Ruth 4:6
He answered: I yield up my right of next akin: for I must not cut off the posterity of my own family. Do thou make use of my privilege, which I profess I do willingly forego.
Open Ruth 4:6 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Qui respondit : Cedo juri propinquitatis : neque enim posteritatem familiæ meæ delere debeo : tu meo utere privilegio, quo me libenter carere profiteor.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ εἶπεν ὁ ἀγχιστεύς Οὐ δυνήσομαι ἀγχιστεῦσαι ἐμαυτῷ, μή ποτε διαφθείρω τὴν κληρονομίαν μου· ἀγχίστευσον σεαυτῷ τὴν ἀγχιστείαν μου, ὅτι οὐ δυνήσομαι ἀγχιστεῦσαι.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיֹּ֣אמֶר הַגֹּאֵ֗ל לֹ֤א אוּכַל֙ לגאול לִ֔י פֶּן אַשְׁחִ֖ית אֶת נַחֲלָתִ֑י גְּאַל לְךָ֤ אַתָּה֙ אֶת גְּאֻלָּתִ֔י כִּ֥י לֹא אוּכַ֖ל לִגְאֹֽל
Haydock's commentary
Family. Hebrew, "I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I spoil my own inheritance." He was afraid of having too many children, and sensible that the first son that should be born of the proposed marriage, would not be counted as his. (Haydock)
The miserable Onan had the same pretext, Genesis xxxviii. 9. Chaldean, "Since I cannot make use of this privilege, having already a wife, and not being allowed to take another, as that might cause dissensions in my family, and spoil my inheritance, do thou redeem it,….as thou art unmarried."
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).