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b-hebrew - Re: [b-hebrew] prepositions & grammar

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  • From: Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
  • To: b-hebrew <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] prepositions & grammar
  • Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 07:55:34 +0200


----- Original Message ----- From: "Vadim Cherny" <VadimCherny AT mail.ru>

Ruth 4:13 VAYYIQAX BO`AZ ET RWT VATT:HIY-LW = and Boaz took Ruth and she
became to him.

you know, she did not actually become his wife

WHAT? Of course she did. Look at the next word: Le'i$$ah. Look also at vss. 10-11. You might not like the idea of "buying" a wife, but wife she was.

It's odd to hear such things from you, Yigal. Boaz took Ruth to restore the seed of Elimelech (4:6). That was a standard procedure regarding a childless wife of one's brother. It wasn't marriage proper. Buying that obligation is not prescribed in Torah, but was apparently practiced.

Vadim Cherny

Come on, Vadim. Gen. 24:67 uses exactly the same terminology to describe Isaac "taking" Rebekah. Was she also "not a real wife"?

Elimelech was not Boaz' brother - he was at most a second cousin. He first had to "free" Ruth from a closer relative, so that he could marry her. But there is no indication in the text that their union was anything less than a full marriage.

The relationship of this story to the levarate marriage law of Deut. 25:5-10 is problematic at best. Deut. only refers to the wife of a brother, only if he was childless and only if the two brothers lived together, in the same extended household. None of these conditions were true in this case. Historically speaking, we have no idea when the law in Deut. was written and if and when it was practiced. As I'm sure you know, most modern critical scholars believe Ruth to be post-exilic. In any case, while both appeal to similar social concepts, it's impossible to draw a direct line from one to the other.

Plus, your claim that despite its not being perscribed in the Torah, what Boaz did was "standard procedure regarding a childless wife of one's brother" (which Ruth wasn't) is unbased. Where else do you find this "standard procedure" mentioned?

And finally, who says that taking a dead brother's widow is "not marriage proper"? In the society of ancient Israel, the whole purpose of marriage was to provide offspring and to provide a place in which a woman could be "useful". Read any book on biblical society. Yes, it was recognized that the man and the woman had to like each other, and even Deut. 25 provides an "escape clause", but such a marriage, once done, was no less a marriage than any other.

Num. 19:21 (and dozens of other places): "And it shall be a perpetual statue" - lexuqqat 'olam - "not really a statute"?

You whole proposition, that the preposition l- means "like" doesn't hold water.

Yigal




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