Ruth 4:1–7

Boaz Marries Ruth

4Boaz went to the meeting place at the town gate and sat down there. Then Elimelech’s nearest relative, the man whom Boaz had mentioned, came by, and Boaz called to him, “Come over here, my friend, and sit down.” So he went over and sat down. ²Then Boaz got ten of the leaders of the town and asked them to sit down there too. When they were seated, ³he said to his relative, “Now that Naomi has come back from Moab, she wants to sell the field that belonged to our relative Elimelech, ⁴and I think you ought to know about it. Now then, if you want it, buy it in the presence of these men sitting here. But if you don’t want it, say so, because the right to buy it belongs first to you and then to me.”

The man said, “I will buy it.”

⁵Boaz said, “Very well, but if you buy the field from Naomi, then you are also buying Ruth,^g the Moabite widow, so that the field will stay in the dead man’s family.”

⁶The man answered, “In that case I will give up my right to buy the field, because it would mean that my own children would not inherit it. You buy it; I would rather not.”

^7*Now in those days, to settle a sale or an exchange of property, it was the custom for the seller to take off his sandal and give it to the buyer. In this way the Israelites showed that the matter was settled.