska: “Ruth, the Pentateuch and the Nature of Biblical Law: In Conversation with Jean-Louis Ska”, in The Post-Priestly Pentateuch. New Perspectives on its Redactional Development and Theological Profiles, eds. Konrad Schmid and Federico Giuntoli (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 75-111 (which focuses on Ska’s own contributions). On some minor points, there are differences between this article and that of 2015.

Their full examination in the Book of Ruth cannot be attempted in the context of a single article; hence the monographic treatment indicated in n.1, above.

The first two are derived from the Sausurian tradition. For the version developed in the Greimasian school, see B.S. Jackson, Making Sense in Law. Linguistic, Psychological and Semiotic Perspectives (Liverpool: Deborah Charles Publications, 1995), 141-63; see also s.IV.5 of Jackson, “A Journey into Legal Semiotics”, in Actes Sémiotiques (2017).

This is not to exclude its intertextual allusions to other biblical narratives.

The different models of the relationship between law and narrative in the Hebrew Bible, referred to in the first sentence of this article, may well reflect different choices on this matter.

R. Westbrook, Property and the Family in Biblical Law (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991; JSOTS 113), 65- 66 (originally published in “Redemption of Land”, Israel Law Review 6 (1971), 367-75, at 373-74), adding at 1991:116 (originally published as “The Price Factor in the Redemption of Land”, Revue internationale des droits de l’Antiquité 32 (1985), 97-127) that in these circumstances of famine it would have been sale at a discount. [Most of the chapters in Westbrook 1991 are unrevised republications of earlier articles. However, there are some minor divergences between them, as Westbrook acknowledges. I have therefore added below the dates of the original publication at the end of each reference.] Cf. R. Gordis, “Love, Marriage, and Business in the Book of Ruth”, in A Light unto My Path. Festschrift J.M. Myers, eds. H.N. Bream, R.D. Heim and C.A. Moore (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1974; Gettysburg Theological Studies 4), 241-264, at 255-56, arguing that under the pressure of the famine which finally drove him and his family out of his native land, Elimelech would surely have disposed of all his holdings before leaving for Moab. On Westbrook’s argument, see more recently R.H. Hiers, Justice and Compassion in Biblical Law (New York & London: Continuum, 2009), 36 n.36.

On which, see further n.112, infra. Westbrook stressed the common objective of levirate and redemption in terms of keeping the ancestral estate within the family line, to the extent that there would be no levirate obligation when that estate had already been alienated, but levirate was a concomitant obligation to the redemption of land, similarly bringing it back into the family: see Westbrook supra n.9, at 1991:67 (1971). Some have argued that the widow was herself regarded as part of that estate: see, e.g. Daube, as quoted in n.52, infra.

D. Daube, “Consortium in Roman and Hebrew Law”, Juridical Review 62 (1950), 71-91, reprinted in Biblical Law and Literature. Collected Works of David Daube Volume Three, ed. Calum Carmichael (Berkeley: The Robbins Collection, 2003), 919-31, noting that Deut. 25 assumes that the father is dead (though he does not restrict consortium to this; with R. Yaron, he argued in “Jacob’s reception by Laban”, JSS 1 (1956), 60-62 [2003:293-95] (as noted by Westbrook, 1991:150 n.3), that Jacob was regarded by Laban for his first month there as a member of an undivided household (Gen. 29:14: vayeshev imo, only to be repudiated as a brother and demoted to a hireling in the following verse). Daube cites the approval of the institution in Psalm 133:1: “Behold, how good and how pleasant is it for brethren to dwell together”, and compares the idealisation of consortium at Rome: see now 2003:921-22. He finds references to the consortium institution in early Hebrew law also in the stories of Abraham and Lot and Jacob and Esau where the terminology of “to dwell together” is also found (Gen. 13:6: lashevet yaxdav; Gen. 36:7: mishevet yaxdav; cf. Deut 25:5: ki yeshvu axiym yaxdav).

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:78 (1977), 119-20 (1990 lecture, unpublished) with ancient Near Eastern parallels. More recently substantial work has been done by Susandra van Wyk on Babylonian partition agreements for the division by the heirs of such undivided estates: see, e.g., her “Content Analysis: A New Approach in the Study of the Old Babylonian Family Division Agreement in a Deceased Estate”, Fundamina 19/2 (2013), 413-440. Westbrook 1991:132- 41 (1990) includes discussion of the position of Aximelekh in 1 Sam. 22:11-16 (at 134-36) and concludes: “If an undivided co-heir dies without a son of his own to step into his place ... his share of the inheritance would be deemed never to have accrued to him. By a legal fiction the levirate duty provides him with the necessary offspring.” Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:80 (1977). At 1991:138-39 (1990), he writes: “Elimelekh sold the land while his two sons were still living in his undivided household and departed for Moab, where all three died without a division having taken place. Any such division would have been ineffective, since the land was no longer in the family’s hands, and its undivided character might equally have remained a matter of indifference were it not for the fact that it had been sold under constraint, at a time of famine, and was therefore still subject to redemption by any surviving relative. The redeemer derives his right to redeem from his status as heir of Elimelekh and thus by redemption acquires the status of an undivided heir – the surviving co-heir of Mahlon and Chilion – to whom all the incidents of indivision attach, including of course the duty of levirate.”

At 1991:79 (1977), Westbrook notes that the narrator has Boaz mention (at 4.3) that the land belonged to Elimelekh and that the redeemer of the land would receive his right to purchase from Elimelech (via Naomi), so that the two sons would again drop out of the picture. But if, as Westbrook maintains, the go’el is here being offered a “right to redeem” (see infra, text at n.96), why would the sons (and their successors) not have inherited such a right? Westbrook appears to assume that dying without children their shares would revert to the estate of Elimelekh, which Naomi at least administers as widow. On the possibility that Naomi succeeds to them as mother, see Jackson, supra n.4, at 102 and n.147 (citing Salmon b. Yeroxam) and infra, at n.114.

From the sequence of names in Ruth 1:2, it appears that Maxlon was the older son. Orpah is mentioned before Ruth in 1:4, which might be thought to imply that she married Maxlon, but according to 4:10 Ruth was the widow of Maxlon. That inconsistency suggests that no reliance be placed on 1:5 for the order in which Maxlon and Khilyon died.

Rabbinic opinion is divided: in Bava Bathra 91b, the deaths of Maxlon and Khilyon are regarded as a divine punishment for intermarriage (thus no prior conversion); Rashi maintains that Ruth’s marriage to Maxlon was not a valid marriage since she (and Orpah) were unconverted at the time; aliter, Ibn Ezra and Kimxi (they converted prior to marriage, based in part on 1:15: Orpah “has returned to her (original) gods”). A harmonising answer has been proposed by R. Moshe Shternbuch, Moadim V’Zmanim 4, 316 (quoted by Rabbi Dr. Meir Levin at http://www.torah.org/learning/ruth/class15.html): the pre-marital conversions were “conditional” on a later show of sincerity, tested precisely by the circumstances after the deaths of the two husbands. See D.R.G. Beattie, “The Book of Ruth as Evidence for Israelite Legal Practice”, Vetus Testamentum 24/3 (1974), 251-267, at 258; B.S. Jackson, “Ruth’s Conversion: Then and Now”, The Jewish Law Annual XIX (2011), 53-61, at 53-55.

Jackson, in the article cited in n.15, supra. The nature of the conversion here is discussed in greater detail in Jackson, supra n.4, at 86-89.

