The Man With No NameRuth 4:1–8

Introduction 31:40

Today we are in Ruth chapter 4. If you are new here, or have not been here in a while, I am what is called an expository preacher. This is my weekly reminder, the fine print I want everybody to know. It is a big term that means I do not go topic by topic. I like to go book by book. Since August we have been going through the book of Ruth. It is only four chapters, and it has been a while, but we are still here, and we will finish in the next couple of weeks. Today we are reading chapter 4, verses 1 through 8.

The story so far 32:20

Let me give you an even quicker recap for anyone who missed it. There was a woman named Naomi, married to a man named Elimelech. They lived in Bethlehem, in Judah, and a famine forced them to go elsewhere. They went to Moab with their sons, and the sons found wives. They lived there about ten years, and then all the men died.

Naomi tells her daughters-in-law, “I cannot take care of you. Go back to your families and let them help you.” One of them, Orpah, says, “I don’t want to. I love you. But I will listen.” She leaves, and there is nothing wrong with that. The other was Ruth. The Scripture says Ruth clung to Naomi and said, “Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.”

Then God provides through a part of His law called gleaning. Farmers were not supposed to take every last thing for profit. They were to leave some, especially at the edges and corners, for travelers passing through, since there was no late-night McDonald’s drive-through, and for people in need, like widows and orphans. So these widows could gather food to survive. God orchestrates all of it to lead Naomi and Ruth to someone who will take care of them. His name is Boaz.

Chapter 3 in three points 34:30

The last thing I want you to remember is chapter 3, which we covered over the last two weeks.

First, Naomi sent Ruth to the threshing floor with a bold plan, built on weeks of watching Boaz’s character, to do things in the correct order, the way the law said to do them.

Second, Ruth made her request using the same covenant language Boaz had first used about her: “Take your maidservant under your wing, for you are a close relative.” She hands his blessing from chapter 2, verse 12, back to him, this time as a proposal.

Third, Boaz agrees, but he reveals that there is someone closer in relation who has the first right to care for her and the land. He sends Ruth home at first light, to protect her from anyone who might harm her or talk about her character, and he will not rest until the matter is resolved that day. That day has now arrived.

Reading the passage 36:00

[Pastor Tim reads Ruth 4:1–8 from the New King James Version.]

First, if you go to our website, there are resources that explain all of this in detail. If you have not been on the Ruth series page lately, you will be pleasantly surprised. I have been compiling my notes, and there are character studies on Boaz, Ruth, and Naomi, and explanations of these customs. When you get home, go download them. Now let’s go back to verse 1.

Verse 1: the city gate 38:50

[Reads Ruth 4:1.]

Ruth has gone home in the morning. Boaz gets up from the threshing floor and says, “The sun is up. It is time to put this plan into motion.” He goes up to the gate and sits down, and the close relative he has been talking about comes by right then.

There is a reason Boaz chose the city gate. First, the city gate was the courthouse and town hall of an Israelite town, the public place where legal business and disputes were settled in front of witnesses. Boaz is not improvising. He does not get up and say, “I wonder where so-and-so will be. I will try the gate and hope he walks by.” He knows his goal. The big picture is to redeem the plot of land and to marry Ruth, so that Naomi and Ruth are taken care of. He is walking into a courtroom and sitting down to wait his turn.

Second, walled towns like Bethlehem usually had one main gate, a single choke point everyone had to pass through on the way out to their fields in the morning. The timing is not luck. Boaz likely knew this man’s routine well enough to know he would be passing through that very morning, the same way Naomi knew Boaz’s habits at the threshing floor back in chapter 3. And remember the last thing Naomi said in chapter 3: the man will not rest until he has settled the matter this very day.

He is not passing time. He is not waiting for the court docket to open. He has engineered this encounter for the first possible day, exactly as Naomi predicted.

So-and-so 43:15

Notice what Boaz says to him: “Come aside, friend. Sit down here.” He calls him “friend.” That is interesting in English and even more interesting in Hebrew. I am probably butchering the pronunciation, so forgive me, but the Hebrew here is peloni almoni. It does not literally mean “friend.” It means “so-and-so.” That is what the author of Ruth uses for the name of the close relative. “Come aside, so-and-so, and sit down here.”

It is a deliberate placeholder for a name. It is intentional. This man is never mentioned by name in the entire book. Boaz, meanwhile, is named consistently, and by the end of this chapter, as we will see next week, he is written into the genealogy that leads to King David, the man after God’s own heart. And if he is in the genealogy of David, spoiler alert, he is in the genealogy of Jesus.

Boaz is a name I knew before I ever preached my first sermon from the book of Ruth. I did not know so-and-so’s. The narrator withholding this man’s name, while making sure Boaz is remembered forever, is its own quiet verdict on the two of them. One man went above and beyond, and we know his name. One man did nothing wrong, as we will see in a few minutes, and thousands of years later he is known in the Scriptures as “so-and-so.”

