“A man would remove his sandal”
Now in former times in Israel, concerning the redemption or exchange of property, to make any matter legally binding a man would remove his sandal and give it to the other party, and this was a confirmation in Israel. (Ruth 4:7 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A strange footwear ritual, and a weirdly self-conscious aside from the narrator.
The cultural key
Handing over a sandal sealed a deal the way a signature or handshake does now. Land was claimed by walking it, so a man's sandal, which touched the ground, stood for the right to possess property; passing it transferred the claim before witnesses. What is remarkable is the verse itself: the narrator stops to explain the custom as something from 'former times,' already obsolete for his readers. A related but harsher sandal rite, pulling the shoe off a brother who refused levirate duty, appears in Deuteronomy 25:9.
Recovered meaning
This is the Bible footnoting its own culture in real time, telling us the story is old enough that its legal customs need translating. The sandal is a receipt, and the aside is a rare glimpse of a narrator dating himself.