it becomes front and center in chapters three and four. In Ruth 3:4, “Boaz employs forms of the verb ga’al (‘redeem’) five times. The language of redemption dominates also verse 7 and constitutes the heart of the negotiations” in the scene of Ruth’s appeal at the threshing floor...
Spackman has observed that in the book of Ruth, the kinsman that was more closely related to Naomi than Boaz, did not fulfill his obligation to redeem Ruth.[18] Boaz had to fill this role instead. With this story of an unreliable kinsman in mind, Spackman paraphrases Lehi’s...
which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (Genesis 11:6-7). God “did there confound the language