See my “The “Institutions” of Marriage and Divorce in the Hebrew Bible”, Journal of Semitic Studies LVI/2 (2011), 221-251 = G. Brooke and C. Nihan, eds., Studies in Biblical Law and its Reception (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010; JSS Supplementary Series).

No doubt because the levirate focuses upon preserving shares in the promised land, and the family is still in Moab.

This may be another reason to doubt that the land had previously been sold or mortgaged, since Naomi must have known that she had relatives in Bethlehem who might be invited to redeem?

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:64 n.3 (1971), argues that Naomi is not referring here to the law of levirate, since if she remarried and had a child, “her son would belong to a different line entirely, and could hardly raise up his step-brother’s name. Nor in this example are the daughters-in-law obliged to marry Naomi’s future sons. Naomi is expressing the thought that she has nothing to offer them, neither land, not husbands. Her remarks may refer to a common practice of convenience, but not to a legal obligation.”

D. Daube, Ancient Jewish Law. Three Inaugural Lectures (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), 35, 38, 43 (this essay, “Conversion to Judaism and Early Christianity”, is reprinted in New Testament Judaism. Collected Works of David Daube, Volume Two, ed. Calum Carmichael (Berkeley: The Robbins Collection, 2000), 465-99); cf. D. Daube, The Deed and the Doer in the Bible. David Daube’s Gifford Lectures, Volume 1, ed. and compiled C. Carmichael (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008), 204-207.

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:78-79, 138-39. Cf. T. Thompson and D. Thompson, “Some Legal problems in the Book of Ruth”, VT 18 (1968), 79-99, at 94-95; See also Jackson, supra n.4, at 96-97. Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:79 (1977), argues that it is “quite possible” (and with some ancient Near Eastern support) that the same law does operate even where the brothers are not “living together” but such a view “empties the phrase of all content”.

See further Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:79 (1977): “Thus in Genesis, since the brothers are living in the father’s house, it is the father who owns the estate. Thus Onan (and Shelah) would receive their dead brother’s share of the property not as his heir, but directly from their father Judah. Er has never actually owned the property and therefore drops entirely out of the picture.”

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:79 (1977): “... the surviving brother ‘was owner of all the property even while his brother was alive, and now, on the latter’s death, he just goes on being owner’ [quoting Daube]... Again, the brother drops out of the picture.”

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:80 n.179 (1977): “The unfortunate Chilion, whose wife Orpah went back to Moab, does have his name extinguished, even though Boaz might acquire his share of the family estate.”

Mishnah Yevamot 8:3; Ibn Ezra on Ruth 1:2 (see D.G.R. Beattie, Jewish Exegesis of the Book of Ruth (Sheffield: JSOT, 1977), 135); J.J. Slotki, “Ruth. Introduction and Commentary”, in The Five Megilloth, ed. A. Cohen (Hindhead, Surrey: The Soncino Press, 1946), 34-65, at 42-43 on 1:4. But Neh. 13:23 criticises marriages with “women of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab”, having earlier (13:1) cited Deut. 23:4 (albeit avoiding the tetragrammaton) in the context of the reading of “the book of Moses”.

Though some have sought to suggest that her religious adherence was secondary to her desire for family (Naomi) and ethnic inclusion. See Jackson, supra n.4, at 86-87, on Milgrom and Mih!il!.

For its incidence, see Jackson, supra n.4, at 81-84, largely following the account of Jean Louis Ska. On Ruth’s one self- identification, as nokhriya (in 2:10), see Jackson, supra n.4, at 81, 84, 85, 89.

Variously interpreted as a ban on intermarriage, conversion, temple participation and covenantal relationships: for literature, see Jackson, supra n.4, at 89 n.81. We may note various sources in which ethnicity (even without “conversion”) does not entail religious exclusion: Solomon’s prayer (I Kings 8:41-3) implied that gentiles as well as Jews brought sacrifices to the Temple; Lev. 22:18 regulates sacrifices brought by both those from beiyt yisra’el and hager beyisra’el; for Isaiah (56:7) the Temple will be a house of prayer for all peoples . See also Hullin 13b: “Sacrifices are to be accepted from Gentiles as they are from Jews.” Particularly interesting is the case of the blasphemer in Lev. 24, the son of an Egyptian father and Israelite mother (and referred to God, via Moses, apparently for that reason). The response is that he is included: kager ka’ezrax yihyeh (24.22). Traditional commentators (rejecting the historical anachronism), claim that the offender was Israelite by virtue of matrilineal descent, and the case was problematic only because tribal affiliation was patrilineal. The argument, however, is relevant to Ruth insofar as a convert without any Israelite lineage would lack a tribal affiliation, and thus a claim within the promised land. Hence, perhaps, the importance of “raising the name” of someone who did have such a claim.

Using the terminology of l-q-t (2:7, 15, 17, 19, cf. Lev. 19:9-10, 23:22). Gleaning is defined by the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia as “allowing the poor to follow the reapers in the field and glean the fallen spears of grain.”

For Jean Louis Ska, Ruth is first and foremost a “good story”, reflecting a particular version of a universal folk-tale in which a poor woman seeks and gains a rich husband: “La legge come strumento di comunicazione divina e controllo istituzionale: Mosè lo scriba e il libro della legge”, in G.L. Prato (ed.), Religione biblica e religione storica dell’antico Israele: un monopolio interpretativo nella continuità culturale (Bologna, Dehoniane, 2009), 123-144, at 133; note the title of his principal treatment of the story: La Biblica Cenerentola (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 2013).

The perfect tsiviyti here functions as a performative, as elsewhere in Ruth, though in the context of a rhetorical question (in the hearing of the young men). See further R.D. Holmstedt, Ruth. A Handbook on the Hebrew Text (Waco TX: Baylor University Press, 2010), 122-23.

“...and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before.” On the possible narrative allusions here, see Jackson, supra n.4, at 79-80.

See R.L. Hubbard, The Book of Ruth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988), 173: “either a refreshing sour drink or a vinegar-based sauce into which bread was customarily dipped”, noting the inclusion of xomets seikhar in the Nazirite prohibitions in Num. 6:3, and that it appears along with wine and bread in an ostracon from Arad.

See Hubbard, ibid., at 174-75.

See further Hubbard, ibid., at 177-79; F. Bush, Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 9: Ruth/Esther (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1996), 126-27. James A. Patch reports at http://biblehub.com/topical/g/gleaning.htm that “The generosity of the master of the crop determined the value of the gleanings, as the story of Ruth well illustrates (Ruth 2:16). A reaper could easily impose upon the master by leaving too much for the gleaners, who might be his own children. The old Levitical law no longer holds in the land, but ... the custom of allowing the poor to glean in the grain fields and vineyards is still practiced by generous landlords in Syria. The writer has seen the reapers, even when they exercised considerable care, drop from their hands frequent spears of wheat. When the reapers have been hirelings they have carelessly left bunches of wheat standing behind rocks or near the boundary walls. The owner usually sends one of his boy or girl helpers to glean these. If he is of a generous disposition, he allows some needy woman to follow after the reapers and benefit by their carelessness. It is the custom in some districts, after the main crop of grapes has been gathered, to remove the watchman and allow free access to the vineyards for gleaning the last grapes.”

In Leviticus 19:9 and 23:22 those entitled to glean are the poor and stranger (ani and ger); in Deut. 24:19-21, those entitled to the forgotten sheaf are the stranger (ger), orphan and widow.

