1Now Boaz went up to the gate and sat down there. Behold, the near kinsman of whom Boaz spoke came by. Boaz said to him, “Come over here, friend, and sit down!” He came over, and sat down. 2Boaz took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, “Sit down here,” and they sat down. 3He said to the near kinsman, “Naomi, who has come back out of the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech’s. 4I thought I should tell you, saying, ‘Buy it before those who sit here, and before the elders of my people.’ If you will redeem it, redeem it; but if you will not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know. For there is no one to redeem it besides you; and I am after you.”
He said, “I will redeem it.”
5Then Boaz said, “On the day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you must buy it also from Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead on his inheritance.”
6The near kinsman said, “I can’t redeem it for myself, lest I endanger my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption for yourself; for I can’t redeem it.”
7Now this was the custom in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning exchanging, to confirm all things: a man took off his sandal, and gave it to his neighbor; and this was the way of formalizing transactions in Israel. 8So the near kinsman said to Boaz, “Buy it for yourself,” then he took off his sandal.
9Boaz said to the elders and to all the people, “You are witnesses today, that I have bought all that was Elimelech’s, and all that was Chilion’s and Mahlon’s, from the hand of Naomi. 10Moreover, Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, I have purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead on his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brothers and from the gate of his place. You are witnesses today.”
11All the people who were in the gate, and the elders, said, “We are witnesses. May Yahweh make the woman who has come into your house like Rachel and like Leah, which both built the house of Israel; and treat you worthily in Ephrathah, and be famous in Bethlehem. 12Let your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, of the offspring which Yahweh will give you by this young woman.”
13So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife; and he went in to her, and Yahweh enabled her to conceive, and she bore a son. 14The women said to Naomi, “Blessed be Yahweh, who has not left you today without a near kinsman. Let his name be famous in Israel. 15He shall be to you a restorer of life and sustain you in your old age; for your daughter-in-law, who loves you, who is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.” 16Naomi took the child, laid him in her bosom, and became nurse to him. 17The women, her neighbors, gave him a name, saying, “A son is born to Naomi”. They named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.
18Now this is the history of the generations of Perez: Perez became the father of Hezron, 19and Hezron became the father of Ram, and Ram became the father of Amminadab, 20and Amminadab became the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon became the father of Salmon, 21and Salmon became the father of Boaz, and Boaz became the father of Obed, 22and Obed became the father of Jesse, and Jesse became the father of David.
The genealogy of Matthew departs from the standard recording of the history of a Jewish family line, in that it contains women within the genealogy. Additionally significant is that each of the women has a problematic past, and a couple of the women, even a sordid past. Let us look at each woman in the order in which she appears in the Bible.
Tamar had a number of marriages to the sons of Judah, who each died, and she married another son, based on the levirate law, in which surviving sons must marry a widowed daughter-in-law. When Judah was willing to violate this law, and he denied her right to marry another son, Tamar acted as a prostitute to trick him into bearing two sons to her (Gen 38:27-30), one whose name was Perez, an ancestor of Jesus.
The next woman mentioned is more familiar to the average reader of the Bible. Rahab was the prostitute who hid the two spies when they were inside the city of Jericho (Josh 2:1-21; 6:22-25). Due to her faith (Heb 11:30-31), she was preserved when Jericho was destroyed. What is most significant in the story of Rahab is that she was the mother of Boaz, the person who later married Ruth.
Ruth was not an Israelite, but was rather a woman of Moab, with no claim to an inheritance in Israel, even though she married one of the sons of Elimelech (God is my king) and Naomi (pleasant), and accompanied Naomi back to Bethlehem. Boaz fulfilled his duty as a kinsman redeemer, taking Ruth as his wife. From them comes Obed, who begat Jesse, the father of David the king (Ruth 4:17-22).
Bathsheba is not mentioned by name in the genealogy, but identified as the wife of Uriah the Hittite, who was a faithful soldier in the army of David the King (2 Sam 11:1-27), who died in battle at David's design (2 Sam 11:14-18). One cannot be sure why Matthew chose not to mention her by name, but it may be that this emphasizes that David the king had unlawful sex with another man's wife, and so had not married her before she became pregnant with a son who died as a baby (2 Sam 12: 13-19), even though afterwards she bore king Solomon (2 Sam 12:24-25).
The last woman to be mentioned is Mary (Matt 1:18-25), the virgin who was especially blessed to become the mother of Jesus, God in the flesh. The author is careful to indicate that Joseph was the husband of Mary, but he was not the Father of Jesus, whose physical beginning came through the Holy Spirit.
All of these women were special in the plan of God, and though each were outcasts by human standards they were women of faith according to the Bible, important to the coming of the King Messiah Jesus.