Комментарий о цитате к Рут 1:11

עד יגדל שלה בני, “until my son Shelah becomes of age.” Seeing there was no brother older than Shelah for Tamar to marry, she would have to wait until Shelah was old enough. Had Shelah been of marriageable age already, Yehudah would not have asked Tamar to wait. This verse [the problems caused by Yehudah delaying the levirate marriage of Shelah, Ed.] prompted our sages in Yevamot 39 to say that if a brother evaded performing the levirate union until a younger, under-aged brother had come of age and would perform it in his stead, or if an older brother was overseas and a brother who was present wanted to wait until his older brother returns from overseas and marries this widow, that one does not accept such arguments. The brother who is present and of age must either perform the levirate marriage or release the widow by performing the rite of חליצה, the act of releasing her to marry an outsider, so hat she can get on with her life. In Ruth 1,11 Naomi says to her daughters-in-law: “turn back, my daughters! Why should you go with me? I am too old to be married. Even if I were to be married tonight and I also bore sons, should you wait for them till they grow up?” This suggests that there might be a point in waiting under less extreme circumstances. There are those who hold that Naomi meant that if she had been pregnant at the time she uttered these words she would have encouraged her daughters-in-law to wait till such sons had been old enough to marry. However, people who think along those lines are quite wrong. The Torah in Deut. 25,1 introduces the whole subject of the levirate marriage with the words כי ישבו אחים יחדיו, which the Talmud in Yevamot 17 interprets to mean ”when the brothers concerned are alive at the same time.” In other words, no unborn brother can qualify for observing this legislation for a brother who had died before he was born.

At the same time, the son-in-law still remains more a stranger than true family. Indeed, the Biblical son-in-law remains only indirectly connected to his wife’s father. Economically, the in-law is not much better than any other foreigner, receiving no direct inheritance. In other areas as well, the bond is tenuous and impermanent – it only truly exists when the blood relative is still alive. Hence, the novelty of Ruth is that she decides to continue the bond with her mother-in-law, Naomi, even after Ruth’s husband has died. That this is not expected is succinctly heard in Naomi’s words to her daughters-in-law, “Why should you go with me? Do I have more sons in my womb that they should be husbands to you?” (Ruth 1:11–12)¹⁶⁷Ruth 1:11–12.