Many commentators stress the theme of supererogatory ethics as characterising the plot of Ruth, Boaz in this respect reciprocating the xesed of Ruth. See Ruth 1:8, 2:20, 3:10; J.L. Ska, “La storia di Rut, la Moabita, e il diritto di cittadinanza in Israele”, in G. Bortone (ed.), Maria nella Bibbia, dale prefigurazioni alla realtà (L’Aquila, ISSRA, 2004), 3–28, at §§5.2, 5.3; idem, Cenerentola, supra n.31, at 25, 40; T.C. Eskenazi and T. Frymer-Kensky, The JPS Bible Commentary: Ruth (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2011), xlviii-l.

Ruth still apparently not knowing of the family connection: “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz”: 2:19.

On the relationship of her terminology here to Lev. 25:25, see Jackson, supra n.4, at 91.

For a traditional view see Slotki, supra n.26, at 56, commenting that this reflects Boaz’s simple manners, assisting himself, despite being rich. But according to some Rabbinic sources, he is also old (80). Slotki argues also that the winnowing is done at night because the cool evening breeze would carry away the chaff, and Boaz was there (alone) to guard the grain from thieves.

See further Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 53-54. Slotki, supra n.26, at 56, on 3:4 comments that margelotav signifies “the place where the feet are”, though 3:14 seems a clearer instance of that usage.

Some take “feet” here as a euphemism for the sexual organs. For such a use of regel, see F.J. Stendebach, “,lgr regel”, in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (TDOT), ed. G.J. Botterweck, H. Ringgren and H-J Fabry (Grand Rapids MI: Eisenbrauns, 2004), XIII.315 (German original 1990-92), listing Exod. 4:25; Isa. 7:20; Ezek. 16.25. Add, probably, 2 Sam. 11:8 (David to Uriah). See also C.M. Carmichael, Sex and Religion in the Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 170.

A.J. Bledstein, “Female Companionships: If the Book of Ruth were Written by a Woman...”, in A. Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Ruth (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 116-33, at 124-25; Carmichael, supra n.43, at 48-50, and for another possible sexual allusion, see C.M. Carmichael, “Treading in the Book of Ruth”, ZAW 92 (1980), 248-266.

vayexerad: 3:8. The RSV’s “startled” hardly does justice to the verb, which is used, i.a., of the people’s terror at the Sinai theophany in Exod. 19:16, 18 (there is significant MS support for the reading ha‘am rather than hahar in the latter, following the LXX). Ruth may actually have risked her life in doing this: see Exod. 22:1-2, according to which he would be entitled to kill a nocturnal intruder.

amatekha, a term which also has possible sexual connotations: see Exod. 21:7-11. Cf. Bledstein, supra n.44, at 123: “This time ‘âmâ, meaning a ‘marriageable woman’, is the term she chooses.”

See further H.J. Harm, “The Function of Double Entendre in Ruth Three”, Journal of Translation and Textlinguistics 7 (1995), 19-27, at 21: “There are so many that I contend that this was not an accident” (though not discussing the terminology of 3:9).

The basic meaning is “wings”, but often used as a metaphor for protection (as in kanfei hasheshinah). Slotki, supra n.26, at 57, on 3:9, notes that it is used specifically as a symbol of marriage, and suggests that the link with its secondary usage as the corner of a garment is illuminated by an Arab custom of placing the corner of a garment over a maiden as a token of marriage. Cf. Bush, supra n. 36, at 164, citing earlier literature.

Daube, supra n.21, at 34-35 [ = 2000:490].

In favour of sexual relations, see, e.g., D.G.R. Beattie, “Ruth 3”, JSOT 5 (1978), 39-48; against Beattie, and in favour of a marriage proposal, see Bush, supra n.36, at 164-65, with discussion of the rather parallel Ezek. 16:7-8, where the same expression is followed by “covered thy nakedness”; in favour of non-marital protection, see Eskenazi and Frymer- Kensky, supra n.38, at 59.

Daube, supra n.21, at 39 [ = 2000:493] writes that Naomi sends Ruth to the threshing floor “attired as for a wedding”. We may note that the terminology of go’el is used in this chapter only in respect of the status of Ruth; land does not enter separately or explicitly into the discussion. However, the use of go’el terminology, despite its absence from Deut. 25, indicates an understanding of the functional (perhaps even conceptual) connection between redemption and levirate, and supports the inclusion in the latter of a wider range of relatives than is mentioned in Deut. 25. Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:58 (1971), writes that ge’ulah in the laws “basically denotes the rightful getting back of a person or object that had once belonged to one’s family but had been lost”; in narrative and prophetic texts “it denotes the saving of a person from the clutches of his enemies by a powerful relative, usually God. The enemies may be foreign nations, creditors or even such abstract forces as sin and death”, citing here D. Daube, Studies in Biblical Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947), 39ff. See further Bush, supra n.36, at 166-69 (also citing Daube 1947:45: “when a man dies leaving a wife but no children his nearest relative had to ‘take back’ the widow — who otherwise would be lost to the family and, mostly, destitute herself — by marrying her”); Jackson, supra n.4, at 90-91, noting that redemption (using the verb ga’al) applies also to male debt slaves in Lev. 25:47-54, with a hierarchy according to closeness of relationship. We may note that it applies also to the amah in Exod. 21:7-11, though here a different verb, padah, is used (Exod. 21:8).

Bledstein, supra n.44, at 123.

Eshet xayil, so translated, appropriately for the context, by the 1917 JPS translation. RSV adopts the more conventional “woman of worth”. Bledstein, supra n.44, at 123, suggests, for the present context, a “woman of sound judgment, wholesome values, and energetic pursuit of what is important”.

We are told in 3:8 that Boaz was woken up at midnight (baxatsi halaylah).

Though not “with” (using the conjunction et or im) him. Harm, supra n.47, at 22, notes this in his list of sexual double entendres, citing Gen. 19:32, 30:15 (in both of which, however, it is used with im). The verb is in fact used in association with margelotav throughout the chapter.

Holmstedt, supra n.32, at 173, citing B.K. Waltke and M. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), §18.2(d); J.M. Sasson, Ruth: A New Translation with a Philological Commentary and Formalist-folklorist Interpretation (Sheffield: JSOT, 1989, 2nd ed.), 100-01; Hubbard, supra n.34, at 24 n.5; Bush, supra n.36, at 184-85.

In later terms, was it a betrothal (whether by intercourse or some other recognised means), full marriage, or only a promise of betrothal — this last not thereby changing Ruth’s status?

Thus Bledstein, supra n.44, at 125.

Though Daube, supra n.21, at 39 [ = 2000:493], observes: “... while retaining Ruth as his bedfellow throughout the night — though without sexual commerce — in the morning he bids her to take a bridal present, the Morgengabe, pretium pudicitiae, to Naomi” (citing Ruth 3:15, 17, cf. Gen. 24:22, 47, 53; 34:12). In strict law it is she [Naomi] who has been with him, as whose ‘redeemer’ he proceeds.” But the historical notion of Morgengabe, a gift from husband to wife after the wedding night, does appear to presuppose consummation.

Though Hubbard, supra n.34, at 201, cites Hos. 9:1 (“You have loved a harlot’s hire upon all threshing floors”) for the view that “the popular mind associated threshing floors with licentiousness”. Cf. Harm, supra n.47, at 20. Anything from threshing-floor book?

RSV has “friend”. Cf. NIV, and others. More commonly, the term is rendered to indicate anonymity (e.g. “such a one”, from KJV and widely followed; for the range of English translations, see https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Ruth%204:1). But such anonymity, given the family connection, must have negative connotations. See further Hubbard, supra n.34, at 233-35.

