August 1, 2008
Inheritance Rights
Read Ruth 4:2-9
Then Boaz said, "On the day you buy the land from Naomi and from
Ruth the Moabitess, you acquire the dead man's widow, in order to
maintain the name of the dead with his property."
My dad was a doctor. When I was a kid, I saw a book on his shelf: "How To Avoid
Probate." I thought probate must be a disease. While not a disease, it can sure wreck
a lot of lives. (In case you were wondering--Probate is the legal process of settling
the estate of a deceased person, specifically resolving all claims and distributing the
decedent's property under the valid will. - Wikipedia)
In Genesis 15, Abram worries that his servant, not his child, will inherit his estate.
In Luke 12:13-21, a young man tries to drag Jesus into a family fight about settling an inheritance. The prodigal son (Luke 15) famously asks for his share of the inheritance
before his father is even wheezing. In Luke 18, a "certain ruler" asks Jesus what he
must do to "inherit" eternal life. (Like my dad, Luke was a doctor -- maybe doctors
take more notice of issues surrounding inheritance than do others.)
In the days before stock and bonds, real estate was the only real estate a person had. Therefore, it was important to keep the family's land as intact and as close to the
family as possible. So, laws were given (by God) and developed (by the people of
God) to secure that a family's or tribe's identity and heritage was preserved. Note
Ruth 4:5 (above), how conscientiously Boaz works to preserve both the name and the property of the deceased.
The law at that time stipulated that the firstborn son inherited a double portion of all
of the father's possession. (Deuteronomy 21:15-17) Daughters were entitled to an
inheritance, provided there were no sons in the family. In case there were no direct
heirs, the brothers or more distant kinsmen were recognized. (Numbers 27:8-11)
The intention was to preserve the estate within one tribe or family. (Lest we be too
quick to judge, similar laws, referred to generically as laws of primogeniture and entail,
were in force in Europe and America until late in the 18th century. Such customs still
exist insome communities, such as the Amish.)
Thus, a so-called "kinsman-redeemer" was to be given the right of "first refusal" to
purchase any land from within the estate of a relative. With such a purchase came all
the rights -- and responsibilities -- of ownership. There was neither Social Security nor
a government to take care of widows and orphans -- only families. Thus, the welfare
of a widow (in this case Ruth) who had a right to the property but could not own it
outright (as was the law in that time) became the obligation of whoever owned the
property.
And so, while the unnamed kinsman-redeemer may have wanted the property, he did
not want -- or could not afford -- Ruth. Boaz was next in line and was quick to seize
the opportunity. By getting Ruth, he got land and a used sandal. In the days before
paper trails, emails, fax machines, surveys, and GPS, a sandal was given to symbolize
two things: first that land was measured by how far a person could walk in a certain
period of time and, second, that the seller was giving up the right to walk the land
without the new owner's permission.
Thus did God insert another oddly shaped piece into the mosaic of Jesus' familial
lineage, his Jewish identity, and our salvation.
Sam Pascoe
