by Maggie White
Chapter Two: Staging
The story doesn’t automatically switch from Dunkirk to D-Day when these women return to the land of Israel. Naomi is rebuilding her life from the ground up as a widow – so is Ruth. She is also an unwanted foreigner, has no name or title in Israel, and her lineage is pagan. Ruth apparently believes that even if life held nothing else for her, to dwell in the land of God in the shadow of the Almighty, was worthy of her life.
It seems to me that the backdrop of this chapter is Psalm 138:6: “Though the Lord is high, He regards the lowly.”
First, we see the kindness of God on display. God built provision for foreigners into the laws and traditions of Israel (see Leviticus 19:9-10). In Israel, where all land was divided by family and passed down by inheritance, the Israelites were commanded not to harvest to the edges of their field, not to glean twice, and not to strip their vineyards bare. The excess was to be left for the foreigners; this was the law. The rationale is in Deuteronomy 10:18-19: “[God] executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” The law reflects the justice and love in the heart of God and it reminds the Israelites that when they were foreigners and slaves in Egypt, they were not forgotten by the Lord. He didn’t give them the option of forgetting the foreigners among them. There is no other god like this.
Second, we see the kindness of a man whose heart was devoted to God on display. The first mention of him (in Ruth 2:1) uses one adjective: “worthy”. When Ruth the foreigner went out to glean in the fields of Israel, she “happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech”. This worthy man was an apparently forgotten relative of Naomi. In the next verses, Boaz demonstrates more than a grudging obedience to the law of God; it seems that he truly delights in it. He asks Ruth to stay in his field, he commands his field hands not to bother her, to pull out extra grain and leave it behind for her. He gives her access to clean water and lunch, and when all was said and done, she walks away from his field with twenty-two liters of barley grain.
Naomi’s heart seems softer when Ruth comes home. She blesses Boaz the man, but more importantly, she says something different about God – that His “kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead” (verse 20). Ruth walked into a black future expecting God to be greater than all the gods of Moab; Naomi came home to Israel expecting that they were wholly forgotten. As Ruth is met by the mercy of this God, Naomi’s narrative and Naomi’s heart begin to change.
In the middle of this chapter is perhaps the most beautiful passage in the entire book. Verses 10-13 find Ruth on her face before Boaz, asking why he has chosen to be gracious to her, “since I am a foreigner?” His response: he knew that she had left everything, he knew of her love and care for her mother-in-law, and far from calling her an outcast, he says, “The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge” (verse 12).
Is it romance? Is it mercy? Is this where Dunkirk fades out to D-Day?
I think it’s just a whisper of redemption, grace and hope in a field of barley – over a thousand years before Christ came to bring thunder to the whispers, to die for the sins of His people, and to make the Gospel promise extend beyond the borders of Israel to every tribe and tongue and nation (Malachi 1:5, Romans 10:12-13, Revelation 7:9).
Chapter Three: Hope
Chapter Three is where the story takes a turn. While some believe this chapter unfolds with deep and almost sexual romance, a historical lens doesn’t really suggest that. Further, a proper hermeneutic doesn’t allow us to walk away from this chapter with a recipe for “biblical courtship”; not all descriptions in the Bible are prescriptions, or instructions for how we ought to live. When we approach the chapter with proper questions, we walk away instructed and uplifted by glimpses of God and the kindness of a man after God’s heart.
The short story is that Naomi desires to “seek rest” for Ruth in the house of husband. She instructs the young widow to go to the threshing floor of Boaz after dark, to lay at his feet, and in effect, ask for more from him than she could ever give.
This is where historical context comes into play. More than proposing marriage, Ruth was stepping into a key aspect of Israelite culture and taking up the values of the people of God. In a nation where family names and bloodlines were everything, the cessation of a family (i.e. the line of Elimelech, Naomi’s husband) was beyond tragic. The law made provision in which the nearest relative (usually a brother of the dead man) could marry a widow, and their firstborn son would be dedicated to continuing the family line of the dead, “that his name may not be blotted out of Israel” (Deuteronomy 25:6). A close relative could also buy back the allotted property of a dead man (Leviticus 25:25).
Tradition calls this the law of the goel, and the relative himself a “redeemer”, a “kinsman redeemer”, a “family redeemer”, and a “guardian-redeemer”. It seems this man, the goel, was not required to take up the widow and redeem her family property. In order for this to happen, he not only had to be a close relative, but he had to be both willing and able to fulfill the role. With an understanding of God’s lawful provision on one hand, and faith that despite her foreign status it could be for her, the woman at the feet of her potential goel says, “I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer” (verse 9).
Some people say Ruth is proposing marriage. In effect, she is. But much deeper, she is going to the man who prayed that she find refuge under the wings of God and asking him to be an extension of those wings, to mercifully redeem her family line, to provide for her a hope and a future.
Boaz does not refuse. He says that all the town knows her as a “worthy woman” (this echoes chapter 2:1 in which he is called a “worthy man”), and calls her request a “kindness” because she did not go after a younger man. After telling her not to be afraid and that he will “do for you all that you ask” (verse 11), he reveals the catch. There is another relative who is closer to her. “Remain tonight,” he instructs, “and in the morning, if he will redeem you, good; let him do it. But if he is not willing to redeem you, then, as the Lord lives, I will redeem you. Lie down until the morning” (verse 13). She stayed at his feet. In the morning, before it was light, he sent her away with six measures of barley, saying, “You must not go back empty-handed to your mother-in-law” (verse 17).
In her despair, Naomi had forgotten Boaz. She had also forgotten this other relative who was closer in the bloodline. In Chapter One, we found her in the wake of famine and death saying that there was no hope of a family and future for her daughters-in-law; in Chapter One, she changes her name to Mara because “the Lord has brought me back empty”. But when Ruth returns from the threshing floor of Boaz, there are two potential redeemers for their family and grain to fill her hands.
To be continued! Read the next part in October!
Maggie (Ford) White lives Fort Bragg, NC with her husband, Joshua, a growing baby, her dog, Kevin, and the joy that God is still the same. She has worked alternately as a Spanish translator, political activist, videographer, registered nurse, and writer over the years. More than anything, she wants to live for eternity, encourage girls and women in the Word of God, and make the Gospel known. She enjoys distance running and cooking three meals a day, but she spends her best hours studying Scripture.
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