What was the old line from The Sandlot? Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. The real hero of this story is God. But Boaz is a hero in it, and we know his name thousands of years later. And that is just verse 1.

Verse 2: ten witnesses 46:42

[Reads Ruth 4:2.]

Now Boaz is not only getting so-and-so to sit down. He calls ten of the city’s elders to sit with them as official witnesses before he says a word about the transaction. As far as we read, he gives no reason. “I need you to sit down, and I need ten witnesses.”

This made the proceedings formal and unimpeachable. It was a number of witnesses large enough that nobody could come back later and claim this was handled informally or improperly. I could ask one person to be my witness, and the two of us could form a plan, and I could pay that person on the side. With ten witnesses, that is much harder. It is difficult to scheme your way into selling the land, claiming afterward that it was not done right, and keeping both the profit and the property. Boaz makes sure everything is set up properly before he moves forward.

The same scene in Genesis 23 48:20

This kind of public, witnessed land transaction at a city gate is not unique to Ruth 4. Go back to Genesis 23, and you will find Abraham doing essentially the same thing when he buys the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite. It is also at the gate, also before witnesses, and also to secure permanent family land rights.

The first readers of this book would have recognized the shape of this scene immediately. They would not have needed a history book. They knew it the way we know that the speed limit on most city streets in Arizona is 45. If you do not see a sign, you go 45, because that is simply understood. In the same way, these readers would have seen the city gate and the ten witnesses and thought, “This is going to be a legal transaction.”

Verse 3: the land that belonged to Elimelech 50:05

[Reads Ruth 4:3.]

Boaz tells so-and-so, the kinsman, that Naomi has come back from Moab and is selling the piece of land that belonged to Elimelech.

I do not want to keep mentioning the website, but the resources there explain this. There were laws that said land had to be sold to a family member, who would then allow the family to keep living on it. There was also a law that if brothers lived in the same household and one died without a son, his widow would marry the other brother, and their first son would carry the dead brother’s name, so the inheritance would continue. That is confusing in a five-second explanation. The Ruth page has good resources on it.

That is what is in play here. They are trying to keep the ancestral land inside the family. The reason goes back to Leviticus 25:23: the land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine.

Israel thought about land differently than we do in America. I own property. I have a house that sits on it, and I pay property taxes on it, which I think is absolutely ridiculous, but that is a whole other thing and not meant for the pulpit. That property is mine. In Israel, the property was not theirs. It was the promised land. God gave it to the tribes and families of Israel, but it was His land, and they were to steward it.

So keeping ancestral land in the family was not just financial prudence. It was covenant faithfulness. It was not, “Let’s make as much money as we can and keep our stuff.” It was, “This is what God has entrusted to us. We are going to be good stewards of it and not sell what is not ours.” A steward cannot sell off his master’s property without his master’s permission.

Verse 4: “I will redeem it” 53:10

[Reads Ruth 4:4.]

Boaz offers this kinsman the first right to redeem, exactly as the order of redemption required. The closest relative of the man who died gets the first right of refusal. He can buy the land, or he can pass it to the next person in line.

And the man agrees right away. “I will redeem it. This is great land. I will add it to my real estate, to my inheritance. I will be a steward for God and add it to my name. Absolutely.” At this point it looks like a simple, low-risk transaction: land added to his own estate.

Verse 5: the detail that changes everything 55:30

[Reads Ruth 4:5.]

Then verse 5 happens. Boaz adds the detail that changes everything. Redeeming the land also means marrying Ruth, to preserve Mahlon’s name and inheritance.

This man is not Mahlon’s brother. So, strictly speaking, the levirate law from Deuteronomy does not bind him the way it would bind an actual brother. That is the law that says a brother must marry the widow and have a son in his brother’s name, and if he refuses at the gate, the woman can take off his sandal and spit in his face, and the whole town looks down on him. That is not what is happening here.

What is happening is that the broader duty of the kinsman-redeemer is being extended to take in the marriage responsibility. This family had no surviving brothers. The husband and both sons were dead. There was no one to fulfill the levirate law. So they are following the spirit of the law, not just the letter, to make sure Ruth is taken care of, and Naomi with her.

A simple land purchase just became a huge commitment. He does not only have to buy the land. He has to marry the woman, have a child with her, and let the land go to that child. It will not stay in his own estate.

Verse 6: “I cannot redeem it” 58:00

[Reads Ruth 4:6.]

Once he hears that it is more than adding land to his estate, he withdraws his offer. He understands the cost. If he redeems the land and marries Ruth, any son born would legally carry Mahlon’s name and inherit that land. It would not be folded into the estate for his own children. So-and-so would be spending his own resources to acquire land that, in the end, would not enrich him or his family line. So he says, “You can have it.”

I need to pause here, because we have the luxury of knowing the outcome. It is easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. It is easy for me, Tim Jennings, born thousands of years later, in a world where it is far easier to find another job or another place to live. That was not his world. This man is looking at it and thinking, “If I do this, what is left for my children? What about little Johnny, who has been going to Hebrew school? If I spend my money to buy this land for Ruth and then have a son with her, it goes to that son. That takes away from little Johnny’s inheritance. I cannot do that.”