Rabbinic tradition has it that Elimelekh, PA, Boaz’s father — and indeed Naomi’s father — were brothers: see Slotki, supra n.26, at 48 on 2:1; 58 on 3:12. Aliter, Bush, supra n.36, at 224. See also E. Lipinski, “Le mariage de Ruth”, VT 26 (1976), 124-127, at 126-27, commenting on Boaz’s reference to Elimelekh, in addressing PA, as “our brother” in Ruth 4:3.

Slotki, supra n.26, at 58, notes that some (rabbinic) sources infer from tov yig’al (3:13) that the kinsman’s name was Tov.

Most recently P. Barmash, “Achieving Justice through Narrative in the Hebrew Bible: The Limitations of Law in the Legal Potential of Literature”, Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtsgeschichte [hereafter ZABR] 20 (2014), 181-199, at 184-86.

Carmichael, supra n.43, at 50-51, argues that the name “may convey a double reference to virility (’ôn) so that the meaning contains an element of mockery: “my virile, virile one” (’ônî, ’ônî). The name Onan is itself a doubling of ’ôn, “the virile, virile one,” for a similarly mocking purpose. The author of Ruth is much given to wordplay. The name Boaz (“in him is strength,” as in the LXX) probably also hints at his sexual potency.”

For Rashi ad loc., see Beattie, supra n.26, at 109; an Anonymous Rabbi ad loc., at 128; Ibn Ezra ad loc., at 143; Qimxi ad loc., at 150; see also see Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 71. In private correspondence, Beattie argues that Rashi’s understanding of the root "#$ is mistaken, representing an attempt to explain the Targum’s erroneous translation of PA in Samuel and Kings. For Beattie, the author didn’t bother to give PA a name because he is not a real character but a man of straw who is necessary for the story. But word play is not strict etymology, and the effect of my argument is that (a) PA ceases to be a “man of straw” (whether as potential heir of Elimelekh or present possessor of the land) and (b) this both provides a solution to the original whodunnit and fills the gap represented by the lack of any mention of an actual redemption from an external third party. Beattie rightly notes that ploni is found by itself in many places (and that cognate forms are used in the same way in Aramaic and Arabic), but to my mind that does not diminish the argument of a play on the combined expression ploni almoni.

Thus, Rashi; the Anonymous Rabbi (though he takes peloni almoni not as a name but as a statement of Boaz: “I have a secret and hidden matter to reveal to you”); Ibn Ezra (though without citing Deut 17:8), Qimxi. Note also Judg. 13:18 (of the name of the angel sent to announce the future birth of Samson: y)lp )whw).

See F. Brown, G.R. Driver and C.A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907, repr. 1968), 811.

Thus the Anonymous Rabbi (“for the matter has been hushed up and has not been revealed until this day”) and Ibn Ezra. Beattie, supra n.26, at 147 n.48, notes that this derivation is attributed to R. Salmon b. Naxman in Ruth Rabbah VII:7.

Thus Qimxi.

Cited by Rashi (who also cites Gen. 18:1) and the Anonymous Rabbi.

Either as “one who is without name” or in a later version: “... he was a widower in his knowledge of Torah” since he failed to adopt the masculine-only interpretation of Deut 23:4, thinking that by violating that ban he would destroy his inheritance. Beattie, supra n.26, at 171, notes the suggestion in Ruth Rabbah II, 10 that that (oral law) interpretation had not yet been propounded in the time of the judges.

The use of the formulation may have been influenced by that in 1 Sam 21:3 and 2 Ki 6:8; nevertheless, pace Rashi (supra n.73), in the narrative context it will have been understood as referring to a widow, not a widower.

Perhaps the yods are here sarcastic.

Hiers, supra n.9, at 38-39, infers from Prov. 15:25 (God’s promise to “pluck up the house of the proud; but he will establish the border of the widow”, JPS), that: “Evidently a widow’s property might be subjected to seizure or encroachment by predatory relatives or neighbors”, supporting this from Micah 2:9, read in the light of 2:1-2. He also cites Mk 12:38-40, Lk 20:46-47 as NT evidence for such encroachments.

On whether the formulation in Lev. 25:25 (but not Num 27:11) imposed a strict hierarchy, see A. Berlin, “Legal Fiction: Levirate cum Land Redemption in Ruth”, Journal of Ancient Judaism 1 (2010), 3-18, at 14-16, concluding however that such a hierarchy is certainly assumed in Ruth.

In the ancient Near Eastern context, Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:140, writes: “... One solution to the problem of managing communal land ... was to appoint a single co-heir as administrator. Problems would still occur if the administrator was himself corrupt, as in the case of Nefer-abu, or his mode of appointment was, as in the case of Jacob. The role of administrator would normally fall on the eldest son.”

On the nature of the women’s claims, see section 4B, below.

This (RSV) translation of tqlx echoes its use in 2:3, referring to the land of Boaz which Ruth “happened” to find, for gleaning purposes. On the latter, Hubbard, supra n.34, at 142 and n.10, comments that it refers to “the portion of the common farmland which Boaz owned”, citing, i.a., Gen. 33:19 as a parallel, but distinguishing Ruth 4:3 and 2 Kgs. 9:25 as referring to “a piece of property belonging to a specific individual”. For an etymological explanation of hd#h tqlx, see M. Tsevat, “qlx, chalaq II”, in TDOT, supra n.43, at IV.477-48 (orig. German 1975-77). Westbrook, supra n.9, at 65-66 (1971), argues that this makes it impossible for the transaction in 4:9ff to be a purchase by Boaz from Naomi.

Cf. Morris in A.E. Cundall and L. Morris, Judges/Ruth (London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1968; Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries), 300.

What follows is taken from his 1991 book, supra n.9.

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:65 (1971). However, he concludes: “If, on the other hand, it were the case that women could not own property, the narrator’s mistake would be so obvious that it could only have been inserted as an oblique reference to a more complex situation.” The issue of whether, if women’s property rights are accepted, they had inheritance rights, is a separate matter. Other suggestions have been made as to how Naomi might have come to own the land, although they create complications for the apparent implication of 4:5 (on the traditional reading) that Ruth too had rights in the estate of Elimelekh.

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:83 (1977).

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:65 n.2 (1971). On the woman of Tekoa, see also Z. Zevit, “Dating Ruth: Legal, Linguistic and Historical Observations”, ZAW 117 (2006), 574–600, at 586–87. Westbrook also cites the story of the Shunamite woman (2 Kgs 8:3-6), on which see further infra, at n.105.

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:79-80 n.4 (1977).

In part, on linguistic grounds: “The perfect can be used for an intended action, but evidenced only in direct speech in the first person and is an emphatic form: Gen.1:29, 15:18, 23: 11,13”: Westbrook, supra n.9, at 65 n.4 (1971). But is the alternative interpretation a matter of “intended action” or a performative? For Holmstedt, supra n.32, at 185: “the use of the qatal here can only be performative”. Indeed, performatives are a feature of the language of Ruth: see also at n.32 supra, n.175 infra.

See however the recent review of Westbrook’s argument by Hiers, supra n.9, at 36 n.36, noting that both 4:5 and 4:9 say that the purchase is from the hand of Naomi; on Westbrook’s overall approach, see also Hiers, 37 n.40.

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:116 (1985). One consequences of this outright sale in Elimelekh’s lifetime is thus that “the two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, never came to own the family property at all”: idem, at 80 (1977).

