If kinsmen dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry outside [i.e., outside the family circle], unto a stranger; her husband's kinsman shall go in unto her, and take her to wife, and perform the duty of a husband's kinsmen unto her. And it shall be that the first-born whom she beareth shall stand upon the name [i.e., take the place, or arise in the place of the kinsman who is dead, that his name be not wiped out of Israel. And if the man like not to take his kinsman's wife, then let his kinsman's wife go up to the gate, unto the elders, and say, My husband's kinsman refuseth to raise up unto his kinsman a name in Israel; he will not do the duty of my husband's kinsman. Then the elders of the city shall call him, and speak unto him; and if he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her; then shall his kinsman's wife come unto him. in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his .face, and shall answer and say, So let it be done unto the man who will not build up his kinsman's house. And his name shall be called in Israel, House of the Shoe taken off [i.e., any one might call him "Baresole," without committing a legal offence; his family would be stigmatized as the family of a shoeless or barefooted vagabond,—"shoeless fellow" being equivalent to "miserable fellow," since it was only in extreme penury and misery that the Hebrews went barefoot].

This is the statute to which Boaz is about to appeal; and the one provision of it which still calls for explanation is that symbolic act, the taking off of the shoe. The custom was even thus early a very ancient one, as we are reminded in this Chapter (verse 7), and was observed in all cases of redemption and exchange: in fact, it was the legal form for confirming or binding legal or commercial transactions. And this custom had its origin in the fact, that when a man took possession of landed property, he did it by planting his shoe on the soil; he asserted his right to it by treading on the land he had bought. Thus the shoe symbolized a possession or estate which a man actually held, and which he could tread with his feet at will. Naturally and easily, therefore, the taking off of the shoe and handing it to another came to signify that a man renounced his own legal claim to a possession and transferred it to the neighbour to whom he gave his shoe: with the shoe he gave the right to .tread and till the land. This singular custom was not peculiar to the Jews; it also obtained anciently among the Germans. But among the Hebrews of the earlier times it grew into common use as a symbol of exchange, and was employed as a sign of the transfer of rights of any kind, and not only to denote the transfer of land: in short, it seems to have been as common as signing a deed or handing over a warrant is. with us. And if we bear this fact in mind, we often get a new light on even the most familiar passages. Thus, for example, the Prodigal Son, in our Lord's parable, has shoes put on his feet to denote that .he is reinstated in the inheritance he had left.

Of course a custom so common was not of itself ignommwus. But to the Hebrew there was as wide a difference between taking off his own shoe and having it taken off by another, as there is with us between lifting off one's own hat and having it knocked off by another. And in the case of the kinsman, who refused to do a goel's duty by his brother's widow, the shoe was taken off, before the Elders, by the woman whom he had refused to marry. He was thus publicly and ceremoniously branded as one who had broken the law, as having failed in the sacred and imperative duties of kinship, as having preferred his private interests and aims to the welfare of the Commonwealth. And this public disgrace was enhanced by the indignity of being spat upon by the woman he had wronged, and having his whole family saddled with a nickname—" House of the Shoeless," or "Baresole's Kin"—.which exposed them to general ridicule and contempt.

This severe law was not enforced by Boaz in all its severity. But, in order to make his own marriage with Ruth lawful and legal, he was obliged to appeal to it, and, in part, to put it in force. His mode of action shews how primitive the time was, how simple the social organization. Obviously there was as yet no king in Israel, no accessible judge even, before whom he might carry his suit. And so, very early in the morning, Boaz hurries from the threshing-floor that he may seat himself in the Gate in time to catch those who, like himself, had slept outside the walls, and will be returning into the city, and those who may leave the city for the fields. He has not long taken his seat before the goel, the unnamed kinsman, passes by. Boaz calls on him to sit down,—using a legal form of summons from which his kinsman would understand that he had some legal business to transact with him.

