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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.

Place

Bethlehem

Type
City
Location
31.704, 35.207

The Town of Bethlehem

Site Study | Hershel Wayne House | Bethlehem

The town of Bethlehem (House of Bread) lies in the Judean hills about five miles south of Jerusalem. We find the first mention of Bethlehem of Judea in Genesis 35:19 and 48:7.  In Scripture, it is sometimes also called Ephrathah (Mic 5:2). 

This is where Rachel died and was buried according to Genesis 35:19. Her grave now resides in the town of Bethlehem, guarded by the state of Israel. 

The town is also known as the City of David (Luke 2:4), because of his birth there, and also where Samuel anointed David as king (1 Sam 16:4-13). 

Bethlehem takes on special significance because it is to this Judean town that Joseph and Mary traveled to be registered, since Joseph was a descendant of David, under the decree of Caesar Augustus. This is where Jesus was born in fulfillment of Scripture (Luke 2:1-7; Mic 5:2).  Also, Herod sent his soldiers to Bethlehem to have the child Jesus put to death since he viewed him as a rival to his kingdom.

Shepherds in the Fields

Site Study | Hershel Wayne House

About a mile east of Bethlehem, near the village of Beit Sahur is the Greek Orthodox church commemorating the place where the angels appeared to the shepherds. An archaeological survey was conducted at the site in 1972 by Vassilios Tzaferis, who identified evidence that the cave over which the church was built was used as early as the second half of the fourth century A.D. In the cave, he found that the natural rock floor had been leveled, and a mosaic floor was put in. The mosaic floor contained an eight pointed star and equilateral crosses. The presence of crosses means the floor was made before 427, when Emperor Theodosius II forbade this practice.

See also Bethlehem

Bibliography. Finegan, Jack, The Archaeology of the New Testament: The Life of Jesus and the Beginning of the Early Church, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 40, 42.

Bethlehem (בֵּ֥ית לָֽחֶם, bēṯ lāḥem)

Site Study | Brian Kvasnica

Bethlehem resides in the hill country of Judah on the ridge route between Jerusalem and Hebron. To the West of Bethlehem is ample agricultural land and to the east is the Judean Desert – good for shepherding--- which descends down to the Dead Sea. It may be that its location with good farming land brought about the name Beit Lechem – “house of bread,” or the name in Arabic related to shepherding, Beit Lacham, “house of meat.” Both traditions of farming and shepherding play an important place here in the Biblical stories: Boaz had a field which Ruth gleaned from (Ruth 2), David tended Jesse’s sheep (1 Sam 17), and was anointed here by Samuel (1 Sam 16). And, shepherds heard the good news about the Messiah’s birth (Luke 2).

Tel Beit Lehem today is mainly covered by the Nativity Square and the Nativity Church but a small portion of the tel on the east side is still bare and was surveyed in 1969 by Gutman and Berman, confirming both Bronze and Iron Age occupation. While tradition points to a well north of the tel where three of David’s mighty men drew water for David after breaking through the Philistine garrison (2 Sam 23:14,16), the only real water sources came from the southeast in the area of “Solomon’s Pools” or “Artas,” likely biblical Etam (2 Chr 11:6; Greek Apan/Aitan).

Not only was Yeshua (Jesus) born in Bethlehem as Micah 5:2 foretold, but Herod murdered the innocents in the area (Matt 2:8, 16) and Hadrian built a sacred grove to Adonis after pounding the messianic Bar Kochva supporters into submission (Jerome, Ep. ad Paul, lviii.3). Jerome, supported by Paula and her daughter Eustochium, came permanently to Bethlehem in AD 382 to study Hebrew and translate the Hebrew Bible into the common language, Latin. His translation remained the foundation for all Western Scriptural reading for 1600 years.

Multiple excavations by Harvey, Vincent and Abel in the early 1900’s and subsequent studies have revealed three main levels of architectural remains of the Church of the Nativity: an early Roman church represented by floor mosaics from Constantine’s era (about AD 325), a Byzantine Church built by Justinian in the sixth century AD which amazingly still stands today, and Crusader restorations in the twelfth-century AD, as seen in the mosaic decoration on the high walls of the nave. The altar of the Church of the Nativity is built upon a large cave structure that was the venerated place of the Yeshua’s birth already from the second century AD (Justin Martyr and the Protoevangelium of James).

Bethlehem (House of Bread)

Site Study | Daniel G Garland

Bethlehem (House of Bread) is a town in the Judean hills about five miles south of Jerusalem.  In Scripture, it is sometimes called Ephrathah (Micah 5:2).  Rachel died and was buried near Bethlehem, according to Genesis 35:19.  It is the town to which Naomi returned with Ruth (Ruth 1:1, 19).  Called the City of David (Luke 2:4) because of his birth there, Bethlehem is also where Samuel anointed David King (1 Sam 16:4-13).  Because both Joseph and Mary descended from David, Bethlehem is the town to which they traveled to register for taxation under the decree of Caesar Augustus, and where Jesus was born in fulfillment of Scripture (Luke 2:1-7; Micah 5:2).  When Herod tried to kill Jesus by ordering the deaths of male infants two years old and under, Bethlehem became the grisly scene for what has been called the massacre of innocents (Matt 2:16-18).  Bethlehem’s location on the road south to Egypt facilitated Mary and Joseph’s escape with Jesus when warned by an angel of the Lord (Matt 2:13-15)—DG.

Person & place data: Theographic Bible Metadata by Robert Rouse (Viz.Bible), CC BY-SA 4.0.