Part 1: Background | Part 2: Loyal Love | Part 3: Chance | Part 4: Abundance | Part 5: A Plan

After harvest comes threshing, and then winnowing. Threshing is the torturing of the harvested stalks so that the kernels, which are the whole point, are physically separated from their husks and from the cut stalks; winnowing involves tossing the kernels into the air so that the wind will blow away the lighter husks, allowing the weightier, unmixed kernels to fall to the ground. “A threshing floor was a stone surface in the fields where the harvest husks were crushed and the grain sifted from the chaff” (HCBC). Winnowing would take place at the nearest point to the field where a stiff breeze was available, typically at a high point.

With the harvest over, and threshing in progress, Naomi, the mother, recognizes her responsibility to find a husband (“rest”) for Ruth (Ru 3.1-2). She knows that Boaz is aware of their plight, is a near relative, and is of means. This can’t all be just a coincidence, can it?

But the harvest has taken a few weeks, and Boaz hasn’t indicated any inclination to do anything more than be generous with his grain. Naomi thinks he needs a nudge.

This was not culturally inappropriate, nor was it meddlesome. Israelites in financial peril from widowhood were entitled to claim a kinsman redeemer (Dt 25.5-6). We call this “levirate marriage” (from the Latin levir, brother-in-law), and the nearest relative was obligated if able. Other responsibilities included avenging a clan member’s murder (Nu 35), redeeming clan land (Le 25.23-28), and redeeming a clan relative from debt slavery (Le 25.35-55) through an interest-free loan (Le 25.35ff) or provision of labor (Le 25.39ff) (AYBD).

All of this legal provision is to remind Israel that God is the ultimate kinsman-redeemer of Israel (Is 63.16; 54.5), based on chesed, loyal covenant love. (The word has appeared in Ru 2.20 and will appear again in Ru 3.10.)

With all this in mind, and knowing that a feast was commonly held when the harvest work was finished, Naomi decides that now is the time. So she shares her plan with her daughter-in-law.

Ruth is going to make herself presentable, as they say, and go to the threshing floor. There she’ll be able to watch the men eat and then settle in for the night, sleeping by the threshed grain to protect it from thieves and from scavenging animals. After Boaz settles in, when it’s dark, she will go and lie down at his feet.

And then, Naomi is reasonably certain, good Boaz will continue to do the right thing, even if it’s more of a commitment than has been required of him so far.

Some interpreters have suggested that something sexual was occurring here. That idea directly contradicts the characters of Ruth and Boaz and the direction of the plot. First, Naomi sends Ruth into that risky situation precisely because she knows that Boaz will protect her; he has already demonstrated that out in the field (Ru 2.9, 22). And Ruth has demonstrated her noble character as well in following Naomi to Bethlehem and in laboring in the field; Boaz will shortly say that she is “a woman of excellence” (Ru 3.11).

Further, the direction of the plot argues against premature sexual behavior. We’ve noticed a recurring theme in the story:

• It begins with Ruth placing herself in the care of not only Naomi, but Naomi’s God (Ru 1.16).
• Boaz notices and comments on what she has done: “under whose wings you have come to trust” (Ru 2.12).
• Boaz is using here an image from his culture and history. In giving Moses detailed instructions for the construction of the Tabernacle, he has required that above the gold covering of the Ark of the Covenant—the “mercy seat”—are two angelic creatures, cherubim, under whose wings God will meet his people in the person of their high priest on the Day of Atonement. As Moses delivers his farewell address to the people of Israel, he refers to this image:
  • As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So the Lord alone did lead [Jacob and the people of Israel], and there was no strange god with him (Dt 32.11-12).
• In a few minutes, when Ruth repeats to Boaz what Naomi has instructed her to say, she will reference this image: “Spread your wings over your handmaid” (Ru 3.9).

Against all this background, hanky-panky? Ridiculous. I don’t think so.

Ruth trusts Naomi’s judgment and obeys explicitly.

The outcome next time.

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Part 1: Background | Part 2: Loyal Love | Part 3: Chance | Part 4: Abundance

Ruth arrives home with an astonishing amount of barley. Naomi, of course, has questions.

