THE LEVIRATE AND GOEL
INSTITUTIONS IN THE
OLD TESTAMENT
With Special Attention to
the Book of Ruth
DONALD A. LEGGETT
1974
MACK PUBLISHING COMPANY
Cherry Hill, New Jersey
Digitized with permission by Ted Hildebrandt, GordonCollege, 2006.
TO LINDA
hvhy rxry twx
Proverbs 31:30b
Acknowledgments
IT is with deep gratitude that I take this opportunity to
publicly acknowledge many who have played a key role
in the completion of my work.
It was through training received at Reformed Episcopal
Seminary, Philadelphia, and Westminster Seminary, Phila-
delphia, that I was first introduced to the Free University. A
scholarship received from the University was an impetus to-
ward taking the step of coming to Europe and tackling an
unfamiliar language. I am grateful for the happy years which
I was able to spend in Amsterdam and Dordrecht, from
1960-1964, while pursuing my studies. I would like to single
out Rev. and Mrs. Jacob Vos, fellow-students at the Free
University in those early years, who were tremendously help-
ful to my wife and me and who remain to this day our closest
friends. In Dordrecht, mention should be made of the De
Leng family who extended many kindnesses to us. Drs. Van-
noy and his family graciously allowed me to share their home
in the closing phases of my work.
Research for my thesis was carried on in numerous librar-
ies. Special mention should be made of the libraries of the
Free University and MunicipalUniversity of Amsterdam,
Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary, and McMasterUniversity, Hamilton,
Ontario. My sabbatical year was spent in Belfast, N. Ireland,
and I am grateful to Queen's University, Belfast, for the gen-
erous use of their facilities. It was my pleasure to make two
extended visits to the Tyndale House, Cambridge, England,
and to be able to take advantage of their research facilities.
Lastly, I would not wish to omit mention of the extensive
help which I have received from the library personnel at the
OntarioBibleCollege.
v
vi Acknowledgments
This thesis would never have been completed without the
generous grant of a sabbatical year by OntarioBibleCollege.
I am also grateful for the stimulation received in my part-
time involvement at the IrishBaptistCollege during that
year. How can I ever thank those students of mine and their
wives who gave me substantial support during that year and
who have been a constant encouragement to me! To the
Postma, Males, Pointner, Barber, Smith, Stoute, McPhee,
Henkelman, and Taylor families, I am deeply grateful. Simi-
larly, to Dr. and Mrs. C. Wellum and Dr. and Mrs. E. Higbee,
and the congregation of GraceBaptistChurch, Carlisle, Penn-
sylvania, for their kind expressions of Christian love.
To Professor Dr. N. H. Ridderbos, I wish to express my
thanks for his wise counsel and competent criticism of my
work. For the considerable time which he has given in its
supervision and for the high standard of biblical scholarship
which he has exemplified, I remain in his debt.
Finally, I wish to thank my wife and children for their
part in my thesis. Through the loving encouragement of my
wife, I was enabled to persevere in my work. She willingly
assumed the added responsibilities of typing and proofread-
ing to her already busy life. The children too have known
what it is to sacrifice vacation time and other things in the
interest of "the thesis." As a family we are thankful to God,
who has enabled us to finish this work. To Him be glory
forever.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTSv
INTRODUCTION1
Part One
THE LEVIRATE AND GOEL INSTITUTIONS IN THE OLD
TESTAMENT (EXCLUSIVE OF THE BOOK OF RUTH)
1. THE LEVIRATE IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST 9
Babylonia10
Assyria12
Hittites 21
Nuzi 24
Ugarit25
2. THE LEVIRATE IN ISRAEL29
The Levirate Incident, Gen. 38 29
The Levirate Law, Deut. 25:5-10 49
The Persons Involved, Deut. 25:5 42
The Purpose of the Levirate, Deut. 25:648
The Ceremony of Refusal, Deut. 25:7-10 55
3. THE GOEL IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST 63
Parallels to the Goel-Redemption of Property 63
Parallels to the Goel-Redemption of Person 68
Parallels to the God-Redemption of Blood 71
4. THE GOEL IN ISRAEL83
Goel-Redemption of Property, Lev. 25:23-28 83
Goel-Redemption of Person, Lev. 25:47-55 98
God-Redemption of Blood, Num. 35; Deut.19:
1-13; Josh. 20:1-9 107
Restitution to the Goel, Num. 5:8 138
vii
viii Contents
Part Two
THE LEVIRATE AND GOEL INSTITUTIONS IN
THE BOOK OF RUTH
5. THE DATE AND PURPOSE OF THE BOOK OF
RUTH 143
The Date of the Book of Ruth 143
Arguments for a Pre-Exilic Date 143
