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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 259. At the Gate
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At the Gate
At the present day the people of the East have reverted to their primitive customs regarding the uses of the gate, and many business and social duties are carried out there. Thomson (The Land and the Book, i. 31) mentions having seen at Jaffa the Ḳâḍi and his court sitting at the entrance of the gate, hearing and adjudicating all sorts of cases in the audience of all that went in and out thereat. At Suakin in 1886 Sir Charles Warren found it necessary to sit at the gate to transact official business in order that the public might freely approach and relate their grievances. Bertrandon de la Brocquière (Early Travels, 349, a.d. 1433) gives an interesting account of his reception at the court of the Turks, the “Sublime Porte,” at Constantinople. The ambassadors were received at the gate of the palace, and all business was transacted there. Chardin relates that the principal gate of the royal palace of Ispahan was held sacred, and used by criminals as a place of refuge. Sir Charles Warren conducted all his business transactions with the governors of Al-Arish, Nukl, and Akabah in 1882 at the gate, where there were arched roofs giving protection from the sun and rain, and seats for the administration of justice. At Nukl the council chamber was immediately over the gate. The city gateways of the present day have usually flanking towers and overhead galleries, with an arched passage within, so that a second set of gates may be erected inside the barbican or courtyard.1 [Note: Sir Charles Warren, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, ii. 112.]
1. Early in the morning Boaz appeared on this bustling scene, and waited until the kinsman of whom he had spoken to Ruth came by. Hailing him, he asked him to sit down by his side, and in the presence of ten chosen Elders he opened his business. Two matters were involved: the inheritance of Elimelech in Israel, and the acceptance of Ruth the Moabitess as the representative of the family of Elimelech. As regards the first, the redemption of the land, the nearer kinsman had no scruples; he would do his duty. As regards the second, he was unwilling to interfere; he preferred that his rights should pass over to Boaz. The reason he gave was, “Lest I mar my own inheritance.” He did not wish to have anything to do with Moabites or Moabitesses; perhaps he shared in the feeling that on their account all this evil had come upon the family of Elimelech. In any case he would run no risks, he would look after himself. So drawing off his shoe he handed it to Boaz, this being at once a symbolic transference of his rights, and a modified form of the old penalty attaching to the non-fulfilment of the law.
The establishing of a connexion with a property is indicated by a man casting one of his shoes upon it. This is based upon the fact that walking upon a piece of ground is a sign of proprietorship. We may recall the Roman custom of bringing before the prætor a clod of earth from the field which one claimed as his property. A certain relation was established also when Elijah the prophet cast his mantle upon Elisha. A special meaning may be discovered in this act, namely, the investiture with the prophetic mantle. So the covering of a woman with one's mantle (Eze_16:8; Rth_3:9) expresses the intention of becoming her protector par excellence, i.e. of marrying her. The correct view of Eze_16:8 and Rth_3:9 is confirmed by Arab custom. “The son who, in the heathen period of Arab history, took over the widow of his father, threw his garment over her. So, too, Mohammed cast his mantle over the Jewess Safîja, captured at Khaibar, as a token that he desired to have her in marriage.”
The opposite condition of things, namely, the dissolution of relations, is indicated as follows. One person takes off another's shoe (Deu_25:9), or the wearer removes it himself (Rth_4:8). The idea at the basis of this act may be explained thus. Seeing that one enters upon the occupancy of a field by treading upon it with his shoes, the pulling off of the shoe indicates the intention of not carrying out this occupancy. The drawing off of the shoe was also, among the Arabs, a special sign of the dissolution of a marriage.1 [Note: E. Konig, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, v. 171.]
