{"commentary":{"id":"adam-clarke","name":"Adam Clarke Bible Commentary","website":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Clarke","licenseUrl":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/","licenseNotes":null,"licenseNotice":null,"englishName":"Adam Clarke Bible Commentary","language":"eng","textDirection":"rtl","sha256":"92e28c9363c876d215e296f2fe04abb3ab7e34a2aacebdf06bd62ae79c6e3dba","availableFormats":["json"],"listOfBooksApiLink":"/api/c/adam-clarke/books.json","listOfProfilesApiLink":"/api/c/adam-clarke/profiles.json","numberOfBooks":57,"totalNumberOfChapters":854,"totalNumberOfVerses":13318,"totalNumberOfProfiles":0,"languageName":"English","languageEnglishName":"English"},"book":{"id":"RUT","commentaryId":"adam-clarke","name":"Ruth","commonName":"Ruth","introduction":"Preface to the Book of Ruth When and by whom the book of Ruth was written, are points not agreed on among critics and commentators. As to the transactions recorded in it, they are variously placed. In the book itself there is no other notation of time than merely this, that the things came to pass in the days when the judges ruled; therefore some have placed these transactions under Ehud; others, under Gideon; others, under Barak; others, under Abimelech; and others, under Shamgar. This last is the opinion of Archbishop Usher; and most chronologers adopt it. The book is evidently an Appendix to the book of Judges, and contains a perfect history in itself; and therefore should not be inserted in any part of that book. It also seems to be an Introduction to the books of Samuel, in which the history of David is contained, as it gives the genealogy of this prince. It is also not without its use in matters which respect the Gospels, as it ascertains the line by which Jesus Christ came. As to the author, he is as uncertain as the time. It has been attributed to Hezekiah, to Ezra, and to Samuel; and it is most likely that the author of the two books of Samuel was also the writer of this little book, as it seems necessary to complete his plan of the history of David. See the preface to the first book of Samuel. The sum of the history contained in this book is the following: A man of Bethlehem, named Elimelech, with his wife Naomi, and his two sons Mahlon and Chilion, left his own country in the time of a famine, and went to sojourn in the land of Moab. There he died; and Naomi married her two sons to two Moabitish women: Mahlon married Ruth, who is the chief subject of this book; and Chilion married one named Orpah. In about ten years both these brethren died; and Naomi, accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, set out to return to the land of Judah, she having heard that plenty was again restored to her country. On the way she besought her daughters to return to their own country and kindred. Orpah took her advice, and, after an affectionate parting, returned; but Ruth insisted on accompanying her mother-in-law. They arrived in Bethlehem about the time of harvest; and Ruth went into the fields to glean for their support. The ground on which she was accidentally employed belonged to Boaz, one of the relatives of Elimelech, her father-in-law; who, finding who she was, ordered her to be kindly treated, and appointed her both meat and drink with his own servants. Finding that she was by marriage his kinswoman, he purposed to take her to wife, if a nearer kinsman who was then living should refuse. He was accordingly applied to, refused to take Ruth, and surrendered his right to her, according to the custom of those times, at the gate of Bethlehem, before the elders of the city. Boaz then took her to wife, by whom she had Obed, who was father to Jesse, the father of David. To the questions, Who was Boaz? and, Who was Ruth? no satisfactory answer can be given: all we know for certain is, that Boaz was an Ephraimite of Bethlehem; and Ruth a Moabitess, and consequently educated a heathen. But what we want in certainty several have attempted to supply by conjecture; with them Boaz was the same as Ibzan, Jdg 12:8-10; and Ruth was the daughter of Eglon, king of Moab. This is the opinion maintained by the Chaldee Targum on this book; to which I shall, in the course of the notes, have farther occasion to refer. The rabbins say that Elimelech was brother to Salmon, who married Rahab; and that Naomi was his niece. The genealogy of David, as stated in this book, is as follows: - A.M. 2236 Judah Pharez Ezron, called also Hezron Aram, called also Ram Amminadab Nahshon Salmon, who married Rahab Boaz, who married Ruth Obed, who begat Jesse A.M. 2919 David born This chronology is according to Archbishop Usher; and includes, from Judah to David six hundred and seventy years.","order":8,"numberOfChapters":4,"sha256":"6cc5081ecfcb9af233555749eaec4243c7ab6ad0798ef9337a898b895b29634d","firstChapterNumber":1,"firstChapterApiLink":"/api/c/adam-clarke/RUT/1.json","firstChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"adam-clarke","book":"RUT","chapter":1},"lastChapterNumber":4,"lastChapterApiLink":"/api/c/adam-clarke/RUT/4.json","lastChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"adam-clarke","book":"RUT","chapter":4},"totalNumberOfVerses":62},"chapter":{"number":4,"content":[{"type":"verse","number":1,"content":["Then went Boaz up to the gate - We have often had occasion to remark that the gate or entrance to any city or town was the place where the court of justice was ordinarily kept. For an account of the officers in such places, see the note on Deu 16:18.