¹³ Remain tonight, and in the morning, if he will ^(A)redeem you, good; let him do it. But if he is not willing to redeem you, then, ^(B)as the Lord lives, I will redeem you. Lie down until the morning.”

⁵ Then Boaz said, “The day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth^[a] the Moabite, the widow of the dead, in order ^(A)to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance.”

²⁰ And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, ^(A)“May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken ^(B)the living or the dead!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of ^(C)our redeemers.”

¹⁹ And he said, “They were my brothers, the sons of my mother. ^(A)As the Lord lives, if you had saved them alive, I would not kill you.”

¹⁶ For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes ^(A)an oath is final for confirmation.

²⁴ saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ^(A)‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ ²⁵ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. ²⁶ So too the second and third, down to the seventh. ²⁷ After them all, the woman died.

Laws Concerning Levirate Marriage

^5 (A)“If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her ^(B)husband's brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her. ⁶ And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that ^(C)his name may not be blotted out of Israel. ⁷ And if the man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall ^(D)go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me.’ ⁸ Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, ^(E)‘I do not wish to take her,’ ⁹ then his brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and ^(F)pull his sandal off his foot and ^(G)spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to the man who does not ^(H)build up his brother's house.’

²³ But ^(A)I call God to witness against me—it was ^(B)to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth.