Boaz

Boaz is the central male figure of the Book of Ruth — a landowner of Bethlehem who appears first as a model of covenant kindness toward the destitute. When Ruth, the Moabite widow of his kinsman, comes to glean in his fields during the barley harvest, he protects her, feeds her, and instructs his workers to leave grain deliberately for her to gather. The Hebrew word that runs through the story is hesed — steadfast, covenant loyalty — and Boaz embodies it before he is ever asked to.

The theological weight of Boaz falls on his role as goel, the kinsman-redeemer. Under the law (Leviticus 25; Deuteronomy 25), the nearest relative could 'redeem' a widow and the land of a dead kinsman, marrying her to raise up an heir in the dead man's name. A nearer kinsman declines the duty; Boaz takes it up publicly at the city gate, redeeming Naomi's land and marrying Ruth. The Fathers read the kinsman-redeemer as a type of Christ, who takes on flesh to redeem a people not his own and to raise up offspring to God. From the marriage of Boaz and Ruth came Obed, the grandfather of David — and so the line that Matthew traces to Jesus, naming Boaz directly in the genealogy of the Christ (Matthew 1:5).