¹³ Stay here tonight, and in the morning I will talk to him. If he is willing to redeem you, very well. Let him marry you. But if he is not willing, then as surely as the Lord lives, I will redeem you myself! Now lie down here until morning.”

⁵ Then Boaz told him, “Of course, your purchase of the land from Naomi also requires that you marry Ruth, the Moabite widow. That way she can have children who will carry on her husband’s name and keep the land in the family.”

²⁰ “May the Lord bless him!” Naomi told her daughter-in-law. “He is showing his kindness to us as well as to your dead husband.^[a] That man is one of our closest relatives, one of our family redeemers.”

⁵ “If two brothers are living together on the same property and one of them dies without a son, his widow may not be married to anyone from outside the family. Instead, her husband’s brother should marry her and have intercourse with her to fulfill the duties of a brother-in-law. ⁶ The first son she bears to him will be considered the son of the dead brother, so that his name will not be forgotten in Israel.

⁷ “But if the man refuses to marry his brother’s widow, she must go to the town gate and say to the elders assembled there, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel—he refuses to fulfill the duties of a brother-in-law by marrying me.’ ⁸ The elders of the town will then summon him and talk with him. If he still refuses and says, ‘I don’t want to marry her,’ ⁹ the widow must walk over to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. Then she must declare, ‘This is what happens to a man who refuses to provide his brother with children.’

¹⁶ Now when people take an oath, they call on someone greater than themselves to hold them to it. And without any question that oath is binding.

²⁴ “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies without children, his brother should marry the widow and have a child who will carry on the brother’s name.’^{[a] 25} Well, suppose there were seven brothers. The oldest one married and then died without children, so his brother married the widow. ²⁶ But the second brother also died, and the third brother married her. This continued with all seven of them. ²⁷ Last of all, the woman also died.

¹⁹ “They were my brothers, the sons of my own mother!” Gideon exclaimed. “As surely as the Lord lives, I wouldn’t kill you if you hadn’t killed them.”

²³ Now I call upon God as my witness that I am telling the truth. The reason I didn’t return to Corinth was to spare you from a severe rebuke.