How did she know that “a man … took notice of” Ruth (Ru 2.19)? Well, there’s no way Ruth harvested all that without help. So Naomi asks. And just one word in Ruth’s answer sets the world on fire.

Boaz. Naomi knows about this man.

“Boaz was both a wealthy landowner and a close relative of Naomi. As such he could be expected to buy for the family its rightful land (Lev 25:25) and look after the helpless members of the family” (WBC).

Naomi’s statement here appears ambiguous:

Blessed be he of the Lord, who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the dead (Ru 2.20).

Who “has not left off his kindness”? Boaz? or the Lord? Contextually either one would make sense; Boaz has been kind, and God has been kind as well. But in the Hebrew as in English the Lord’s name immediately precedes the relative pronoun who, and there are other grammatical considerations that favor the Lord as the subject as well. If that’s the case, then this moment is a major development in the character of Naomi.

Remember the bitter old woman who arrived a few days ago? What has happened to her now? This Yahweh, who was great but not good, she recognizes as one who is after all loyal to his covenant promises. Of a handful of men who could serve as a redeemer—maybe just two, as far as the rest of the story tells us—Ruth has found an eminently eligible one on her first day in the fields.

In leading Ruth to the field of Boaz, God has exhibited kindness “to the living and to the dead” (Ru 2.20). Both of those adjectives are plural. The living ones, of course, are Ruth and Naomi. The dead ones? That would be Ruth’s late husband—we don’t know (yet) whether that’s Mahlon or Chilion—and Naomi’s late husband Elimelech. By looking after their widows, God is treating them with kindness, taking care of those that the dead no longer can.

So what now? Naomi advises Ruth to heed Boaz’s admonition (Ru 2.21) that she work only in his field and stay close to his workers, who will protect her (Ru 2.22). She, too, is aware of the danger to a young woman working alone out in the fields in the days of the judges.

Barley and wheat harvests together (Ru 2.23) would last about 6 weeks. “Barley was harvested from late March through late April, wheat from late April to late May” (NET), “a period of intense labor for about two months. This generally coincided with the seven weeks between Passover and … Pentecost” (MSB).

During this time, and with the cooperation and help of Boaz’s workers, Ruth would bring home far more grain than the two women would need for their own food. With the surplus they could trade for their other needs, most obviously meat, dairy, oil, and vegetables that would be available in the little village. Ruth has placed herself into the family of the aging widow and under the protecting wings of Israel’s God, and he has supplied the two with all that they need.

God is gracious; he gives good things to the undeserving.

But in the end, this is more than a story of sufficient caloric intake for two people in a faraway corner of the world. God is going to use Boaz to provide far more than food to them. And in doing that he’s going to change the world—the world of that day, and our world as well, in every place and in every time.

We’re just halfway through the story. The best—by far—is yet to come.

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Part 1: Background | Part 2: Loyal Love | Part 3: Chance

Boaz admires Ruth for seeking refuge under the wings of Israel’s God (Ru 2.12; cf Ps 17.8; 91.4; Mt 23.37). This image is going to show up again in our story.

Boaz blesses Ruth in the name of Yahweh. “The Gentile had sought refuge under the ‘wings’ of Yahweh, and therefore was entitled to his blessing” (OTSS).

It’s lunchtime. Ruth could be expected to have brought food for lunch, or to eat from what she had been able to gather herself. Boaz will have none of it. He invites her to join him and his reapers for their employee meal, prepared at his expense (Ru 2.14). It’s a meal common in the ancient Near East: roasted kernels of the harvested barley and what we would call a vinaigrette—wine vinegar mixed with olive oil. As the account makes clear by the fact that he hands her the grain himself, he had opened a seat for her next to him, or at least within arm’s reach.

Is Boaz setting up a romantic relationship? It’s tempting to (literally) romanticize this account in the interest of making it a “better story” to Western ears, but that kind of interest is unlikely at this point. One commentator says, “The text offers no hint of any romantic attraction between Boaz and Ruth. Given the racial and social barriers that separated them, the thought would not have crossed Ruth’s mind, and she could not have known that he was a kinsman of her deceased husband. As for Boaz, he was simply a good man, ‘sent’ by God to show favor to this woman. The wings of God are not only comforting to Israelites; they offer protection even for despised Moabites” (Block, NAC).

