Ruth 4:7
Now this in former times was the manner in Israel between kinsmen, that if at any time one yielded his right to another: that the grant might be sure, the man put off his shoe, and gave it to his neighhour; this was a testimony of cession of right in Israel.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Hic autem erat mos antiquitus in Israël inter propinquos, ut siquando alter alteri suo juri cedebat, ut esset firma concessio, solvebat homo calceamentum suum, et dabat proximo suo : hoc erat testimonium cessionis in Israël.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ τοῦτο τὸ δικαίωμα ἔμπροσθεν ἐν τῷ Ἰσραὴλ ἐπὶ τὴν ἀγχιστείαν καὶ ἐπὶ τὸ ἀντάλλαγμα, τοῦ στῆσαι πάντα λόγον· καὶ ὑπελύετο ὁ ἀνὴρ τὸ ὑπόδημα αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐδίδου τῷ πλησίον αὐτοῦ τῷ ἀγχιστεύοντι τὴν ἀγχιστείαν αὐτοῦ· καὶ τοῦτο ἦν μαρτύριον ἐν Ἰσραήλ.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וְזֹאת֩ לְפָנִ֨ים בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל עַל הַגְּאוּלָּ֤ה וְעַל הַתְּמוּרָה֙ לְקַיֵּ֣ם כָּל דָּבָ֔ר שָׁלַ֥ף אִ֛ישׁ נַעֲל֖וֹ וְנָתַ֣ן לְרֵעֵ֑הוּ וְזֹ֥את הַתְּעוּדָ֖ה בְּיִשְׂרָאֵֽל
Haydock's commentary
Israel. Hebrew, "and this was the testimony in Israel." The ceremony here specified is very different from that which the law prescribed, Deuteronomy xxv. 7. But Josephus says, that they complied with all the regulations of the law, and that Ruth was present on this occasion. (Calmet)
Perhaps the law was not executed in all its rigour, when another was found to marry the widow, (Worthington) and when no real brother was living. (Tirinus)
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).