Judges, Ruth: Revised Edition (The NIV Application Commentary)

by K. Lawson Younger

Boaz calls to this individual to come over and sit down (“Come over here, my friend [peloni ’almoni], and sit down”; v. 1). The NIV translation misses the impact of the sentence. The phrase peloni’almoni is an example of a wordplay termed farrago.3 The best translation is “So-and-So.” The same expression is used in 1 Samuel 21:2 and 2 Kings 6:8, where the narrator does not wish to give the name of the place, so that the translation “such and such a place” is appropriate.4 Taylor likens this to the English “Joe Schmoe”—a quite apt illustration of the Hebrew nuance.5 This phrase originates with the narrator, not with Boaz. Boaz would surely know the name of a fellow citizen in a small town like Bethlehem, not to mention a relative who is the go’el just prior to him. Consequently, the narrator is underscoring the namelessness of this man in order to create a less than favorable impression and is prompting the audience to suspect a pejorative purpose in the narrator’s choice of the expression.6 Therefore, to translate the expression as “my friend” is to obscure the narrator’s purposeful omission of the man’s name.7 A translation like “Mr. Such-and-Such” or “Joe Schmoe” is much more on target. Having called the man over, Boaz now procures ten elders of the city. This contrasts markedly with the way in which Boaz summoned the nearer relative. While he summoned this man over at the moment he passed through the gate, the text strongly suggests that Boaz does not simply wait in the...