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and, softly lifting the coverlet, lays herself at his feet. At midnight, accidentally
touching the form at his feet, Boaz wakes with a start - and "bent down, and, behold a
woman lying at his feet!" In reply to his inquiry, the few words she speaks - exquisitely
beautiful in their womanly and Scriptural simplicity - explain her conduct and her
motive. Two things here require to be kept in mind: Boaz himself sees nothing strange
or unbecoming in what Ruth has done; on the contrary, he praises her conduct as
surpassing all her previous claims to his respect. Again, the language of Boaz implies
that Ruth, although daring what she had felt to be right, had done it with the fear which,
in the circumstances, womanly modesty would prompt. We almost seem to hear the low
whispered tones, and the tremor of her voice, as we catch the gentle, encouraging words
of Boaz' reply: "My daughter," and as he stills the throbbing of her heart with his
kindly-spoken, fatherly: "Fear not!" No thought but of purity and goodness,^334 and of
Israel's law intruded on the midnight converse of those who were honored to become
the ancestors of our Lord.
And now he, on his part, has explained to Ruth, how there is yet a nearer kinsman,
whose claims must first be set aside, if the law is to be strictly observed. And, assuredly,
if observance of the law of redemption, with all that it implied in Israel, had not been
the chief actuating motive of Boaz and Ruth, there would have been no need first to
refer the matter to the nearer kinsman, since there could be no possible hindrance to the
union of those whose hearts evidently belonged to each other.
The conduct of each party having been clearly determined, they lie down again in
silence. What remained of the short summer's night soon passed. Before the dawn had
so far brightened that one person could have recognized another, she left the threshing-
floor, bearing to her mother the gift of her kinsman, as if in pledge that her thoughts had
been understood by him, and that her hope concerning the dead and the living would be
realized.^335
The story now hastens to a rapid close. Early in the morning Boaz goes up to the gate,
the usual place for administering law, or doing business. He sits down as one party to a
case; calls the unnamed nearer kinsman, as he passes by, to occupy the place of the
other party, and ten of the elders as witnesses or umpires - the number ten being not
only symbolical of completeness, but from immemorial custom, and afterwards by law,
that which constituted a legal assembly. To understand what passed between Boaz and
the unnamed kinsman, we must offer certain explanations of the state of the case and of
the law applying to it, different from any hitherto proposed. For the difficulty lies in the
sale of the property by Naomi - nor is it diminished by supposing that she had not
actually disposed of, but was only offering it for sale. In general we may here say, that
the law (Numbers 27:8, 11) does not deal with any case precisely similar to that under
consideration. It only contemplates one of two things, the death of a childless man,
when his next-of-kin (speaking broadly) is bound to marry his widow (Deuteronomy
(^)