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:66 (1971).

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:67 n.1 (1971), providing a further example: the description of Ruth in 4:5 as “the widow of the dead” when the only “dead” here referred to is Elimelekh.

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:66 (1971).

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:66 (1971): “This transaction of redemption is not recorded because it is not essential to the narrative; it takes place “off-stage”, so to speak.” But in 4:9 Boaz calls the elders and people to witness a present transaction (“this day”), that he has acquired (or is acquiring) “all that belonged to Elim'elech and all that belonged to Chil'ion and to Maxlon”, in reference to the shoe ceremony. This is certainly not “off-stage” and the object of the transaction hardly sounds like a (single) right of redemption. See further s.4D infra.

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:116 (1985).

The close relationship between redemption and inheritance is demonstrated by Jer. 32:7-8, where mishpat hage’ulah and mishpat hayerushah are used almost synonymously. Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:61-61 (1971), comments in this context: “If the redeemer were also a potential heir, he would frequently be intervening to buy back his own inheritance”, citing the link between the two in Jer. 32:8. Cf. Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:90 n.1 (1985): “Persons other than the seller who are entitled to redeem this land [that in Lev 25] are all relatives who stand in the line of succession.” See also Berlin, supra n.77, at 17-18.

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:139 (1990, previously unpublished). On this reconstruction, see further my comments on 4:4, below.

As Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:138-39 (1990), puts it: “... in the book of Ruth, we see how the state of indivision, once attached to a parcel of family land, remains with it unless and until the land is divided, whatever its interim ownership. Elimelekh sold the land while his two sons were still living in his undivided household and departed for Moab, where all three died without a division having taken place. Any such division would have been ineffective, since the land was no longer in the family’s hands, and its undivided character might equally have remained a matter of indifference were it not for the fact that it had been sold under constraint, at a time of famine, and was therefore still subject to redemption by any surviving relative.”

For the alternative, see n.80, supra.

See further the conclusion to section 4D, for the application of this approach. This, broadly, is the approach attempted in Jackson, supra n.4.

As, indeed, in Jackson, supra n.4, at 100-104. A recent argument in favour of widow’s inheritance rights is Hiers, supra n.9, at 35-40 (including at 38-39 an inference from Prov. 15:25). Other suggestions have been made: Elimelekh may have transferred his part of the field to Naomi during his lifetime: Job is said to have divided his estate between sons and daughters (presumably, during his lifetime) and the Septuagint takes Elimelekh to have “given” a portion of the field to Naomi. Or her title may have derived from a marriage settlement, perhaps anticipating the ketubbah and particularly the security for widowhood attributed to Shimon b. Shetax. Zevit, supra n.86, at 588, notes that Judith (which he dates to the 4th cent BCE), a childless widow, inherited from her husband (8:1–7, 9:2), and that before her death she disposed of that property (16:22–24) by will (u9peleip/ eto). See also Hiers, supra n.9, at 36-37, for other suggestions (Naomi acting as guardian or trustee).

Daube, supra n.21, at 37 [ = 2000:492].

At least if one is expecting an account based on legal concepts — an approach against which I have argued, as regards the Book of Ruth, in “Acknowledgement and Recognition in Biblical Law”, to appear in a forthcoming Festschrift.

Cf. Jackson, supra n.4, at 102-03. See also Hiers, supra n.9, at 38.

Cf. Jackson, supra n.4, at 103 and n.151. This is the situation, apparently, in a fragmentary 8th cent. Ostracon, discussed in Jackson, supra n.4, at 103-04, which also provides evidence of a division of the estate between widow and brother. However, there is no indication in Ruth of any form of third party adjudication, let alone by a royal officer. Moreover, the authenticity of the ostracon has been doubted. Since writing my earlier article, I have encountered more serious objections to it, based on scientific tests, as voiced by Christopher A. Rollston, “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs I: Pillaged Antiquities, Northwest Semitic Forgeries, and Protocols for Laboratory Tests,” Maarav 10 (2003), 135-193; idem, “Non-Provenanced Epigraphs II: The Status of Non-Provenanced Epigraphs within the Broader Corpus of Northwest Semitic,” Maarav 11 (2004), 57-79; Y. Goren, M. Bar-Matthews, A. Ayalon, B. Schilman, “Authenticity examination of two Iron Age ostraca from the Mousaieff collection”, Israel Exploration Journal 55 (2005), 21-34. In the light of this, both André Lemaire and Hershel Shanks, in private correspondence, have withdrawn their support for authenticity. Nevertheless, Rollston, at 2004:75, in acknowledging the knowledge and skill of the forger, suggests that “such material should normally be relegated to a secondary or tertiary status”, i.e. they represent a view, well informed by scholarship, of a text that could have been written. On the interpretation of the ostracon, see A. Lemaire, “Veuve sans enfants dans la royaume de Juda”, ZABR 5 (1999), 1-14 (and see his important distinction, at 11, between the positions of young and old widows); J.A. Wagenaar, “ ‘Give in the Hand of Your Maidservant the Property...’ Some remarks to the Second Ostracon from the Collection of Sh. Moussaïeff”, ZABR 5 (1999), 15-27. The issue will be discussed further elsewhere.

A possibility considered by Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:67 (1971), at least in the context of redemption of land: see n.136, infra.

Cf. Westbrook’s remarks quoted supra, text at nn.86 and 95, though for him PA is the prospective heir, who must first redeem from a third party.

R. Yaron, Introduction to the Law of the Aramaic Papyri (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 71-76, 78.

Lipinski, supra n.63, at 125-26 (noting also the ancient Near Eastern sources).

Without the need to amend it to hrkwm or the participle rkm (Bush, supra n.36, at 202), as some have suggested. For the view that it functions as a performative, see supra n.88.

See below, on 4:4 and 4:9. Aliter, Zevit, supra n.86, at 586, who suggests that after Elimelekh’s death Naomi, while still in Moab, had taken a loan and ceded control over the land as collateral (thus makhrah, past tense, in 4:3). The lender had the use and ultimate ownership should the debt not be repaid by a certain date. Derek Beattie, in private correspondence, also takes makhrah as past tense, arguing that this is simply a claim (whether true or false) which Boaz makes, designed to elicit the interest of PA in what seems to be a bargain.

Lipinski, supra n.63, at 126; cf. B.S. Jackson, Theft in Early Jewish Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 43 (on Exod. 21:37).

The order of succession in Num 27:8-11 (sons, daughters, brothers, uncles, next nearest kinsman) has a notable omission: the father of the deceased (who surely took precedence over the deceased’s uncles, if not also his brothers). If the principle underlying succession by daughters in the absence of sons is applied to all classes (as it is in rabbinic law), then the mother would stand in for the father of the deceased. On the possibility that Naomi succeeds as mother, see also Beattie, supra n.15, at 1974:254-55; Hiers, supra n.9, at 37.

Cf. Lipinski, supra n.63, at 126: “il est pratiquement certain que l’auteur du livret de Ruth ne songeait qu’a une cession de l’usufruit du terrain d'Élimélek, cession limitée en droit au temps du veuvage de Noemi. ... La transaction ne porterait donc que sur l’usufruit ou la jouissance actuelle du terrain d'Élimélek.” Cf. (for usufruct) Bush, supra n.36, at 202-204, 211-15. Similarly, Wagenaar, supra n.92, at 23, argues that until the child of a levirate marriage had grown up the brother of the deceased would have the usufruct of the property in order to provide for the widow and child. We need not enter into the appropriateness here of terms such as “usufruct”.

