Ruth 4:5
And Booz said to him: When thou shalt buy the field at the woman's hand, thou must take also Ruth the Moabitess, who was the wife of the deceased: to raise up the name of thy kinsman in his inheritance.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Cui dixit Booz : Quando emeris agrum de manu mulieris, Ruth quoque Moabitidem, quæ uxor defuncti fuit, debes accipere : ut suscites nomen propinqui tui in hæreditate sua.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εἶπεν Βόος Ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τοῦ κτήσασθαί σε τὸν ἀγρὸν ἐκ χειρὸς Νωεμεὶν καὶ παρὰ Ῥοὺθ τῆς Μωαβείτιδος γυναικὸς τοῦ τεθνηκότος, καὶ αὐτὴν κτήσασθαί σε δεῖ, ὥστε ἀναστῆσαι τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ τεθνηκότος ἐπὶ τῆς κληρονομίας αὐτοῦ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיֹּ֣אמֶר בֹּ֔עַז בְּיוֹם קְנוֹתְךָ֥ הַשָּׂדֶ֖ה מִיַּ֣ד נָעֳמִ֑י וּ֠מֵאֵת ר֣וּת הַמּוֹאֲבִיָּ֤ה אֵֽשֶׁת הַמֵּת֙ קניתי לְהָקִ֥ים שֵׁם הַמֵּ֖ת עַל נַחֲלָתֽוֹ
Haydock's commentary
When. Hebrew again corruptly, "On the day thou buyest the land of the hand of Noemi, I will also buy it of Ruth," &c. It ought to be, conformably to some manuscripts and the ancient versions, "thou must also take Ruth," ver. 10. (Capel, p. 144, and 362.) (Kennicott) (Haydock)
We see here the observance of two laws, the one preserving the inheritance in the same family, and the other obliging the next of kin to marry the widow of the deceased, if he would enjoy his land, Leviticus xxv. 10., and Deuteronomy xxv. 5. (Calmet)
Such widows as designed to comply with this condition, took possession of the land on the death of their husband, and conveyed it to those whom they married, till their eldest son became entitled to it. (Abulensis, q. 30 to 61.)
Inheritance. The son to be born, would be esteemed the heir of his legal parent. (Menochius)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Ambrose Exposition of the Christian Faith, Chapter X. Observations on the words of John the Baptist (John i. 30), which may be referred to divine fore-ordinance, but at any rate, as explained by the foregoing considerations, must be understood of the Incarnation. The precedence of Christ is mystically expounded, with reference to the history of Ruth
69. Again, St. John Baptist also taught in less weighty language what ideas they were he had combined, saying: “After me cometh a Man, Whose shoes I am not worthy to bear,” setting forth at least the more excellent dignity [of Christ], though not the eternity of His Divine Generation. Now these words are so fully intended of the Incarnation, that Scripture hath given us, in an earlier book, a human counterpart of the mystic sandal. For, by the Law, when a man died, the marriage bond with his wife was passed on to his brother, or other man next of kin, in order that the seed of the brother or next of kin might renew the life of the house, and thus it was that Ruth, though she was foreign-born, but yet had possessed a husband of the Jewish people, who had left a kinsman of near relation, being seen and loved of Boaz whilst gleaning and maintaining herself and her mother-in-law with that sh …
The Fathers are given as they wrote. Where a passage lays the Passion on the Jewish people, the Church teaches that it cannot be charged against all the Jews then living, nor against the Jews of today, and that all sinners were its authors (CCC 597, 598).