\nHo, such a one! - sit down here - This familiar mode of compellation is first used here. The original is שבה פה פלני אלמני shebah poh, peloni almoni! \"Hark ye, Mr. Such-a-one of such a place! come and sit down here.\" This is used when the person of the individual is known, and his name and residence unknown. אלמני almoni comes from אלם alam, to be silent or hidden, hence the Septuagint render it by κρυφε thou unknown person: פלני peloni comes from פלה palah, to sever or distinguish; you of such a particular place. Modes of compellation of this kind are common in all languages."]},{"type":"verse","number":2,"content":["He took ten men - Probably it required this number to constitute a court. How simple and how rational was this proceeding!\n1. The man who had a suit went to the city gates.\n2. Here he stopped till the person with whom he had the suit came to the gate on his way to his work.\n3. He called him by name, and he stopped and sat down.\n4. Then ten elders were called, and they came and sat down.\n5. When all this was done, the appellant preferred his suit.\n6. Then the appellee returned his answer.\n7. When the elders heard the case, and the response of the appellee, they pronounced judgment, which judgment was always according to the custom of the place.\n8. When this was done, the people who happened to be present witnessed the issue.\nAnd thus the business was settled without lawyers or legal casuistry. A question of this kind, in one of our courts of justice, in these enlightened times, would require many days' previous preparation of the attorney, and several hours' arguing between counsellor Botherum and counsellor Borum, till even an enlightened and conscientious judge would find it extremely difficult to decide whether Naomi might sell her own land, and whether Boaz or Peloni might buy it! O, glorious uncertainty of modern law!"]},{"type":"verse","number":3,"content":["Naomi - selleth a parcel of land - She was reduced to want; the immediate inheritors were extinct, and it was now open for the next heir to purchase the land, and thus preserve the inheritance in the family according to the custom of Israel."]},{"type":"verse","number":4,"content":["I thought to advertise thee - Both Dr. Kennicott and Father Houbigant have noticed several corruptions in the pronouns of this and the following verses; and their criticisms have been confirmed by a great number of MSS. since collated. The text corrected reads thus: \"And I said I will reveal this to thy ear, saying, Buy it before the inhabitants, and before the elders of my people. If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it; but if thou wilt not redeem it, tell me, that I may know; for there is none to redeem it but thou, and I who am next to thee. And he said, I will redeem it. And Boaz said, In the day that thou redeemest the land from the hand of Naomi, thou wilt also acquire Ruth, the wife of the dead, that thou mayest raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance;\" Rut 4:4, Rut 4:5. - See Kennicott's Dissertations, vol. i., p. 449; Houbigant in loco; and the Variae Lectiones of Kennicott and De Rossi. This is Boaz's statement of the case before the kinsman, and before the people and the elders.\nI will redeem it - I will pay down the money which it is worth. He knew not of the following condition."]},{"type":"verse","number":5,"content":["Thou must buy it also of Ruth - More properly, Thou wilt also acquire Ruth. Thou canst not get the land without taking the wife of the deceased and then the children which thou mayest have shall be reputed the children of Mahlon, thy deceased kinsman."]},{"type":"verse","number":6,"content":["I cannot redeem it for myself - The Targum gives the proper sense of this passage: \"And the kinsman said, On this ground I cannot redeem it, because I have a wife already; and I have no desire to take another, lest there should be contention in my house, and I should become a corrupter of my inheritance. Do thou redeem it, for thou hast no wife; for I cannot redeem it.\" This needs no comment. But still the gloss of the Targum has no foundation in the law of Moses. See the law, Deu 25:5-9."]