How to read this page

An Intertextuality Pair — one connection between two passages, shown as linked verse cards: the Later text and the Earlier text it quotes, alludes to or echoes. The Significance essay explains why the link matters and where it points in Christ.

Reference Type— how explicit the link is: Quotation, Allusion, or Echo
Connection Method(s)— how it carries meaning: e.g. Typology, Promise-Fulfillment, Analogy, Longitudinal Theme
Found via— where the connection was identified, e.g. the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or an Anchor-Text Network

Graph View — tap the constellation icon in the top bar to see this page's connections as a web of light: gold points are passages, and the coloured threads are the connection types. Click any type in the graph's own legend to filter it in or out, and use the expand control for the full-screen night sky.

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Intertextuality Pair

Ruth 4:5-6 → Numbers 27:4

Echo

Later text

Ruth 4:5-6BSB

Then Boaz said, "On the day you buy the land from Naomi and also from Ruth the Moabitess, you must also acquire the widow of the deceased in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance." The kinsman-redeemer replied, "I cannot redeem it myself, or I would jeopardize my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption, because I cannot redeem it."

Earlier text

Numbers 27:4BSB

Why should the name of our father disappear from his clan because he had no sons? Give us property among our father's brothers."

Significance

In Numbers 27:4, the daughters of Zelophehad ask, "Why should the name (שֵׁם, shem) of our father disappear from his clan because he had no sons? Give us property (אֲחֻזָּה, achuzzah) among our father's brothers." Ruth 4:5 addresses the same crisis from a different angle: Boaz declares that acquiring the land requires also marrying the widow "to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance (נַחֲלָה, nachalah)." Both texts confront the problem of a man dying without a male heir and the threat of his name being blotted out from Israel. Where Zelophehad's daughters achieved inheritance through a new legal ruling allowing daughters to inherit, Ruth's situation is resolved through the kinsman-redeemer institution and marriage — two distinct legal mechanisms addressing the same underlying concern for preserving family name and land. In Ruth the preserved name and inheritance ultimately secure the Davidic lineage into which the narrative flows.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Echo
Connection Method(s): Longitudinal Theme — "Why should the name of our father disappear from his clan?" (Numbers 27:4) and "raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance" (Ruth 4:5) are two installments of the one canonical theme of preserving name and נַחֲלָה when succession fails, a thread that in Ruth flows into the Davidic line and finds its telos in Christ the kinsman-redeemer who secures the inheritance.