Jackson, supra n.4, at 102, and see n.114 supra.

Discussed further below, in discussing the expressions twr t)mw ym(n dym in 4:5, and the apparently contradictory claim in 4:9, that Boaz claims that he had acquired the whole estate, including explicitly what had belonged to Khilyon and Maxlon, ym(n dym.

If so, 4:9 is not to be taken to refer divisions of the land belonging respectively to Elim'elech, Chil'ion Maxlon.

ytrm) yn)w, literally: “And I said (to myself)”: see Holmstedt, supra n.32, at 186-87, suggesting that it is an abbreviated form of blb rm), used for “internal speech”; cf. Holmstedt at 171, on 3:14, citing also Gen. 20:11 and other instances.

l)gy, amended to l)gt: Holmstedt, supra n.32, at 188-89, in accordance with the LXX, Targum and multiple late- medieval MSS, though not here noted as a kere/ketiv in the MT. See, however, rabbinic commentaries at Beattie 1977, supra n.26, at 143 (Ibn Ezra) and 147 n.50. See also Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 75.

See Holmstedt, supra n.32, at 189 and earlier (on 2:10 and 3:12) on the distinction between yn) at the beginning of the verse and ykn) here.

Cf. Holmstedt, supra n.32, at 188, against those (Bush, Hubbard) who take l)g to be an unusual intransitive usage. As Holmstedt observes, the narrator nowhere suggests that Elimelekh’s land has been alienated from the clan.

B.S. Jackson, Wisdom-Laws: A Study of the Mishpatim of Exodus 21:1-22:16 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 82 and n.14; and see n.172 below. We think of acquisition in terms of ownership, but a more appropriate concept (applicable to both property and persons) may be control. The clear distinction between ownership and possession is of Roman origin. Nor is the verb used of acquisition of “rights”, although in Proverbs (alone) we find it used of the acquisition of wisdom).

Supra, text at n.75.

Gordis, supra n.7, at 252-59, approved by Bush, supra n.36, at 213, taking hnq in the sense of “transfer” (following Lipinski).

Westbrook, supra n.94.

See further on 4:7-8 below.

On which see Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:59, 60-61 (1971). Beattie, supra n.15, at 1974:257-58, takes the view that the negotiations at the gate do imply such a claim. R. Yaron, “Redemption of Persons in the Ancient Near East”, Revue internationale des droits de l’antiquité VI (1959), 155-76, at 174-75, notes that redemption of persons may involve passing, temporarily or permanently, into the power of the redemptor, and classifies the (mainly ANE) cases of redemption as motivated by charitable, non-profit or commercial motives.

Even the homicide sources are not without hints that a go’el hadam may accept kofer.

Lev. 25:13-16, 28; Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:60 (1971). See further infra, on 4:6.

Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 75, note this is the first time Boaz mentions Ruth’s problematic status. The significance of this will differ according to the readings (and thus interpretation) one adopts of this verse.

Many commentators assume the qere without discussion, including Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:67 (1971), who interprets the verse as: “The day that you acquire (knoskha: 67 n.3: the verb qnh does not necessarily mean ‘buy’...) the field from the hand of Naomi [i.e. by taking advantage of the right of redemption that kinship to Naomi gives, rather than by an ordinary purchase] you also acquire (kanita) Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of the dead, in order to restore the name of the dead on his inheritance”. In favour of the qere, see also A. Lemaire, “Une inscription phénicienne découverte récemment et le mariage de Ruth la Moabite”, Eretz Israel 20 (1989), 124*-129*; Bush, supra n.36, at 227- 29; in favour of the ketiv, see Beattie, supra n.15, at 1974:263-64 (contra, Lipinski, supra n.63, at 127 n.6); Sasson, supra n.57, at 125-36; Holmstedt, supra n.32, at 191-92.

On the use of the verb qanah here and later, see n.172, infra.

See further Biblia Hebraica Quinta, Fascicle 18: General Introduction and Megilloth, ed. A Schenker et al. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2004), 55*-56* (J. de Waard). See also Beattie, supra n.15, at 1974:264, on general agreement that twr t)mw must be corrupt. On the view that Ruth is here being presented as co-heir of the land, see Holmstedt, supra n.32, at 190-91.

E.g. W. McKane, “Ruth and Boaz”, Transactions of the Glasgow Oriental Society 19 (1961/62), 29-40, at 38-39; Beattie, supra n.15, at 1974:263; Sasson, supra n. 42, at 130.

Daube, supra n.21, at 1981:38 [ = 2000:492-93]: “Under the system prevailing in this epoch, if the land belongs to a childless widow, a “redeemer” must take her to wife and the firstborn will always be her original husband’s heir.” Cf. earlier but more tentatively Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:67 (1971): “It may be that redemption involved an obligation to support Naomi or even marry her”; see also Beattie, supra n.15, at 1974:257-58. For the possible reasons why Boaz appears to present this as an obligation, see Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 76-77.

Or the right to redeem the land, if, contrary to the widow scamming scenario, we take it to be in the hands of a third party.

Daube, supra n.21, at 1981:40, speculates that “and from Ruth the Moabitess” may be an interpolation (but see Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 75, adopting and discussing the unamended text t)mw), and goes on to argue, at 41-42, that it is only after ratification of the transaction that he clearly identifies “the wife of the dead” as Ruth. Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:67 (1971), earlier took a similar position, but differs as to when Boaz reveals the truth: PA may have been aware that “the right of redemption triggers the duty of levirate marriage” even when Boaz invited him to redeem in 4:4. At that stage he would have assumed the widow to be Naomi, in which case “Naomi being past the age of child-bearing, the land purchased would pass to the redeemer’s sons as part of his inheritance.” However, Boaz reveals in 4:5 that the widow is in fact Ruth, so that the combination of redemption and levirate “results in paying for land which will not become part of one’s patrimony.” See also Beattie, supra n.15, at 1974:266.

On this assumption, however, see Hiers 2009:42 n.66, noting also Westbrook’s observation, supra n.9, at 1991:67 (1971), that PA should welcome Naomi, since if she produced no heir Elimelekh’s land too would go on his death to his own sons as part of his own estate.

Daube, supra n.21, at 1981:40-41 [ = 2000:494]. Others have proposed similar views, without apparent awareness of Daube’s position. Thus, E.W. Davies, “Ruth IV 5 and the Duties of the go’el”, VT 33 (1983), 231-234, at 234: “...the new information which Boaz imparts to the kinsman and which occasions his change of mind (Ruth iv 5) is not that a widow would have to be acquired along with the property (since this would already have been understood) but that the widow in question was in fact Ruth and not Naomi.” Holmstedt, supra n.32, at 192, offers a variation based on the ketiv: Boaz bluffs the redeemer into thinking that Boaz himself intends to produce an heir for Elimelekh. On the trickster theme, see also Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 85, 95 (regarding Obed).

For a further argument in favour of the ketiv, see the last paragraph of section 5, infra.

Biblia Hebraica Quinta, supra n.134, at 55*, for suggestions to either delete the m from t)mw or regard it as an enclitic.

With C.H. Gordon, “We ‘and’ in Eblaite and Hebrew”, in Eblaitica: Essays on the Ebla Archives and the Eblaite Language, ed. C.H. Gordon, G.A. Rendsburg and N.H. Winter (Winona Lake, IN.: Eisenbrauns, 1987), 29-30, at 29, quoted by Harm, supra n.47, at 23.

As in 4:9-10, discussed below.

Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 77, compare the terminology of Deut 25, while still arguing that this is not a levirate marriage, partly on the grounds that the concluding genealogy mentions Boaz and excludes Maxlon. But see section 5, infra. On the significance of “name” in this context, see Jackson, supra n.4, at 106-07.

Rashi (at Beattie, supra n.26, at 109) gives a non-monetary motive: he thought wrongly that children with Ruth would be discredited because of the ban on Ammonites and Moabites in Deut 23:4, even though the latter (according to rabbinic tradition) refers to males only. The Anonymous Rabbi’s commentary on 4:6 (ibid., at 129) reconstructs the redeemer’s motivation as: “I cannot redeem the inheritance unless I sell my [own] inheritance and I do not want to destroy my inheritance for the sake of redeeming the inheritance of somebody else.” Qimxi ad loc (ibid., at 151): “By having in one house two women who are rivals to each other”. See further See Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 78.

If we take the more common view, that PA is himself being invited to marry Ruth, we still have to understand in what respect, exactly, he fears that that “I impair my own inheritance”. For Beattie, supra n.15, at 1974:257-58, “the redeemer suddenly saw the redemption of the field as a profitless exercise”. This assumes that any claim made by the family against the redeemer does not entail repaying the purchase price to the redeemer (though Beattie is unclear about this at 266). On a strict reading of levirate, the field would ultimately be inherited by his first son by Ruth, qua heir not of PA but of Elimelekh, while PA himself has paid good money for the field. Is he afraid of expending his capital on this? On any reading, his own residual estate will go to any further sons he has by Ruth, as indeed to any sons he may have already. We are told nothing of his existing family situation: Beattie, ibid., at 1974:261-62, argues against both modern and ancient views that PA was already married and had children. Or it is Ruth’s Moabitess status (a toshav in terms of Lev. 25?) which prompts a fear of financial sanctions?

Supra, text at n.75.

Cf. supra, text at n.96. Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:76 (1977) observes that the levirate is in fact a “great sacrifice on the part of the brother, for he might just let the deceased remain without issue and take over the inheritance for himself and his progeny” (assuming that otherwise “the inheritance would return to the line of the deceased, to which the issue of the levirate fictionally belonged”). Cf. Carmichael, supra n.60, at 51-52.

See also Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 78.

On the use elsewhere and implications of Mynpl (longer or shorter time-span, but often signifying a radical change), see Sasson, supra n.57, at 141.

On the use of the perfect Pl#, see Sasson, supra n.57, at 143f., noting also (with E. Levine, The Aramaic Version of Ruth (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1973; Analecta Biblica 58), 104) that Targum Ruth replaces shoe (wl(n) with “glove”, possibly because the verb Clx, used in Deut. 25:9-10, is more commonly used in relation to footwear, whereas Pl# is nowhere else used in relation to shoes.

It is possible that the vague “to his neighbour” in 4:7 is designed to cover the different circumstances and personnel of redemption of land and redemption of widows. Ruth Rabbah vii.11 (on 4:7) locates the ceremony within a history of qinyan in general: see further Jackson, “The Jewish Background to the Prodigal Son: An Unresolved Problem”, in Jackson, Essays on Halakhah in the New Testament (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2008), 111-50, at 129f.; idem, supra n.4, at 95 n.115.

We may note that the levirate law appears in Deuteronomy immediately before an explicitly talionic rule, Deut. 25:11-12.

On the spitting, see D. Daube, “The Culture of Deuteronomy”, Orita 3 (1969), 27-52, reprinted in Biblical Law and Literature. Collected Works of David Daube, Volume Three, ed. Calum Carmichael (Berkeley: The Robbins Collection, 2003), 995-1013, at 1001-03.

See further B.S. Jackson, “Ruth’s Conversion: Then and Now”, The Jewish Law Annual XIX (2011), 53–61, at 55-58, esp.57; Jackson, supra n.4, at 94-97.

Cf. Beattie, supra n.15, at 1974:265, comparing this to the requirement of Deut. 25:5 that the childless widow “shall not be married abroad to a strange man” (rz #y)l ,hcwxh, rendered by JPS (1917) “abroad unto one not his kin”).

Cf. E.F. Campbell, Ruth (Garden City NY: Doubleday & Co., 1975; Anchor Bible), 149-50; Y. Zakovitch, Ruth: Introduction and Commentary (Tel Aviv: The Magnes Press, 1990; Mikra Leyisra’el), 108 (Heb.), though preferring the view of R. Yehudah in B.M. 47a, that the subject remains PA, against the stam (“Boaz natan lago’el”). See further Jackson, supra n.165, at 56; idem, supra n.4, at 95. Ruth Rabbah (ad loc.) 7:12 debates the related (but not identical) question of whose shoe was removed.

Pace Jackson, supra n.165, at 57.

Supra, s.4C, text from n.132.

Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 80, 81 note that this is problematic, in the light of Deut 23:4, and that Boaz is depicted as making public disclosure and thereby seeking communal assent. They observe also that this challenges the view that Ruth has converted earlier in the story and note that she is not described as a Moabite from this point on.

On the use of trk here, see Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 82, comparing esp. Isa 56:5.

Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 77, 81, noting that it is the only instance of the use of hnq in the Hebrew Bible in relation to marriage, but citing Halivni Weiss for the view that it is typically used in multiple transactions, one of which involves the acquisition of land or slaves. In the Mishnah, qanah came to be used commonly of betrothal: Mishnah Kiddushin starts (1:1): ha’ishah niknit bishlosh derakhim, and later came to be used commonly of betrothal.

Hiers, supra n.9, at 37, takes this to imply that Naomi inherited from her sons when they died (thus, qua mother), citing (at n.41) Beattie, supra n.15, at 254-55, though considering also the possibility that she inherited directly from Elimelekh. On the reading of 4:5 adopted in the text above, at n.142, we do not have to consider Ruth as a part-owner, as widow of Maxlon.

See text at n.123, supra.

Cf. Holmstedt, supra n.32, at 199; Hubbard, supra n.34, at 256 (in relation to 4:10).

Not least, the census of Num. 26:33, where Zelophehad’s family situation is already mentioned. For the relationship of the census to the distribution of the land, see Num. 26:33.

On Elimelekh’s death, his estate would have descended to his sons. On their death, their estates (comprising Elimelekh’s estate plus any personally acquired property of the sons) would, in the absence of any children, have reverted to Elimelekh, had he been alive. Since he is not alive, his estate (now including those of his sons) goes to his nearest agnatic relatives.

See, e.g., D.N. Fewell and D. Gunn, “Boaz, Pillar of Society: Measures of Worth in the Book of Ruth”, JSOT 45 (1989), 45-49.

The levirate sources imply, of course, a denial of widows’ inheritance rights.

Text at n.100, supra.

Text at n.167, supra.

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:59-61 (1971), arguing in part from Jer. 32, though adding at 117 (1985) that the noting of the price and the careful recording of the sale contemplate the possibility that his cousin (or his heirs) may be able at a later date to buy it back from him at the same low price that Jeremiah had paid, given the circumstances of the siege.

On this issue, see further Jackson, “Acknowledgement and Recognition in Biblical Law”, to appear in a forthcoming Festschrift.

Cf. Daube, supra n.21, at 1981:43[ = 2000:496]. They are given originally to Rachel and Leah by their father, Laban, on their marriages to Jacob and thus originally belonged to an idolatrous household; their children are also named not by the natural mother, but are counted amongst the twelve tribes of Israel. See also Bledstein, supra n.44, at 128.

