Ruth 3:9: And he said, Who art thou? And she answered, I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman.
The Old Testament law decreed that when a woman was left a widow and had no children, a nearby relative could redeem her house by marrying her, providing for her, and giving her children. This was known as the law of the “goel,” a Hebrew word meaning kinsman redeemer. The law of the goel was fulfilled more than once in the Bible, and each of its fulfilments or redemptions were connected with the tribe of Judah and the line of David within the tribe of Judah.
The man Judah (one of the twelve sons of Jacob) became the goel of the widow Tamar and fathered her child (Genesis chapter 38). From that child and line was born Boaz. Boaz in turn became the goel of the widow Ruth and fathered her child Obed. From Obed would come King David. So then, King David only existed because of the law of the goel. He was born of a genealogy that saw the goel’s intervention, a substitute fathering on two occasions beforehand, and it would be his line that would see one more goel, one more intervention or substitute fathering.
The third record of a goel happened in Bethlehem, the same place where Boaz redeemed Ruth! It was God Himself who acted as the Goel, for He intervened in the line of Judah and became the substitute Father in the virgin birth of Jesus. Mary was not a widow, but humanity and the entire creation was, for all had become barren and cut off from the Creator after the fall of man, and all was unable to bear the fruit it was meant to bear. Isaiah 54:5 speaks of the LORD as being our Redeemer or Goel, for only by His divine intervention could we be redeemed and go from a barren state to becoming what we were truly created for, and to bear the fruit that our lives were called to bear.