After lunch, Boaz increases his care for her by ordering his workers to actually help her harvest (Ru 2.15, 16). She’s picking in the tall cotton, so to speak, and the workers are actually dropping some of their own gleanings in her path—and doing so at the command of the owner. Boaz is not the stereotypical greedy rich businessman.

It’s likely that these professional harvesters were using a sickle in their right hand to cut a bundle of plants gathered by their left hand. This would be, I suppose, about a cup of kernels once it had been threshed and winnowed. They are keeping her in good supply.

This is astonishing generosity. The Mosaic Law allowed her what the reapers accidentally left behind. But these workers, with the approval—no, the insistence—of the owner, were lavishing product right at her feet. All she had to do was pick it up.

By the end of the day she had “about an ephah” of barley grains (Ru 2.17). Measures of volume in those days were inexact by our standards, and since the text adds “about,” we should expect that the commentators will be all over the place in their estimates. One says it was a bushel (TCBC); another says “nearly three-fifths of a bushel” (ECB); yet another says “approximately three pecks, dry measure” (WBC). Our problem is compounded by the fact that unless you’ve picked apples, you probably have no idea what a bushel or a peck is. Another commentator goes with “about 4 gallons” (Bible Guide), and we all know the size of those 5-gallon plastic buckets you get at the home improvement stores. So that helps.

If you were to fill one of those buckets to 80% full of grain, how much would it weigh? Probably 30 or 35 pounds. That’s a lot of product for a single gleaner in one day. “It testifies both to Ruth’s industry and to Boaz’s generosity” (NET).

How is Ruth going to get that home? She doesn’t have any plastic buckets. Does she perhaps have a woven basket? Or a shawl of some sort in which she could wrap it up?

That’s likely.

But wouldn’t that be cumbersome?

In my African travels, I’ve seen women routinely carrying such packages on their heads. Word on the street is that these women can carry up to 70% of their body weight up there. Makes my neck hurt just thinking about it.

As we’ll see next time, this one day’s work will set in motion the providential outcome of this story.

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Part 1: Background | Part 2: Loyal Love

A woman seeking food for her family has lost her family. Her husband and both of her sons are gone forever, and she is in a strange land. She accepts the obvious conclusion: the God of Israel may be great, but He is not good. He has not been great for her. He has not kept His covenant promises. She went out full, and God has brought her back empty (Ru 1.21).

 Is she right?

 Will the covenant God let her continue in her dismay?

 The plot has begun; now it thickens.

Boaz is “a man of great wealth” (Ru 2.1). This can refer to military prowess (Gideon, Judg 6.12) or to social standing (2K 15.20). This context probably points to the latter. So Boaz is wealthy.

The Mosaic Law provides that a childless widow can expect a near relative of her late husband to “redeem” her (Dt 25.5-10). This may involve buying back property, paying off debts, or even fathering a legal heir to the late husband. Boaz is not only biologically qualified to be the redeemer, but he is logistically qualified as well.

Ruth’s “chance chanced” (“she happened to come”) to bring her to the fields of Boaz (Ru 2.3). The writer means it to be ironic. “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Pr 16:33).

“That Boaz was a godly man is stressed from the moment he is introduced in the account. When he came out from Bethlehem to inspect the harvest he greeted his reapers in the name of Yahweh. They responded in kind” (OTSS).

And the first thing this godly man does after greeting his workers is ask about the woman he doesn’t recognize. Bethlehem is a small town, and he would know its faces.

“In the ancient Near East life outside a family was impossible, and since Boaz does not recognize Ruth he is sufficiently concerned to inquire about her background. The foreman furnishes the required details, along with the fact that Ruth has requested permission to glean. The foreman himself has been keeping her under observation, and has noted the quality of her work. Even under the hot sun she takes only a brief rest interval” (ECB).

The fact that he has heard of her already signifies God’s kind providence in bringing word of her character to Boaz, and God’s preparation of Boaz’s heart to be interested in helping her. In the small village of Bethlehem, the return of Naomi, and the arrival of Ruth, would be the talk of the town; as soon as his foreman says this woman is “the Moabite woman with Naomi,” Boaz knows the backstory.