Arguments for a Post-Exilic Date 146
Argument from Purpose 147
Argument from the Place of the Book in
the Canon 152
Argument from Language 154
Argument from the Social and Legal
Customs 157
The Purpose of the Book of Ruth 163
The Interesting-Story Purpose 164
The Exemplary Purpose 165
The Theological Purpose 166
The Davidic-Ancestry Purpose 168
The Legal Purpose 170
6. NAOMI AND THE LEVIRATE 173
7. NAOMI AND THE GOEL 181
The Discovery of a Goel, Ruth 2:20 181
The Approach to Boaz, Ruth 3:1-9 188
Preparations for the Visit, Ruth 3:1-4 188
The Appeal of Ruth, Ruth 3:7-9 192
The Response of Boaz, Ruth 3:10-15 201
EXCURSUS: THE INITIATIVE OF NAOMI
8. BOAZ AND THE GOEL
The Administration of Law at the Gate, Ruth
4:1, 2209
The Sale of the Property, Ruth 4:3 211
The Double Responsibility, Ruth 4:5, 10 222
The Refusal of the Goel and the Ceremony of
the Shoe, Ruth 4:6-8 249
Contents ix
9. OBED 255
Naomi's Goel, Ruth 4:14 255
Naomi's Son, Ruth 4:16, 17 260
Boaz' Son, Ruth 4:21 265
Part Three
GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
10. SUMMARIZING CONSIDERATIONS ON THE
LEVIRATE INSTITUTION IN ISRAEL271
Representative Views 271
Recapitulation and Conclusion 287
11. SUMMARIZING CONSIDERATIONS ON THE
GOEL INSTITUTION IN ISRAEL AND ON THE
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BOOK OF RUTH 292
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ABBREVIATIONS 299
BIBLIOGRAPHY303
Introduction
IN recent years attention from different quarters has been
devoted to the subject of the goel.1 in Israel. Several
importantpublications can be named. In 1940 Stamm
published his work Erlösen und Vergeben im Alten Testa-
ment, which established that the verb lxg was a term taken
from the sphere of family law, as over againsthdp which
belonged to the domain of commercial law.2 In 1947 the
stimulating work of Daube, Studies in Biblical Law, was pub-
lished, in which considerable attention was devoted to the
study of the goel concept and to the verb lxg. Daube made
additional contributions to these topics in his later writings;
in particular in his 1956 work, The New Testament and Rab-
binic Judaism, and in the work published in 1963, The Exo-
dus Pattern in the Bible. He presented very penetrating
studies of the goel and opened serious discussion on the sub-
ject of Yahweh as the Divine Goel. He suggested that the
specific functions of the human goel in Israel were applied in
some instances to Yahweh, although he acknowledged that
there were many general references to Yahweh as Goel where
specific nuances could not be inferred. By studying the spe-
cific functions of the goel, Daubecameto the conclusion
that "lxg primarily suggests the return of men or things into
their own legitimate place. .. The word simply denotes the
1. Throughout the course of this study the active participle of the verb lxg,
"redeem," will be transliterated simply with the word goel and the noun hlxg,
"redemption" with the word geullah.
2. J. J. Stamm (p. 45) concludes: "hdp ist ein Terminus des Handelsrechtes,
welcher einfach den Loskauf durch Stellung eines Gegenwertes ausdrückt.lxg ist
ein familienrechtlicher Begriff, der stets eine vor dem einzelnen Rechtsgeschäft
zwischen dem Loskaufenden und dem Losgekauften bestehende, durch die Zuge-
hörigkeit zu einer Sippe gegebene, Beziehung voraussetzt." Stamm dealt with
Jahweh as Goel in pp. 31-44 and made one passing remark on the goel in Ruth
(cf. p. 28).
1
2 Introduction
rightful getting back of a person or object that had once
belonged to one or one's family but had been lost."3 Daube
proposed therefore that lxg means "to recover."
Jepsen concurred in the main with Daube in his article
written in 1957. He wrote: "Go'el war der, der Besitz,
Freiheit und Leben der Sippe und ihrer Glieder wiederherste
len sollte. . . . Ga'al bedeutet danach: das, was eine Sippe an
Leben, Freiheit und Besitz verloren hat, wiederherstellen.. . .
Die Mittel der Wiederherstellung, der ge'ullah, sind verschie-
den: Blutrache, Heirat, Rückkauf . . . immer aber ist das eine
Ziel, die verlorene Lebenskraft der Sippe wiederzugewinnen."4
An opinion in general agreement with that of both Daube
and Jepsen was Snaith's, who in 1961 argued that "primarily
the root [lxg] is used with reference to the enforcement, the
restoration of a right or claim that has lapsed. . . . Generally,
whenever person or property is freed by purchase, the verb is
G'L if it is reverting to the original owner.. .. The idea of
reversion is essential to the root.”5 The goel is the agent
involved in securing this reversion to the original owner.
