What Does Ruth 4:21 Mean?
And Salmon brought forth Boaz, and Boaz brought forth Obed.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Salmon begat Boaz, and Boaz begat Obed,THE KEY
Boaz brings forth Obed, whose name means “one who serves,” so this line carries a nature within the very name it gives.
THE MEANING
Continuity is visible here: Salmon brings forth Boaz, and Boaz brings forth Obed. These named lives move through one another, with Obed’s name carrying the sense of “one who serves” into the line that continues beyond him.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a life is self-originating and isolated: the verse makes continuity visible by naming who brings whom forth.
THE ROOT
הוֹלִיד
holid
GROWS FROM
ילד
to bear, give birth, or beget
Holid is a causative form of ילד: Salmon causes Boaz to be born, and Boaz causes Obed to be born. The same root yields yeled, “child,” holding both the act of bringing forth and the one brought forth in a shared word-family.
ALSO GROWS
yalad: to bear, give birth, beget
יָלַד
This is the root beneath both begetting acts in the verse.
yeled: child
יֶלֶד
The child is not separate from the act of begetting; both belong to the same root-family.
עוֹבֵד
ʿoved
GROWS FROM
עבד
to serve or work
Obed is formed from the root for serving: his name means “one who serves.” The verse places this nature inside the genealogy’s next named life.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeved: servant
עֶבֶד
This noun shares Obed’s root and makes the sense of service in his name visible.
ʿavodah: service, work
עֲבֹדָה
This branch shows the root’s wider field of service and work carried by Obed’s name.
THE PATTERN
A genealogy makes continuity concrete by naming each life brought forth and the next link it carries.
And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and brought forth a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.And Boaz brought forth Obed, and Obed brought forth Jesse,Salmon brought forth Boaz out of Rahab, and Boaz brought forth Obed out of Ruth, and Obed brought forth Jesse.THE THREAD
And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and brought forth a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.Ruth’s repeated “begat” and Genesis’s “begat” translate forms of the same Hebrew root, ילד, meaning “to bear or beget.” Genesis adds that the child carries likeness, opening this brief genealogy onto the continuity each new life bears.
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