At this point Boaz knows that she is a relative, but she doesn’t.

Boaz calls Ruth “my daughter” (Ru 2.8). This implies two things. First, he is considerably older than she is; and second, he is taking responsibility for her—at least for her safety and provision while she is on his property.

The Law required landowners to allow the poor to glean the corners of their fields (Lv 19.9-10; 23.22). Apparently, charity could not be assumed; gleaners were in the practice of asking for permission (Ru 2.7). Boaz extends permission but also urges her to work alongside his female workers (Ru 2.8; apparently those binding the sheaves). This would give her access to more grain and would provide physical protection. The fields were not a safe place for impoverished women seeking food (Ru 2.22). Not in the days of the judges.

Boaz orders the male workers not to molest her. That amounts to an order that they protect her from other workers as well; it would be so understood. “Boaz is hereby instituting the first anti–sexual-harassment policy in the workplace recorded in the Bible” (Block, NAC).

So now Ruth has a place to gather food in safety. This is a huge step forward for the two impoverished women.

Could Boaz be even more helpful than this?

Stay tuned.

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Part 1: Background

Somewhere along the road, Naomi breaks her silence. She says, “Our hope is in family. My family, my hope, is in Bethlehem; yours is here in Moab. May Yahweh deal kindly with you—may he show you lovingkindness, covenant loyalty—even in the land of Chemosh! May he be loyal to you as you have been to my sons” (Ru 1.8-9)

These Moabite women will not be welcome in Israel, will they? The history of the Moabites and the Israelites has not been friendly:

• Moab was the son produced by Lot’s incestuous relationship with his elder daughter (Ge 19.33-37);
• The Moabite king, Balak, had refused to allow Israel to pass through his land on the way to Canaan, and had even hired Balaam to curse them (Nu 22.1-8);
• Moabites had seduced Israel to Baal worship (Nu 25.1-3);
• The Mosaic Law decreed that no Moabite could enter the assembly of Yahweh (Dt 23.3-4). Moses said, “You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever” (Dt 23.6).

So Naomi, genuinely seeking the best outcome for her Moabite daughters-in-law, thinks, “Perhaps you can find another husband—you’ve been good wives (Ru 1.8)—and then you’ll be secure.”

They resist. They love Naomi, and they want to stay with her (Ru 1.10).

Her tone turns desperate. “I have no sons in my guts,” she says (Ru 1.11). (This is not the typical Hebrew word for “womb.”) “You won’t find a husband in me; God has dealt bitterly with me (Ru 1.13). Look at the emptiness of my life! God has not been good to me.”

So Orpah does the sensible thing. With Naomi’s apparent approval, Orpah returns to her people, and to her gods—back to the land of Chemosh.

But Ruth is not Orpah. She shows loyal, covenant love to her dear mother-in-law. Ruth the Moabite seeks the family of the Jewish widow, who can promise her nothing. “The reference to burial with Naomi indicates she considers herself a part of Naomi’s family and is determined to be buried in the same family tomb” (NAC).

And she seeks the Jewish widow’s God (Ru 1.16). Like the Canaanite Rahab before her, Ruth believes in the God of Israel. She even seals her covenant with the covenant name of YHWH (Ru 1.17).

“How much she knew about the implications of claiming Yahweh as one’s God we do not know. She had indeed been observing Naomi for more than a decade, but from what we have seen of [Naomi] in this chapter she hardly qualified to be a missionary of orthodox Yahwistic faith and theology” (NAC). Has Naomi given Ruth any reason to see YHWH as good and gracious?

Faith and faithfulness have always delivered Israel from judgment and brought God’s abundant provision. Will a Moabite woman’s faithfulness do the same? God has promised to bless all nations through Abraham; will He bless Abraham through the faith of a woman from another nation? And from Moab, at that?

It’s a long, steep, exhausting climb out of the Jordan Valley to Bethlehem. You and I probably wouldn’t make it. And there are robbers in the wilderness, who would not be chivalrous to two women traveling without male escort.