An article evoking wide interest on this subject was that
of Johnson, who in 1953 advanced the idea that the basic
idea underlying the varying activities of the goel was that of
protection. "When a kinsman is slain or dies childless, or
when he is forced to sell himself into servitude or to part
with his property, there is a breach of continuity, and the
normal life of both individual and society is upset. Disorder
has been introduced into the life of each, and in the case of
the corporate unit as in that of the ordinary individual, any
weakness or disorder, whether brought about by actual physi-
cal death or not, involves a certain loss of vitality and it is the
function of the lxeGo to "protect" the life or vitality of both
the individual and the kin-group and thus preserve their
3. D. Daube, Studies in Biblical Law, 1947, pp. 3940.
4. A. Jepsen, "Die Begriffe des Erlösens im Alten Testament," Solange es
"Heute" heisst, Festgabe fur R. Hermann, 1957, p. 159.
5 N. H. Snaith, "The Hebrew Root G'L (1)," ALUOS, 3, 1961-62, pp. 60,
61.
Introduction 3
standing in society by keeping intact their essential unity or
integrity."6
Johnson pointed out that lxg in several places means
"defile," and argued that the verblxg, "to defile" may not
be divorced, as is commonly done, from lxg, "to redeem, to
lay claim to." In both cases the basic idea is that of "covering
up" an object. He seeks support for his opinion from Job
3:5, which he translates: "Let darkness, let utter blackness
cover it; Let a cloud settle upon it; Let the o'er-shadowings
of day bring terror to it." By a process of semantic polariza-
tion the original thought of covering was employed both in
the sense of protection from degradation as well as in the
sense of causing degradation or defilement.7 Johnson's opin-
ion on the root meaning of the verb did not receive wide-
spread support8 although the article as a whole was a worth-
while contribution to the growing material on the goel in
Israel.
Within more recent years, Holmgren,9 Baltzer,10 Stamm
(for the second time),11 Ringgren,12 Stuhlmueller,13 and
6., A. R. Johnson, "The Primary Meaning of lxg," SVT, 1, 1953, pp. 71, 72.
7. A. R. Johnson, op. cit., pp. 72-74. RSV translates the verb vhlxgy in Job
3:5 with "claim" as does the NV, "beslag op hem leggen"; KJV translates with
"stain" and the NEB with "sully."
8. Johnson's argument has been accepted for example, by A. Guillaume,
"Unity of the Book of Job," ALUOS, 4, 1962-63, pp. 26-46, and R. de Vaux,
Ancient Israel, 1961, p. 21, who comments that the root "means 'to buy back, or
to redeem,' ‘to lay claim to,’ but fundamentally its meaning is 'to protect.' " It is
disputed, in my opinion correctly, by J. Blau, "Uber Homonyme und angeblich
Homonyme Wurzeln," VT, 6, 1956, p. 243. Blau argues that the verbvhlxgy in
Job 3:5 is parallel with the verb vhwrdy in Job 3:4 in an abc bca parallelism, in
which case the thought is, God need not claim the day, for the darkness shall
claim it for its own.wrd is used in a sense similar to lxg in Genesis 42:22 and
Psalm 9:13 (12) which supports Blau's argument. Cf. also K. Koch "Der Spruch,
‘Sein Blut bleibe auf seinern Haupt,' und die israelitische Auffassung vom vergos-
senen Blut," VT, 12, 1962, p. 410 n.l.
9. F. Holmgren, The Concept of Yahweh as Go'el in Second Isaiah, unpub-
lished Ph.D. dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1963.
10. D. Baltzer, Ezechiel und Deuterojesaja (BZAW, 121), 1971, pp. 84-99.
11. J. J. Stamm, "lxg," THAT, 1, pp. 383-397.
12. H. Ringgren, "lxg," TWAT, 1, pp. 884-895.
13. C. Stuhlmueller, Creative Redemption in Deutero-Isaiah, 1970, pp. 97-
131.
4 Introduction
Sklba14 have published materials relevant to the topic of the
goel in Israel. In these newer studies the question of a basic
root meaning for the verb has receded somewhat into the
background and more emphasis has been given to an exami-
nation of the usage of the terms.
It was my intention initially to seek to handle the topic
of the goel in Israel in its broadest sense, including the topic
of Yahweh as Divine God. It soon became apparent that such
a task was precluded by the sheer quantity of materials in-
volved.
