Ruth 4 · set as a daf · Migne’s recension, PL 11310 glosses in the school’s own voice · 1 naming a sourceLatin on migne.app · pilot view, Ruth only
GlossaLaon, c. 1120 · unattributed
Douay-Rheims · Challoner
Auctoresthe Fathers Migne names
1Then Booz went up to the gate, and sat there. And when he had seen the kinsman going by, of whom he had spoken before, he said to him, calling him by his name: Turn aside for a little while, and sit down here. He turned aside, and sat down.
v. 1Turn aside. Because Christ saw that the law had been appointed for the Jews for a time: and he bade it turn aside to himself, because he bent it to the bearing of witness to the mystery of his own dispensation. Otherwise: he saw the kinsman pass by, when he beheld the coming of his own forerunner, who was hastening after the manner of human life, and mercifully turned him to the office of a forerunner. He spoke. Fittingly did he offer the lawyers Noemi's portion of the field to buy, when he showed to the masters of the Synagogue that part of the people which remained when grace had already appeared, to be saved; that they might acknowledge their own weakness, and commit to the true physician the doing of what they themselves could not do; whence it is said to the lepers: Go, show yourselves to the priests (Luc. XVII), and as they went they were made clean.
2And Booz, taking ten men of the ancients of the city, said to them: Sit ye down here.
3They sat down, and he spoke to the kinsman: Noemi, who is returned from the country of Moab will sell a parcel of land that belonged to our brother Elimelech.
4I would have thee to understand this, and would tell thee before all that sit here, and before the ancients of my people. If thou wilt take possession of it by the right of kindred: buy it, and possess it: but if it please thee not, tell me so, that I may know what I have to do. For there is no near kinsman besides thee, who art first, and me, who am second. But he answered: I will buy the field.
5And Booz said to him: When thou shalt buy the field at the woman's hand, thou must take also Ruth, the Moabitess, who was the wife of the deceased: to raise up the name of thy kinsman in his inheritance.
v. 5That thou mayest raise up. It signifies no other possession of the people than the joining of the Church in marriage to Christ, who raised up again the ancient name of sons of God, which the saints had in the beginning; whence: The sons of God seeing, etc., and Luke says: Adam the son of God — which name he also raised up in the Church of the Gentiles through the grace of God; whence: He gave them power to be made the sons of God, etc. This name the decalogue of the law could not raise up among the nations. But if thou refer this to John the Baptist, thou wilt find him yielding the right of kinship, and saying: I baptize with water: but there hath stood one in the midst of you whom you know not: whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to loose. And elsewhere: I am not the Christ: but am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. The law also yields to the Gospel: For the law entered in that sin might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did more abound. There is indeed a setting aside of the former commandment because of the weakness thereof: but the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God, is made through Jesus Christ.
6He answered: I yield up my right of next akin: for I must not cut off the posterity of my own family. Do thou make use of my privilege, which I profess I do willingly forego.
7Now this in former times was the manner in Israel between kinsmen, that if at any time one yielded his right to another: that the grant might be sure, the man put off his shoe and gave it to his neighbour; this was a testimony of cession of right in Israel.
8So Booz said to his kinsman: Put off thy shoe. And immediately he took it off from his foot.
v. 8To loose. The shoe is the covering of the mysteries. But the law loosed the shoe from its own foot and gave it to Christ, because it could not make the sacraments plain through the teachers of the people, but reserved this to be done by Christ. John therefore claimed the shoe not for himself but for Christ, because he understood that the bride belonged to Christ alone; whence he says: I am not worthy to loose the latchet of his shoe
9And he said to the ancients, and to all the people: You are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech's, and Chelion's, and Mahalon's, of the hand of Noemi:
v. 9Witnesses. So Christ has sufficient witnesses out of both Testaments, that the Gentile people, which the decalogue, now ended, could not make fruitful in spirit, he himself made fruitful by the seed of the word of God, possessing all things which the saints, both the former and the later, had.
10And have taken to wife Ruth, the Moabitess, the wife of Mahalon, to raise up the name of the deceased in his inheritance lest his name be cut off, from among his family and his brethren and his people. You, I say, are witnesses of this thing.