When she arrives—finally!—in her hometown, she sets it abuzz. Her old friends recognize her—they think—but Naomi doesn’t look like the woman who left so long ago. “Can this be Naomi?!” (Ru 1.19). She has changed significantly, and not for the better. The years of sorrow have aged her body, and they have aged her spirit.

“Look what Israel’s God has done to me. Don’t call me ‘Pleasant’ (Naomi) any more. I am a different person now” (Ru 1.21). Naomi is certain that God is great, but she’s not so sure that he is good.

But calamity does not always mean judgment. God has not forgotten Naomi. He has removed the famine; crops are growing again.

As the Master of time and seasons, Israel’s God has led Naomi back to her people in barley harvest (March/April), just as the House of Bread is to be filled with bread (Ru 1.22).

And with much, much more.

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He is a shepherd, and he lives in what is now Kuwait.

One day God speaks to him, with a bizarre demand. And a promise (Ge 12.1-3).

• Leave your people and your country, and go to a place I will show you.
• I will bless you—and through you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Abram obeys. In the land of promise—Canaan—he seeks and worships God despite his fear and his failures. God fills his tents with financial and familial prosperity. From him is born a people, named for his grandson, Israel.

And from Israel’s son Judah God promises that a king will come.

And then comes darkness. Famine drives Israel, with his family of just 70 people, into Egypt. And now slavery, and the growing nation suffers under brutal taskmasters. It’s a dark time.

But God is faithful; He provides a deliverer, Moses. Israel pillages the Egyptians, God drowns the Egyptian army, and at Sinai Israel becomes a nation, with God Himself as their king and Aaron as their priest.

But like their father Abram, Israel gives in to fear, and more darkness comes in the Sinai Wilderness. More than a million people die in 40 years of wandering in the desert. Finally trusting God, they move, conquering, into Canaan. In their first victory, at Jericho, the Canaanite Rahab, a prostitute, believing in Yahweh, God of Israel, comes to their side.

 All families of the earth, indeed.

But in their new land, there is no king in Israel, and every man does what is right in his own eyes. Thinking themselves to be wise, they become fools, even worshiping the gods of the very Canaanites that they have just defeated.

Now what? Where is the promised king? Where is the plan of God?

_____

Like all short stories, this one begins by setting the stage. We meet the characters and are introduced to the conflict that the story will resolve.

There is famine in Bethlehem, “the house of bread” (Ruth 1.1) The cupboard is bare. Famine is one of the promised judgments on unbelief (Dt 28.23-24). We don’t know if this particular famine is God’s judgment, but that’s something to consider, given the lifestyle in Israel in the days of the judges (Ruth 1.1).

From here, on a clear day, you can see the hills of Moab, just 25 miles to the east. When you’re hungry, and all the fields around you are dusty and barren, the green hills across Jordan beckon. You think you can taste the greens, and the grains, and the fatted calf. Moving makes a lot of sense.

And so—like Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob before him—Elimelech escapes famine in his hometown and seeks food outside the land of promise.

And like Jacob, he dies there. But unlike Jacob’s, his body will never go home again.

As might be expected, his sons marry women of that land. But ten years later the sons too die, prematurely. The family, seeking to escape Famine, has fallen to the clutches of a greater evil, Death.

And now we have a problem: a Jewish woman, with two Moabite daughters-in-law and no means of support through husband or sons. There is no safety net; a childless widow in the ancient Near East is in dire peril. “If she could not find a family in which to live and work she was reduced to begging, prostitution, and often death by starvation” (Harrison, ECB, 182)—“a future without hope” (Block, NAC, 629).

Apparently, God is displeased with them. At least that’s what it looks like. What’s a girl to do?

There are trading caravans traveling the major highway in the area all the time, and they bring news. There’s family in Bethlehem, and word on the street is that there’s food there too (Ru 1.6). God has acted on behalf of His people. He has not forgotten them. “The ‘house of bread’ is being restocked” (Block, NAC, 631).

If the earlier famine had come as some sort of judgment on Israel’s unbelief, there is no mention here of any repentance in Israel. This is simply grace.

And through this grace, God is telling a much more far-reaching story—one that involves not just Naomi, but all Israel—and you and me as well.

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