20G 
RURAL HOURS. 
ing." When, at dawn, she is going, he bids her bring her veil, and 
measures six measures of barley in it, saying, " Go not empty unto 
thy mother-in-law." The occurrences in the concluding chapter, 
at the gate of the town, are strikingly ancient, oriental, and Jew- 
ish. The nearer kinsman declines to fulfill the duties enjoined by 
the law, he does not wish to buy the " parcel of land," or to marry 
Ruth, " lest he mar his own inheritance ;" he makes over the duty 
to Boaz, giving him his shoe as a token, a singular and very prim- 
itive custom ; but we are reading now of times before the date of 
the Trojan war, chronology having placed these incidents in the 
fourteenth century before Christ. Boaz then calls upon all present 
to be Avitnesses to the contract by which he engaged to buy the 
land, and to marry the widoAv. " And all the people that»were in 
the gate, and the elders-, said. We are Avitnesses. The Lord make 
the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel, and like 
Leah, Avhich two did build the house of Israel : and do thou Avor- 
thily in Ephratah, and be famous in Bethlehem." Probably be- 
fore the six measures of barley were eaten, Ruth entered the 
house of Boaz as his Avife. Naomi Avent with her ; and in time 
Ruth gave a grandson to the aged Avidow : " And Naomi took the 
child, and laid it in her bosom, and became nurse unto it." " And 
the Avomen said unto her. He shall be unto thee the restorer of thy 
life, and a nourisher of thine old age, for thy daughter-in-law which 
loveth thee, v)hich is better to thee than seven sons, hath borne 
him." This dhild became in the course of years the grandfather 
of David ; Ruth received the honor coveted by every Jewish 
woman — she was one in the line between Sarah and the Blessed 
Virgin, the mother of our Lord. It was undoubtedly to record 
her place in the sacred genealogy, or rather for the sake of that 