See also Hiers, supra n.9, at 43, on the double surrogacy indicated in Ruth: that a widow past childbearing age whose own sons are dead and without heirs may substitute her fertile, widowed daughter-in-law, citing (at n.69) Lipinski, supra n.63, at 1976:127, though the latter refers to surrogacy in the patriarchal narratives, where there is no widow involved.

The significance of which already, before the concluding genealogy, points to David: 4:17.

On the terminology of h#) and h#)l when used in the sexual context, see B.S. Jackson, Wisdom-Laws, supra n.123, at 95-96, 116, the latter on Deut. 21:13, on which see also Jackson, “Gender Critical Observations on Tripartite Breeding Relationships in the Hebrew Bible”, in A Question of Sex?: Gender and Difference in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, ed. D. Rooke (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007), 39-52, at 45-46.

Perhaps Boaz’s mind was not clear enough to form the necessary intention!

meishiv ru’ax (we might say: a mexayyeh!).

Exod. 2:7-9 (albeit using different terminology).

Slotki ad loc., supra n.26, at 65, notes a rabbinic comment that Naomi is called his mother because Naomi brought him up. Hiers, supra n.9, at 43 and n.71, argues that since Obed is presented as the surrogate son of Naomi (4:17), he is therefore also implicitly the son of Elimelekh, against the view of Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:80 n.1 [ = 1977:77 n.43], based in part on 4:10, that Boaz “does not raise up Elimelekh’s name, since it is not necessary, only Maxlon’s”.

Y. Dor, “From the Well in Midian to the Baal of Peor: Different Attitudes to Marriage of Israelites to Midianite Women”, in Mixed Marriages. Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period, ed. C. Frevel (New York and London: T & T Clark, 2011), 150-69, at 165. For the comparison with Bilhah and Zilpah, however, see n.184, supra.

See Ska, La storia, supra n.38, at §4 and n.3; Cenerentola, supra n.31, at 16 and 42 n.3; Jackson, supra n.4, at 108. For further literature and a discussion of this view, taken to represent a consensus, see Bush, supra n.36, at 13-16.

See further Jackson, supra n.4, at 109-10.

E.g. Eskenazi and Frymer-Kensky, supra n.38, at 81-82.

Including the issue of whether it was designed to preserve the rights of individuals or families/clans to portions of the promised land.

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:76 (1977) writes: “... had Onan refused outright, he would have gained nothing, since either his father [Judah] or younger brother [Shelah ...??] could perform the levirate instead and provide an heir to the deceased’s estate ... By performing the duty in form but not in fact, he hoped to gain for himself his dead brother’s inheritance”. See also D.E. Weisberg, Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism (Waltham MA: Brandeis University Press, 2009), 28.

Mishnah Yevamot 4:7, cited by Weisberg, supra n.197, at 214 n.71: see her comments in the text at 40, 41 (on different foci of Deuteronomy and the Mishnah) and 43 (on the status of children of the levirate union: regarded as the legal offspring of the levir).

This is not the place to review the many different approaches to this general issue. An interesting thesis has been proposed by Berlin, supra n.77, at 18: “Both Ruth and Jeremiah are engaged in “legal fictions”; they are taking liberties with Torah laws by employing them in ways and situations at variance with the original laws, and also by joining together two conceptually similar laws. This goes beyond interpretation. We might call this the scripturalization of legal practices. It turns ordinary transactions, or fictional transactions, into applications of Torah law. The scripturalization of legal practices suggests that not all references to Torah law reflect actual legal practice or even legal theory, as developed by scribes or judges. Nor does the re-use of these laws depend on the status of the Torah laws themselves – whether they are actual laws, idealized or theoretical laws, or non-legal scribal works.”

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:63 (1971).

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:53 (1971).

Westbrook, supra n.9, at 1991:71 (1977).

Working in this way has prompted me to modify a number of positions in the course of my research. Thus, this essay too must be regarded simply as a stage in work in progress.

Daube, supra n.21, at 1981:47 [ = 2000:499].

See further B.S. Jackson, “Susanna and the Singular History of Singular Witnesses”, Acta Juridica (1977), 37-54 (Essays in Honour of Ben Beinart), reprinted in Essays on Halakhah in the New Testament (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2008), 89-110, tracing also the subsequent use of the story in Canon Law, English law and Scots law.

Only in the legal reception history is the issue of due process to the elders raised.

See text at n.6, supra.

Hubbard, supra n.34, at 23-46; cf. D.A. Leggett, The Levirate and Goel Institutions in the Old Testament, with Special Attention to the Book of Ruth (Cherry Hill, New Jersey: Mack Publishing Company, 1974), 143-63. For more recent reviews of the literature, see Zevit, supra n.86; E.A. Jones III, Reading Ruth in the Restoration Period: A Call for Inclusion, St. Andrewes Ph.D. thesis, 2013 (kindly made available to me by the author), now (May 2016) published under the same title, by Bloomsbury.

E.g. M. David, “The Date of the Book of Ruth”, Oudtestamentische Studien 1 (1941), 55-63; Gordis, supra n.7, at 244; B. Levinson, Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 34 and n.23.

Some initial comments on this may be found at various points in Jackson, supra n.4, section 2 (at 81-89).

“Nebu’zarad’an, the captain of the guard, left in the land of Judah some of the poor people who owned nothing, and gave (vayiten) them vineyards and fields at the same time.” According to 2 Kings 25:8, he came to Jerusalem in the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnez’zar. See further P.R. Bedford, Temple Restoration in Early Achaemenid Judah (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001), 45. J. Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah (London; SCM Press, 1989), 60, observes: “The ground was thus prepared for social conflict – of the kind which flared up as late as Nehemiah’s administration (Neh. 5:1) – when Babylonian Jews began to trickle back in the early Persian period.”

L. Grabbe, History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period, Volume 1 (London and New York: T & T Clark International, 2004), 206. According to Neh. 5:5: “... other men have our fields and our vineyards”, though whether this is directed at the remainees or returnees is debated.

Ibid., at 287.

Supra n. 212, at 66.

J. Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 56-66 (New York: Doubleday, 2003, The Anchor Bible, Vol. 19B), 156-57 (footnotes, with full source citations, here omitted).

Ezek. 11:15 “Son of man, your brethren, even your brethren, your fellow exiles, the whole house of Israel, all of them, are those of whom the inhabitants of Jerusalem have said, ‘They have gone far from the LORD; to us this land is given for a possession.’”

That it was directed at returnees is not always noted, but fits well with Ruth. See esp. Ezra 9:4: “Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered round me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice.”

Neh. 13:1: “On that day they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people; and in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God.”; Neh. 13:23-25: “In those days also I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab; [24] and half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but the language of each people. [25] And I contended with them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair; and I made them take oath in the name of God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves.”

Num. 27:1-11, 36:1-9. We may note that there are elements of compromise here, as in Boaz’s first proposition to PA (Ruth 4:3, as discussed above). Similarly, the daughters of Zelophehad are given shares along with their uncles (betokh: Num, 27:7; cf. the division of Job’s estate: Job 42:15, where the implication of betokh is unambiguous).

For the use of nokhri in this context, see also Ezra 10:11, 17, 18, 44.

See B.S. Jackson, “The Jewish Background to the Prodigal Son: An Unresolved Problem”, supra n.153; idem, “A Tale of Two Prodigals”, Inauural Lecture at Liverpool Hope University, 2010 (on Luke’s parable and comparison with the 20th cent. history of “Brother Daniel”): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = ZjaUU-d2BuE

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