11Then all the people that were in the gate, and the ancients, answered: We are witnesses: The Lord make this woman who cometh into thy house, like Rachel, and Lia, who built up the house of Israel: that she may be an example of virtue in Ephrata, and may have a famous name in Bethlehem:
Isidore of Seville · v. 11And the elders. ISID. The blessing of the ten elders shows that in the name of Jesus all nations are to be blessed. For iota among the Greeks signifies ten, and it is the first letter in the name of Jesus. May the Lord make this woman. He prays for prosperity for the Church of the Gentiles, that she may receive the grace of fruitfulness which the first parents of the Israelites had. Rachel. Having, in the hope of inward contemplation, the inward understanding of truth. Whence Rachel was of a goodly countenance and of a beautiful form, whom every godly and earnest man loves, and for her sake serves Laban, who is interpreted a whitening, which he compares to the grace of God, who says: If your sins have been as the Phoenician dye, they shall be made white as snow (Isa. I). Lia. The action of this life in which we live is laborious out of faith, and uncertain by what issue it may come to the profit of those for whom we mean to take counsel. She is Lia, the first wife of Jacob, who is recorded to have been weak-eyed.
12And that the house may be, as the house of Phares, whom Thamar bore unto Juda, of the seed which the Lord shall give thee of this young woman.
v. 12Phares, etc. Who held the grace of the Gentile people, and in the birth went before his brother, who had first put forth his hand; for Israel first put forth his hand in the work of the law, and drew it back stained with the blood of the prophets and of Christ himself. But afterwards the people of the Gentiles broke forth, that the first might be last, and the last first (Matth. XX). Thamar too is interpreted changing, or bitterness. For the Church of the Gentiles, both in name and in habit, which was foul and bitter in idolatry, becomes sweet and fair in penance.
13Booz therefore took Ruth, and married her: and went in unto her, and the Lord gave her to conceive, and to bear a son.
v. 13That she might conceive and bear. The Church is always made fruitful by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and as some depart to the perpetual light others come after them, that the Christian name may abide for ever and our most holy mother may have consolation in her old age from a new offspring. When the patriarchs and the prophets departed, the evangelists and the apostles succeeded them; whence: Instead of thy fathers, sons are born to thee.
14And the women said to Noemi: Blessed be the Lord, who hath not suffered thy family to want a successor: that his name should be preserved in Israel.
15And thou shouldst have one to comfort thy soul, and cherish thy old age. For he is born of thy daughter in law: who loveth thee: and is much better to thee, than if thou hadst seven sons.
v. 15For of thy daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law of the synagogue is the Gentile Church, who was married to Christ, born of the synagogue. Whom indeed the synagogue could not beget through the law: him, received through the mystery of prophecy and figured under a veil, she carried hidden, and she discharged the office of a nurse, because she lacked the privilege of a mother. Much better to thee, etc. That is, than the multitude of those who in the old testament were nourishing the teaching of the law, who indeed did not believe the word of the Lord, and sacrificed their sons and their daughters to devils, and at last killed Christ and persecuted the apostles.
16And Noemi taking the child, laid it in her bosom, and she carried it, and was a nurse unto it.
v. 16And of the nurse. A spiritual lineage of generation is shown. For Obed is interpreted servile. Isai, a sacrifice in the sun, or incense; David, strong of hand, or desirable. For he who serves God strenuously offers him a pleasing sacrifice and incense of the sweetest odour through works of virtue and the pursuit of prayer. And so, made strong by faith and devotion, he is desirable, and pleases God.
17And the women, her neighbours, congratulating with her, and saying, There is a son born to Noemi, called his name Obed: he is the father of Isai, the father of David.
v. 17The neighbours. The powers of the heavens, who rejoice in the fruitfulness of the Church, and call her name Obed, that is, serving, whom they desire to serve the supreme King together with themselves.
18These are the generations of Phares: Phares begot Esron,
v. 18These are. There are ten generations of the son of Juda down to David. Whence thou knowest that the whole intent of the divine law tends toward Christ, who was born of the seed of David, that it may proclaim his coming and make manifest in him the perfection of the law: For the end of the law is Christ, unto justice to everyone that believeth (Rom. X). Before the law, therefore, Jacob says of the incarnation of Christ: The sceptre shall not be taken away from Juda, nor a ruler from his thigh, till he come that is to be sent. And to David it was said, because Christ is of the seed of Juda: Of the fruit of thy womb I will set upon thy throne. It is plain, therefore, that the oracle of the prophets also and of the patriarchs pertains to the dispensation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
19Esron begot Aram, Aram begot Aminadab,
20Aminadab begot Nahasson, Nahasson begot Salmon,
21Salmon begot Booz, Booz begot Obed,
22Obed begot Isai, Isai begot David.
The page follows the form the Glossa itself was written for: text in the centre, the school’s own glosses on the inner margin, the Fathers it excerpts on the outer. The printed Talmud page, on the usual reading, descends from this Latin glossed page (Soncino 1483, Bomberg 1520). Migne’s nineteenth-century recension keeps only the marginal layer; the interlinear glosses survive here only as the italic lemma that heads each note. Sigla are printed as Migne gives them; Id. and ibid. are resolved to the last author named, and the resolution is shown.