[Footnote A:  In the verse preceding, Boaz says, “I have bought all that was Elimelech’s * * * of the hand of Naomi.”  In the original, the same word (kana) is used in both verses.  In the 9th, “a parcel of land” is “bought,” in the 10th a “wife” is “bought.”  If the Israelites had been as profound at inferences as our modern Commentators, they would have put such a fact as this to the rack till they had tortured out of it a divine warrant for holding their wives as property and speculating in the article whenever it happened to be scarce.]

[Footnote B:  This custom still prevails in some eastern countries.  The Crim Tartars, who are poor, serve an apprenticeship for their wives, during which they live under the same roof with them and at the close of it are adopted into the family.]

This use of the word buy, is not peculiar to the Hebrew.  In the Syriac, the common expression for “the espoused,” is “the bought.”  Even so late as the 16th century, the common record of marriages in the old German Chronicles was, “A BOUGHT B.”

The word translated buy, is, like other words, modified by the nature of the subject to which it is applied.  Eve said, “I have gotten (bought) a man from the Lord.”  She named him Cain, that is bought.  “He that heareth reproof, getteth (buyeth) understanding,” Prov. xv. 32.  So in Isa. xi. 11.  “The Lord shall set his hand again to recover (to buy) the remnant of his people.”  So Ps. lxxviii. 54.  “He brought them to his mountain which his right hand had purchased,” (gotten.) Neh. v. 8.  “We of our ability have redeemed (bought) our brethren the Jews, that were sold unto the heathen.”  Here “bought” is not applied to persons reduced to servitude, but to those taken out of it.  Prov. viii. 22.  “The Lord possessed (bought) me in the beginning of his way.”  Prov. xix. 8.  “He that getteth (buyeth) wisdom loveth his own soul.”  Finally, to buy is a secondary meaning of the Hebrew word kana.

Even at this day the word buy is used to describe the procuring of servants, where slavery is abolished.  In the British West Indies, where slaves became apprentices in 1834, they are still, (1837,) “bought.”  This is the current word in West India newspapers.  Ten years since servants were “bought” in New York, and still are in New Jersey, as really as in Virginia, yet the different senses in which the word is used in those states, puts no man in a quandary.  Under the system of legal indenture in Illinois, servants now are “bought."[A] Until recently immigrants to this country were “bought” in great numbers.  By voluntary contract they engaged to work a given time to pay for their passage.  This class of persons, called “redemptioners,” consisted at one time of thousands.  Multitudes are “bought” out of slavery by themselves or others.  Under the same roof with