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Then Boaz told him, “Your purchase of the land from Naomi requires your marriage to Ruth so that she can have children to carry on her husband’s name and to inherit the land.”

“Then I can’t do it,” the man replied. “For her son would become an heir to my property too;[a] you buy it.”

In those days it was the custom in Israel for a man transferring a right of purchase to pull off his sandal and hand it to the other party; this publicly validated the transaction.

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Footnotes

  1. Ruth 4:6 “For her son would become an heir to my property too,” or “That would ruin my own inheritance,” i.e., complicate his estate for the children he already had.

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