It also turned out that in the literature cited above rela-
tively little was being said about the goel in the book of
Ruth. Yet of the forty-four usages of the substantive goel,
nine occur in Ruth; and of the fifty-one occurrences of the
verb lxg in the qal form, twelve are found in Ruth.15 In the
face of these statistics and the paucity of material to be
found in the general works cited above dealing with the goel
in Ruth, it seemed that a study which specialized in the role
of the goel in Ruth was needed. Further research into the
literature brought to light a considerable number of articles
and other small works which discuss the specialized questions
arising from the book of Ruth. These individual questions all
have a bearing on the basic problem of how the marriage of
Boaz as goel to Ruth is to be related to the levirate16 law of
Deuteronomy 25:5-10, which requires only the marriage of
"brothers dwelling together." It is necessary, therefore, as
well as, we trust, useful to devote considerable space to pre-
senting this literature and to sketching the views taken by
various authors.17 In addition, a thorough study of the levirate
14. R. Sklba, "The Redeemer of Israel," CBQ, 34, 1972, pp. 10-18.
15. Cf. G. Lisowsky, Konkordanz zum Hebräischen Alten Testament, pp.
299, 300 and J. J. Stamm, "lxg,"THAT, 1, p. 383.
16. The term "levirate" is derived from the Latinword levir meaning "a
husband's brother."
17. The commentary of W. Rudolph, Das Buch Ruth, Das Hohe Lied, Die
Klagelieder, KAT, 17, 1962, provides considerable literature as does especially the
article by H. H. Rowley, "The Marriage of Ruth," in The Servant of the Lord,
Introduction 5
institution in Israel is indispensable to the topic of the goel in
Ruth. Some authors write that the book of Ruth has essential-
ly nothing to do with levirate marriage,18 some find it neces-
sary to coin the special term "ge'ullah marriage"19 to define
the marriage of Boaz and Ruth, and others are convinced that
this marriage is to be properly reckoned as a levirate mar-
riage.20 The strong majority of scholars seek to fit the data of
the book of Ruth concerning the levirate-type marriage into a
particular phase of the levirate development within Israel. It
seems, therefore, that the book of Ruth is crucial to the
understanding of the levirate and goel institutions in Israel.
Tentatively, two conclusions affecting methodology were
reached. In the first place, the commonly accepted methodol-
ogy of tracing the historical development of the levirate by
dating Ruth either before or after Deuteronomy was con-
cluded to be faulty. In the second place, it was decided that
the narrative sections of the Old Testament which tell of a
levitate situation (Gen. 38; Ruth) should be given as serious
consideration and weight in the study of the levirate
tion as the levirate law of Deuteronomy 25.
In addition to studying the levirate institution as the
background for the goel activity in Ruth it was deemed
imperative to examine the sections of the Old Testament law
where the duties of the goel are prescribed, to see if any
correlation might exist between these duties and the levirate
type-marriage undertaken by the goel, which was not pre-
scribed in the Old Testament laws.
In the examination of the goel and levirate institutions in
Israel a study of possible parallels to these institutions in the
ancient Near East was felt to be of interest and importance.
19652, but many significant articles appeared in more recent times. See chapter 1
nn. 2, 4.
18. Cf. for instance, K. Dronkert, Het Huwelijk in het Oude Testament,
1957, pp. 68, 69.
19. L. Epstein, Marriage Laws in the Bible and the Talmud, 1942, pp. 86,
140.
20. Cf. the definition of the levirate given by J. Mittelmann in chap. 2, n. 1.
6 Introduction
Finally, because the book of Ruth occupies the central part
of this study, it is necessary to give special attention to the
question of the date (in spite of the first of the above-named
conclusions affecting methodology) and the purpose of the
book of Ruth.
Part One discusses the levirate and goel institutions in the
Old Testament (excluding Ruth) with their Near Eastern
counterparts. Part Two, after dealing with the date and the
purpose of the book of Ruth, focuses the reader's attention
upon the light this book sheds on these important institu-
tions within Israel. Chapter 6 discusses Naomi's reference to
the levirate in Ruth 1:11-13. Chapter 7 is a study of the data
in Ruth 3 which centers on Ruth's night-time encounter with
Boaz. An excursus tackles the question, Why did Naomi take
the initiative and send the widow, Ruth, to Boaz instructing
her to request marriage from him on the basis of his being a
goel? Chapter 8 directs attention to Ruth 4: 1-8, the account
of the completion of Ruth's request by Boaz in hismeeting
with the nearer kinsman and the subsequent shoe transaction
ceremony. Chapter 9 centers on Obed, who is called Naomi's
goel in Ruth 4:14, Naomi's son in Ruth 4:16, 17 and Boaz'
son in Ruth 4:21. Part Three is given over to our conclusions
on the levirate and god institutions, which have been drawn
through integrating the results of the general study in Part
One with those of the specific study of the book of Ruth in