2. With profound and solemn emotion Boaz called on the Elders and the circle of bystanders to observe and remember this legal transfer of rights and duties, expressing himself, however, with legal fulness and precision: “Ye are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech's, and all that was Chilion's and Mahlon's, of the hand of Naomi. Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.” They replied: “We are witnesses”-thus completing the legal transaction-and broke out into a profusion of good wishes which amply verified the statement of Boaz concerning Ruth in the previous chapter: “All the gate of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman.” They lifted her to the level of the most famous women of Israel by praying that she might be like Rachel and Leah, the mothers of the twelve tribes. They would not have uttered this prayer if they had not come to esteem her, for her love and piety, as an Israelite indeed. It was a happy day to both Boaz and Ruth when, amidst the benedictions of all present, they were united, and next to the joy of the bride and bridegroom Naomi's was probably the greatest.
Ruth and Boaz in the union of their actual lives represented the marriage of the Gentile and the Jew. Ruth was the child of Moab, the daughter of a foreign soil, the votary of a heathen religion; Boaz was a genuine son of Israel who had never separated from the parent stem, whose blood had never been tinged with intermixture from without. Their union symbolized the meeting of extremes, prefigured an age of charity, when the hearts of men should be larger than their creeds and the spirit of nations bigger than their boundaries. In the soul of Jesus the wedding-bells of Ruth and Boaz are rung once more. Here again Moab and Israel meet together. In the heart of the Son of Man the Gentile stands side by side with the Jew as the recipient of a common Divine Fatherhood. What is it but the sound of wedding-bells that He hears when He cries, “Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God”? What is it but the footsteps of Ruth that He discerns when He exclaims, “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold”? What is it but the tread of Moab in the field that catches His ear when He makes the qualification for approach to Him not human possession but human need, “Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest”? The marriage-bells of Ruth at Bethlehem were the same bells which sounded at the marriage-supper of the Lamb.1 [Note: G. Matheson, The Representative Women of the Bible, 200.]
3. The curtain rises again for one brief moment to give us a sweet glimpse of domestic life in the household of Boaz. We see Ruth, a happy wife and a still happier mother. We see Naomi, spending the calm evening of her clouded life, not separated from the abiding love of her daughter-in-law, living once more in the new representative of the house of Elimelech. It is to her, not to Ruth, that the congratulations of the women are addressed. For in a true sense the babe was hers, the restorer of her life, the nourisher of her old age, the builder up of the fortunes of her house, because in him the great love of her daughter-in-law had become a visible, an embodied fact.
No finer tribute could have been paid to the character of Ruth than the tribute paid by the neighbours after the birth of her child. All feeling of jealousy against the alien who has come among them has passed away, and in congratulating Naomi they express themselves in this way: “Thy daughter in law, which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath borne this child.” Coming from those women of Bethlehem who at the first must have envied the good fortune of Ruth and looked upon this union with one of their best citizens as a slight upon their own daughters-coming from such neighbours, it is a splendid tribute to the qualities alike of head and of heart possessed by Ruth.
And so the story closes, not simply leaving these two brave and noble women happy in each other, and in Boaz, and in Obed his son, but weaving for them an immortal crown of honour in that it marks their intimate connexion with David, the “darling of Israel,” and with Him who was at once David's Son and Lord. “Boaz begat Obed, and Obed begat Jesse, and Jesse begat David”; and of David, as concerning the flesh, came Jesus the Christ, the Light of the Gentiles and the Glory of the people of Israel.
Ruth's voluntary and wonderful attachment to Israel's people, and land, and God-attachment testified in sorest trial, when all hope seemed gone, and there was but an aged, childless, homeless widow to cling to-had its reward correspondent to the intense love, and devotion, and disinterestedness. That reward, what is it? Behold it first in the favour and then in the plighted troth of Boaz. Behold it in Ruth of Moab as the ancestress of the royal house of David. Behold it in Ruth of Moab as the ancestress of Jesus Christ our Lord. Behold it in that Book of Ruth forming a part of inspired Scripture, with its simple, pathetic story-a sacred pastoral poem. The less we put our service of God in the form of bargain and covenant, the more likely are we to fare with special richness at the end.1 [Note: J. Rankin, Character Studies in the Old Testament, 90.]
After its own life-working. A child's kiss
Set on thy sighing lips shall make thee glad;
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich;
A sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest. Such a crown
I set upon thy head.2 [Note: E. B. Browning.]