How to waive a right of pre-emption over land

Week beginning: 18th March, 2018 | By Andrew Myers | St Albans

"Then Boaz said, 'On the day you buy the land from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the dead man's widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property.' At this, the guardian-redeemer said, 'Then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate. You redeem it yourself. I cannot do it.' (Now in earlier times in Israel, for the redemption and transfer of property to become final, one party took off his sandal and gave it to the other. This was the method of legalising transactions in Israel.) So the guardian-redeemer said to Boaz, 'Buy it yourself.' And he removed his sandal."

Ruth 4:5-8 (NIV)

The unnamed "guardian-redeemer" (referred to in the Hebrew as "so-and-so"!) must have had, as closest surviving male relative, the right to redeem land probably sold by Naomi's husband (but over which she retained the right of usufruct). This seemed

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