This was not villainy. He was not a villain. He was not breaking any law. Honestly, he does nothing shameful. He simply counts the cost and declines it. Boaz is able to pay that same cost gladly. But I want to be clear: if I were in that man’s shoes, I would probably have done the same thing.

Verse 7: the sandal 61:05

[Reads Ruth 4:7.]

The narrator now pauses the story to explain an old custom to the original readers. To confirm a redemption or an exchange, one man would take off his sandal and hand it to the other. That was the confirmation in Israel.

This is simply a legal confirmation gesture, closer to a handshake or a signature on a contract. It is not anything shameful. It is not the ritual from Deuteronomy 25, where the woman takes off the man’s sandal and spits in his face.

I think it is interesting that the author of Ruth, who I believe was Samuel, has to explain this custom to his first readers just as he is explaining it to us. By the time the book was written, the gesture had stopped. The fact that the narrator has to explain it at all tells us that real time had passed between these events and the writing of the book. A custom does not need explaining to readers who still practice it.

Verse 8: sealed before witnesses 63:30

[Reads Ruth 4:8.]

The kinsman says, “I cannot do it. I would ruin my own inheritance. You buy it.” He takes off his sandal and hands it over. The transaction is now sealed, publicly, before ten witnesses. Nothing is hidden, and nothing about the process is informal.

What does this mean for us? 64:10

I think that is remarkable. If we skimmed these eight short verses, we would miss a great deal. But I also believe God’s Word is living. It is sharper than any two-edged sword. It was written to teach, correct, and guide. If all of that is true, then this story has to mean something for us today.

I don’t know about you, but I do not own any farms. I do not wait at the edge of town for someone to drive by so I can stop them and do a big transaction. So what does this mean for us in Gold Canyon, or the East Valley, Superior, Apache Junction, wherever you are?

First, doing the right thing the right way sometimes means doing it publicly and accountably, not just privately. We have talked a lot about how Boaz did not seek recognition. He told his workers to pull grain from the bundles so Ruth would happen upon it, and he took no credit. We talked about how people sometimes feel they have to post on social media when they do something good, and how God wants us to do good quietly. I am not saying to forget that. This is different. This is something with a long-lasting effect that could affect other people.

Boaz could have handled this quietly. He could have slipped it through, and nobody would have given it a second thought. Remember, this was the time of the Judges, when everybody did what was right in their own mind. He could have said, “Look at everything I have given this woman. Look at how I have helped her take care of her mother-in-law. I have gone above and beyond. I have a right to this land and a right to marry her. Forget the closer relative.” He probably would have gotten away with it.

But Boaz is a man of character. He understands that character means doing the right thing when nobody is looking, and also doing the right thing where others can see and bear witness, so that nothing bad can come of it. He chose witnesses, a public gate, and a formal process, and he put everything on the line. He wanted to marry Ruth. He wanted to redeem the land. He wanted to take care of Naomi. All of it was at risk, because if he did things the right way, the closer relative could have said yes. Boaz said, “Right is right. I am going to the city gate. I will get my closest relative and the witnesses, and we will do this the right way.”

Too many times in our society we have become comfortable with, “I will just do this and ask for permission later.” That is not what Boaz does here. It is not what Jesus did. We cannot do it either.

Second, not every refusal is villainy, but every choice has a cost, and someone has to be willing to pay it. The kinsman’s refusal is understandable to me. There is nothing wrong with what the man did, just as there was nothing wrong with what Orpah did when she went back to Moab. But Boaz’s willingness to pay the cost the other man would not is what makes him remembered. Boaz did not have to do it either. He did it willingly. Saying no does not mean you are wrong or bad. But understand that it comes with consequences too. There is a cost to refusing, and there is a cost to doing something the way God wants us to.

Third, being forgotten by name is its own kind of consequence. So-and-so had his own consequence. There was a cost to his refusal, and it is that thousands of years later he is known as “so-and-so.” The man who protected his own estate is nameless in Scripture forever. The man who gave something up for someone else’s sake is named in the very genealogy of Jesus Christ.

Closing prayer 70:50

Father, I do not want to be forgotten. I know the kinsman did nothing wrong. But I want to be a man like Boaz. I want to be a man who steps up, who goes above and beyond for those in need, who trusts in the Lord, who is described as a man of valor.

I pray that we, as a church and as individuals, would be willing to do the right thing the right way all the time, even if it means being held accountable publicly. Help us to realize that everything we do has a cost, for good and for bad. Every sin we commit has a cost. Every decision we make has a cost. Even every praise we lift has a cost.

Lord, we lift our lives to You. Thank You for the way You worked through Boaz, and that we remember his name thousands of years later. I do not care about my own fame. But I do want to be remembered as someone who counted the cost daily and still went above and beyond, because it is what You have called me to do. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.