},{"type":"verse","number":7,"content":["A man plucked off his shoe - The law of such a case is given at large in Deu 25:5-9. It was simply this: If a brother, who had married a wife, died without children, the eldest brother was to take the widow, and raise up a family to the brother deceased; and he had a right to redeem the inheritance, if it had been alienated. But if the person who had the right of redemption would not take the woman, she was to pull off his shoe and spit in his face, and he was ever after considered as a disgraced man. In the present case the shoe only is taken off, probably because the circumstances of the man were such as to render it improper for him to redeem the ground and take Ruth to his wife; and because of this reasonable excuse, the contemptuous part of the ceremony is omitted. See the note on Deu 25:9."]},{"type":"verse","number":11,"content":["We are witnesses - It is not very likely that any writing was drawn up. There was an appeal made to the people then present, whether they had seen and understood the transaction; who answered, We have witnessed it. If any minutes of court were kept, then the transaction was entered probably in some such words as these: \"On ___ day of ____, Boaz bought the land of Elimelech from Naomi his widow, and took Ruth, her daughter-in-law, to wife; ____, who had the nearest right, refusing to buy the land on the conditions then proposed.\"\nThe Lord make this woman - like Rachel and like Leah - May thy family be increased by her means, as the tribes were formed by means of Rachel and Leah, wives of the patriarch Jacob!\nWhich two did build the house of Israel - We have already seen that בן ben, a son, comes from the root בנה banah, he built; and hence אבן eben, a stone, because as a house is built of stones, so is a family of children. There is a similar figure in Plautus, Mostell. Act i., sec. 2, ver. 37.\n- Nunc etiam volo Dicere,\nut homines aedium esse similes arbitremini.\nPrimum dum parentes fabri liberum sunt,\nEt fundamentum liberorum substruunt.\n\"I would also observe, that ye men are similar to houses; ye parents are the fabricators of the children, and they are the foundation of the building.\""]},{"type":"verse","number":12,"content":["Like the house of Pharez - This was very appropriate; for from Pharez, the son of Judah, by Tamar, came the family of the Beth-lehemites and that of Elimelech."]},{"type":"verse","number":13,"content":["So Boaz took Ruth - The law of Moses had prohibited the Moabites, even to the tenth generation, from entering into the congregation of the Lord; but this law, the Jews think, did not extend to women; and even if it had, Ruth's might be considered an exempt case, as she had been already incorporated into the family by marriage; and left her own country, people, and gods, to become a proselyte to the true God in the land of Israel."]},{"type":"verse","number":16,"content":["Naomi took the child - This might do for Naomi, but it was bad for the child. A child, unless remarkably healthy and robust, will suffer considerably by being nursed by an old woman, especially if the child sleep with her. The aged gain refreshment and energy by sleeping with the young; and from the same means the young derive premature decrepitude. The vigor which is absorbed by the former is lost by the latter. It is a foolish and destructive custom to permit young children, which is a common case, to sleep with aged aunts and old grandmothers. Bacon's grand secret of the cure of old age, couched in so many obscure and enigmatical terms, is simply this: Let young persons sleep constantly with those who are aged and infirm. And it was on this principle that the physicians of David recommended a young healthy girl to sleep with David in his old age. They well knew that the aged infirm body of the king would absorb a considerable portion of healthy energy from the young woman."]},{"type":"verse","number":17,"content":["The neighbors gave it a name - That is, they recommended a name suitable to the circumstances of the case; and the parents and grandmother adopted it.\nThey called his name Obed - עובד obed, serving, from עבד abad, he served. Why was this name given? Because he was to be the nourisher of her old age, Rut 4:15. And so he must be by lying in her bosom, even if services in future life were wholly left out of the question. These neighbors of Naomi were skillful people. See on Rut 4:16 (note). Other meanings, of which I am not ignorant, have been derived from these words; those who prefer them have my consent.\nHe is the father of Jesse, the father of David - And for the sake of this conclusion, to ascertain the line of David, and in the counsel of God to fix and ascertain the line of the Messiah was this instructive little book written."]},{"type":"verse","number":18,"content":["Now these are the generations - The Targum gives a copious paraphrase on this and the following verses, I shall insert the principal parts in their proper places."]