‘ And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, “You sit down here.” And they sat down.'
The mystery deepened when Boaz requested that ten city elders should also sit with them. They were there to act as witnesses to the transaction that was about to take place. It may, however, be that ‘ten' indicates ‘a reasonable number' (compare Jacob's ‘he has changed my wages ten times' - Genesis 31:7).