We translate the summons. "Ho, So-and-so," or, "Ho, Such-an-one, turn aside, sit down here." But it is difficult, if not impossible, so to translate the Hebrew form as to convey its full significance. In the Original we have two Hebrew words, Peloni almoni, and these two words, apparently, embody one of those legal obliquities of which most ancient systems of law retain some trace; as, for example, in those fictitious personages, John Doe and Richard Roe of the English action for ejectment, who have only recently been abolished, and in the custom which, till a few years since, obtained in the German courts of suing, not in one's own proper name, but in some common and familiar name, such as Hans.

The ancient Hebrew form of procedure was of this oblique kind. Instead of summoning even his near kinsman by his personal name, Boaz cried "Peloni almoni, turn aside, and sit down,"—the words meaning literally "such" and "nameless;" the effect of using this antique form being, so far as we cai1 now recover it, very much as if he had summoned a certain anonymous person before the Elders instead of giving him his proper name; just as a few years ago certain fictitious personages, John Doe and Richard Roe, might have been, and were, summoned into an English court. What the origin of the form was, whether it denoted that only a friendly suit was to be tried, or whether it was intended to cover errors of misdescription, or whether it grew out of the solemn Eastern courtesy which would shrink from naming a man when threatening him with vexation or harm, it is impossible to say: but, in any case, we have here, in this phrase, an old legal fossil, a remnant of a still more ancient legal form in one of the most ancient systems of jurisprudence.

Peloni almoni, in the person of the unnamed kinsman of Boaz, responds to the summons. And now, his legal adversary or respondent being secured, Boaz sits and watches the citizens as they pass in and out, a£king now this and now that grave elder to sit down, until he has ten, the legal number, of the best reputed men of Bethlehem to act at once as judges and witnesses of his procedure. In accordance with Oriental custom, many other citizens, seeing these grave elders assembled, and understanding that the wealthy and pious Boaz had some business of grave importance to. transact, would add themselves, unbidden yet not unwelcome, to the company, that they too might hear and see what was going on.

Boaz opens the proceedings by formally announcing to his kinsman that Naomi has sold the field, the parcel of land, which formerly belonged to their common kinsman, Elimelech. Naomi may either have sold this land to supply her necessities, though, if that were so, one hardly sees how she should have come to extreme want in the lapse of a single year; or, more probably, she may have sold it for the express pur11ose of putting the law m motion, and compelling her kinsman to redeem it. In either case the kinsman was legally bound both to redeem the estate and to marry Naomi, or, should she waive her claim or be past child-bearing, to marry Ruth. Each of these two women was a childless widow, and each had a claim on the estate. Should neither of them have a child, the family of Elimelech would become extinct, "his name would be put out of Israel." Here clearly, then, was a case in which the goel was bound to come forward and do his duty. And, indeed, the goel of Naomi admits the claim; nay, more, so long as he thinks it is only the redemption of Elimelech's land that is in question, he. is willing to satisfy the claim. To the appeal and inquiry of Boaz, "Wilt thou redeem?" he formally replies, "I will redeem it."

Now. Boaz had set his heart on marrying Ruth, and therefore he must have heard his kinsman's reply with some dismay. But one resource is left him. His kinsman may not admit that he is bound to marry Ruth, or he may not care to. marry her, even if he admit the obligation. . And hence Boaz now rejoins, " But, if you redeem the .land of Elimelech, you must also take Ruth, the Moabitess, to wife, and raise up the name of the dead man on his inheritance. Are you prepared to do this also?" The kinsman is not prepared to assume this function of the goel. And, in an ordinary case, he would have been in no little embarrassment between his reluctance to marry his kinsman's widow and his fear lest, should he refuse, she should inflict the disgraceful penalty of his refusal upon him. But Boaz has made the way easy for him. He has brought neither Naomi nor Ruth with him, so that his kinsman has no indignity to fear. For the present, at least, his shoe will not be pulled off, nor will the slighted and injured woman spit in. his face. And, moreover, Boaz has expressed his perfect willingness to discharge all the duties. of the goel should his kinsman decline them. His motive in thus sparing his kinsman is not simply, I suppose, either a kindly consideration for a man closely related to him or his love for Ruth, but also the conviction that an Israelite, caring only for the letter of the law and not for its spirit, might honestly doubt whether he were bound to marry his" brother's" widow when that widow was a daughter of Moab. True, Ruth had come to put her trust under the shadow of Jehovah's wings. True, she was known as a good and brave woman in all the city of Bethlehem. But, none the less, she was by birth an alien, one of the heathen women, with whom the sons of Israel were forbidden to intermarry. The law was doubtful: if the appeal to it were pushed too far he might defeat his own end.

We need not think over hardly, therefore, even of this anonymous kinsman. He may have been, probably he was, a just man according to his lights. Walking by the strict requirements of the law of Israel he may have honestly doubted whether he were bound to marry Mahlon's Moabitish widow. Undoubtedly it was a sin against Hebrew law for Mahlon to have married her while she was a heathen, even if it were not a sin to take her to wife now that she was a proselyte. Could, then, the widow of an .illegal marriage claim quite the same rights with the widow of a legal marriage, even though she afterwards became a proselyte to the Hebrew faith? And if he was not bound to marry her, would it be prudent to marry her? Evidently he thinks it would not be prudent. He declines to redeem, on such terms, the inheritance of his dead kinsman, "lest I mar mine own inheritance." By which he meant, I think, that his doubt as to the right conferred on Ruth by the Hebrew law was reinforced by a Hebrew superstition. For, in Israel, marriage with the daughter of an alien race was held to be "unlucky," even when it was lawful. Many such marriages had proved unhappy and disastrous. And, by expressly calling Ruth the Moabitess in his challenge, Boaz seems to have touched his kinsman's superstitious fears. No doubt, the calamities which had befallen Elimelech and Naomi were popularly attributed to their sojourn in the Field of Moab. No doubt, the popular voice of Bethlehem affirmed that Chilion and Mahlon had been cut off before their time because they had married "strange women;" Here, then, was one Hebrew family in imminent danger of extinction solely because of such a marriage as was now proposed. The goel fears a similar fate. He fears that, should he marry Ruth, he may injure his own inheritance,"—fears that he too may die before his time, and his name be put out of Israel. He, therefore, will run no such risk: let Boaz run it, if he will.

This, I believe, was his real reason for refusing to discharge the duty of the goel. And it is a curious comment on his narrow selfish ambition. that, of this man who was bent on preserving his name and fame, who would run no risk of having his name cut off from the gate of his place, neither Israel nor the world knows even so much as the mere name. He is unnamed in the very Book which recounts his story; we know him simply as the "anonymous kinsman:" while Boaz, who had no such selfish ambition, who held that in every nation they who trust God and work righteousness are acceptable with Him, . lives for ever on the sacred page, and is enrolled, together with Ruth, in the pedigree of Him whose Name is above every name.

1) This singular, and, if judged by modern standards, immoral, law of Levirate marriage, like other of the laws of Moses—e.g., the law of divorce—which have been called in question, was a concession to " the hardness of their hearts" for whom he legislated; and so far from being a license to immorality, it was really a limitation of the current immoralities of the time. In ages long anterior to his, a wife, being bought from her parents, became the property of her husband, and too valuable a property to be given up at his death. With other property she descended to his heirs, commonly his brothers, any one of whom might possess her; some tribes going even to the shameful excess of all possessing her in common. Michael is, in his Commentaries on the Laws of Moses (Book iii. Chap. v. Art. 98), has well brought out the process and advance by which this hateful custom grew into a legalized system of Levirate marriages. This system obtained among the Canaanitish tribes for centuries before the time of Moses, as is proved by the shocking story recorded in Genesis xxxviii. All that the great legislator of the Hebrews is responsible for is, that he set still straiter limits to the prevailing custom, including among the duties of the Goel that he, and he only, should "raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead might not be cut off from among his brethren."

2) It is probable that in the appeal of Boaz and the response of the Elders we have another "survival" of an ancient system of jurisprudence.