Ruth Chapter 3 (for real this time)

Last week I flubbed and said I was going to examine Ruth chapter three.  It was really chapter two.

Let’s try this dance again.

To recap: Naomi’s husband and sons have died, leaving her and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, widows.  Ruth sticks by her, and they move close to a relative who takes up responsibility of them.  Ruth works hard under the care of Boaz (the aforementioned relative).  This attracts the attention of Boaz.

The narrative: Naomi tells Ruth that she needs to step-up Ruth and Boaz’s relationship.  She tells her to get all nice and pretty and sleep at Boaz’s feet when he goes to sleep that night (this was understood to be a marriage proposal in those times).  Boaz stumbles into the barn, knocks out, and Ruth lies down at his feet.  When big brother Boaz wakes up, he sees a woman sleeping at his feet, and is a little confused (understandably). He is a bit peeved that he might be associated with drunk-sleeping around (understandly), and demands to know who it is.  Ruth identifies herself, pleads with Boaz to be more involved with her care, and Boaz agrees— but first he’s got to convince someone who is more closely related to them to marry her.  Boaz then sends her away with a large gift of grain, to help seal his promise, and the chapter ends.

Hookay, let’s break apart some of the more important parts:

First, Naomi tells Ruth to clean herself up, put on some perfume and nice clothes.  Now let’s be honest here, a guy will have a harder time saying “no” to a well-dressed, well-groomed, pretty lady.  We could say that Naomi was appealing to Boaz’s carnal nature, but people washed, perfumed, and put on their “Sunday best” when they visited God’s temple as well.  Looking and smelling nice isn’t just to engender physical appeal, but a symbolic gesture of respect— like going to a job interview (and in effect, this was what Ruth was going to do).

Second, when Boaz wakes up he’s kinda freaked out that there is some random lady sleeping at his feet.  His reaction of surprise and indignation is pretty indicative of his character: he doesn’t go around taking random women (including his servants) to bed with him, even while drunk.  Waking up with a woman at his feet could spawn a lot of bad rumors about his character, something that he’d want to avoid, and you could guess at his anger and confusion at the event.

Third, Ruth and Naomi trust that Boaz won’t take sexual advantage of Ruth while she sleeps at his feet.  He’s got the power to make her stay with him and coerce sexual favors from her if he so chooses, but he doesn’t.  They know Boaz wouldn’t do it, and I suspect that even if he did, Naomi and Ruth had no choice in the matter.

Fourth, Boaz agrees to the proposal.  Ruth puts her reputation and her body (read: physical safety), on the line when she sleeps at his feet.  Boaz knows they are in a desperate situation, and is probably deeply moved by the trust these two women have placed on him.  He has mercy on them, and probably remembers that the Israelites were foreigners long ago, and they needed help in a foreign land. He decides he should help them too.

Fifth, Naomi had a closer relative who could’ve taken care of them (as Boaz notes), but for some reason they didn’t go to that other relative.  This could be for several reasons: they knew Boaz was more righteous than the other relative, Boaz was in a better financial position to take care of them, or the other relative didn’t have that much incentive to take care of them.  Whether this was from clever planning of Naomi (which I suspect), or from God’s providence, I’m not too sure, but I’m going to trust God that he had a reason for the events to unfold the way they did.

Not much moving stuff this week (that I noticed), but good stuff nonetheless.  Next week we’ll be closing up the study of Ruth with chapter four.

See you there.

Prophets and Prophecy: 101B

Continuing on the subject of prophecy, I want to talk about the nature and complexities of prophecies, and the difficulties in interpreting them.

An important aspect of prophecy is understanding the symbology of the Bible.  In John 3:14, Jesus says “As Moses lifted up a snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man shall be lifted up”.  This was in reference to an event in Numbers 21:7-9.  It went something like this:

Israelites: Moses! We’re getting bit by snakes and dying, can you talk to God about that?

Moses: Fine, I’ll see what I can do. [To God] So God, what should we do?

God: Make a bronze snake, put it on a stick, and then when people get bit, lift the snake up.  When they look on it they will be healed.

A snake is commonly seen as a symbol of sin in the Bible, and bronze is known by biblical scholars as the “metal of judgment”.  So, people become poisoned by a snake (sin), and then they look at “the judgment of sin” on “a piece of wood”, to be healed.  Sound familiar?

Many people are familiar with the symbolic representation of numbers in prophecy.  Ten, for example, is known poetically as “many”.  Ten tens (100), would be seen as a great many, and ten ten tens (1,000), would be a great-great many.  There are also twelve tribes that contained the whole of Israel, and Jesus had twelve apostles sent out to save the world.  Twelve, then, could be seen as representative of the whole of a nation.

Now let’s look at the number of people saved from each tribe of Israel in Revelation 7:5-8.  It wasn’t just 12 (thus symbolizing the whole of an nation), and it wasn’t 1,000 (a great-great-great many).  It was 12,000—everyone, a great-great-great-many.  Combined with the fact that John makes sure to name every tribe in this passage, we can say that the totality of the people saved is then doubled.  Everyone-everyone gets saved, a great-great-great many.  Cool huh?

We can play these numbers and symbols games ad infinitum, but the trouble we face with interpreting prophecies in the Bible is the same problems we face when interpreting poetry in any other form of writing: a symbol can mean more than one thing.

The Bible isn’t just a set of laws or a recorded history of one ethnic group’s relationship to the supernatural, its also a book of poetry.  Because of this, some of the meaning can get muddled not only through translation, but through personal prejuidices and experiences.  Fire, for example, is seen as a symbol of purifying, but it is also a symbol of passion.  Does this mean that when John said Jesus will come and baptized people with the Holy Spirit and fire (Luke 3:16), that people will be immersed in purification, or passion?  It would probably be fair to say both.  But what about the fallen angels in the lake of fire?  The people who entered Hell?  Are they being purified, or impassioned?  I think it would be fair to say neither; they will never be purified, they will always be condemned.

Prophecy, then, is tricky business.  I personally think that we should stick to some of the prophecies that have already come to pass (the ones about Jesus), moreso than what will happen in the end times.  Logically speaking, even if I knew everything that would happen from studying Jesus’s prophecies in the gospels and the visions contained in Revelations, could I stop any of it?  Not really.  Would knowing the exact order of events, down to the second, help me prepare?  Not really, all I need to know to prepare for Christ’s coming is explained (more clearly) in every other book besides Revelations.

So, I couldn’t change anything even if I knew, and my best preparation isn’t in studying prophecies—it’s in the rest of the Bible.

Don’t get me wrong, I think many prophecies can help show the different aspects of God’s character and His plans for our lives, but I think we need to be serious and sober-minded when it comes to the predictions of doomsday that we hear, and that we have to have an attitude of respect and humility when it comes to trying to understand prophecy, and the entirety of the Bible.

Next week I’ll (hopefully) talk about the Baltimore Riots. See you there.