},{"type":"verse","number":19,"content":["Hezron begat Ram - He is called Aram here by the Septuagint, and also by St. Matthew, Mat 1:3."]},{"type":"verse","number":20,"content":["Amminadab begat Nahshon - The Targum adds, \"And Nahshon was chief of the house of his father in the tribe of Judah.\"\nNahshon begat Salmon - In the Hebrew it is שלמה Salmah, which Houbigant thinks was an error of an ancient scribe, before any final letters were acknowledged in the Hebrew alphabet: for then the word would be written שלמון Salmon, which a scribe, after final letters were admitted, might mistake for שלמה Salmah, and so write it, instead of שלמון Salmon, the ו vau and final nun in conjunction (ון) bearing some resemblance to ה.\nThe Targum calls him \"Salmah the Just; he was the Salmah of Beth-lehem and Netopha, whose sons abolished the watches which Jeroboam set over the highways; and their works and the works of their father were good in Netopha.\""]},{"type":"verse","number":21,"content":["And Salmon begat Boaz - The Targum goes on, \"And Salmon begat Absan the judge; he is Boaz the Just, on account of whose righteousness the people of the house of Israel were redeemed from the hands of their enemies; and at whose supplication the famine departed from the land of Israel.\"\nAnd Boaz begat Obed - \"Who served the Lord in this world with a perfect heart.\""]},{"type":"verse","number":22,"content":["And Obed begat Jesse - \"Who,\" says the Targum, \"also is called Nachash, נחש because neither iniquity nor corruption was found in him, that he should be delivered into the hands of the angel of death, that he might take away his soul from him. And he lived many days until the counsel was remembered before the Lord, that the serpent gave to Eve the wife of Adam, that she should eat of the tree; by eating of the fruit of which they became wise, to distinguish between good and evil: and by that counsel all the inhabitants of the earth became guilty of death; and by this iniquity Jesse the Just died.\" Here is no mean or indistinct reference to the doctrine of original sin: and it shows us, at least, what the very ancient rabbins thought on the subject. I should observe that these additions are taken from the London Polyglot; they are not found in that of Antwerp; but they are the same that appear in the Targum of the great Bible printed by Bomberg, at Venice, in 1547-49.\nAnd Jesse begat David - To this no comment is added by the Targumist, as the history of this king is found in the following book.\nThe ten persons whose genealogy is recorded in the five last verses, may be found, with a trifling change of name, in the genealogical list in Mat 1:3-6, as forming important links in the line of the Messiah. To introduce this appears to have been the principal object of the writer, as introductory to the following books, where the history of David, the regal progenitor and type of the Messiah, is so particularly detailed.\nFor the account of the birth of Pharez and his brother Zarah, the reader is requested to refer to Genesis 38:12-30, and to the notes there; and for several particulars in the genealogy itself, to the notes on Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38, where the wisdom, goodness, and providence of God, in the preservation of this line, are particularly noticed.\nMasoretic Notes on Ruth\nNumber of verses in Ruth is 85.\nMiddle verse is Rut 2:21.\nWe have already seen that Archbishop Usher places the event mentioned here in A.M. 2686, about one hundred years after the conquest of Canaan."]}],"introduction":"Boaz gathers a council of the elders at the city gates, states the case, and proposes to the nearest kinsman to redeem the inheritance of Elimelech, and take Ruth to wife, Rut 4:1-5. The kinsman refuses, and relinquishes has right to Boaz, Rut 4:6. The manner of redemption in such cases, Rut 4:7, Rut 4:8. Boaz redeems the inheritance in the presence of the elders, and of the people, who witness the contract, and pray for God's blessing upon the marriage, Rut 4:9-12. Boaz takes Ruth for wife, and she bears a son, Rut 4:13. The people's observations on the birth of the child, Rut 4:14, Rut 4:15. It is given to Naomi to nurse, Rut 4:16. The neighboring women name the child, and the book concludes with the genealogy of David, Rut 4:17-22."},"thisChapterLink":"/api/c/adam-clarke/RUT/4.json","thisChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"adam-clarke","book":"RUT","chapter":4},"nextChapterApiLink":"/api/c/adam-clarke/1SA/1.json","nextChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"adam-clarke","book":"1SA","chapter":1},"previousChapterApiLink":"/api/c/adam-clarke/RUT/3.json","previousChapterReference":{"commentaryId":"adam-clarke","book":"RUT","chapter":3},"numberOfVerses":17}