Ruth Chapter 2

As promised yesterday, I’ll be continuing the series on how awesome and AMAZING Ruth is.

To Recap: Ruth was married to one of Naomi’s sons.  Naomi’s husband and her sons died, so Ruth didn’t have a reason to stick by her ex-mother-in-law, but she did. Naomi decides to return to see if a relative will take care of them, and moves closer to him.

Naomi, a widow, is probably pretty old by now, so Ruth takes it upon herself to provide for her.  Note that as a widow in ancient Israel the best you could hope for is to become a beggar, or take up some… erm… ahhh… disreputable nightly pursuits, involving entertaining a man’s more… ummm… carnal… uhhh…

Fine, widows often became beggars or prostitutes. I said it.  Happy? 

Anyway, Naomi is probably too old to work, so it is on Ruth’s shoulder’s to provide for BOTH OF THEM.  Naomi informs her that they have a relative, by the name of Boaz, and tells her to see if they can take the gleanings from Boaz’s field.

(Gleanings, by the way, are the leftovers from a harvest.  God made a law that a landowner was not to make a servant go over a field a second time after the first harvesting of a field, and not to harvest all the way to the edges.  This leftover was specifically set aside for foreigners and the poor; people who needed help providing for themselves.  Cool huh?)

What’s great is that Boaz notices a woman he doesn’t recognize, following behind his workers, taking up the gleanings.  He asks his overseer who she is, and the overseer has glowing remarks about her:

“She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi.  She said ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’  She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.” [Ruth 2:6-7]

So Ruth didn’t waltz right in and start taking from the field, even though the gleaning was set aside specifically for people like her.  Second, the overseer noticed that she’s been working pretty much all day.  Later on in this chapter, we see that even after Ruth was invited to dinner, she went back to work the moment she was finished.  Imagine working hard all day, grabbing some dinner, then going back to work.  This means that Ruth was 1) Humble and 2) WORKED HARD.  Very admirable attributes.

Boaz is obviously impressed, and instructs Ruth not to work a field belonging to anyone else, allowed her access to the water drawn up by his men, and to not worry about any of his men mistreating her because he specifically ordered them not to lay a hand on her.

Now I want to take the focus off of Ruth for a bit, and talk about Boaz and God.  First, we see that God’s laws to take care of the less fortunate are at work: Ruth and Naomi were hard up on their luck, yet they were still being taken care of because of the laws regarding gleanings.  Second, Boaz takes up responsibility to become Ruth and Naomi’s guardian.  Becoming a guardian for your relatives was also another system mandated by God.  Third, Boaz was a righteous dude because he followed God’s laws when it came to taking care of the less fortunate; not only did he obey them, but he had compassion on Ruth and Naomi’s plight.  He was motivated to give instead of clinging to greed.

Now for those of you who aren’t familiar with ancient culture in the middle east, there was a reason why Boaz didn’t want Ruth to work in any field, and it was the same reason why women today don’t feel comfortable walking to their car alone at night.  Boaz knew that Ruth was vulnerable, not only because she was a foreigner, but also because she was a woman and may not be able to protect herself from a licentious man.  He specifically placed her under his protection, and took steps to minimize the chances of her becoming endangered.  That’s awesome.

To review: Ruth had an AMAZING work ethic, Boaz had compassion on Ruth and Naomi and did some old-school gangsta-gentleman stuff, and God’s decrees often had injunctions specific to taking care of the less fortunate.

There were other things that happened in this chapter that I’d love to talk about, but unfortunately I don’t have the space to address them in this blog post.

We’ll be looking at Ruth chapter 3 next week.  See you there. 

[Photo cred: http://blog.eteacherhebrew.com/israel-history/the-scroll-of-ruth-מְגִלַּת-רוּת/]

Ruth Chapter 4

This last month we’ve been going through the book of Ruth, trying to highlight her heroism as well as shining a brighter light on some of the morals we can glean from such a small and often over-looked book from the Old Testament.  Today we’ll wrap up the series.

I won’t bore you with a recap of events. Instead, you can review the first, second, and third blogposts I’ve made previous about the Book of Ruth.

Chapter four begins with Boaz walking up to the city gate (in ancient times, this was like a city’s townhall), and makes arrangements with a closer relative with Naomi (he remains unnamed) who should’ve been taking care of Ruth and Naomi in the first place.  They seal the agreement, the city elders and the general public witness it, and Boaz goes on to marry Ruth.  Ruth bears a son, who will later become the grandfather to King David.  The chapter ends with a recitation of David’s lineage, from Perez to David.

Not much as far as moral stories go on in this chapter, mostly an example of customs.  First is the talk of gates, and their importance. Many psalms, for instance, talking about walking up to the city gates and proclaiming that God is the Lord (Psalm 9:14 and 100:4), and Boaz goes up to the gates of the town to get his agreement legally recognized and approved. 

Second, Boaz makes a deal with the closer relative to Naomi to marry Ruth, because the relative had the authority over Naomi’s lands and possessions.  The relative initially agrees to claiming Naomi’s land, but when he finds out that he has to marry Ruth to get it, he refuses. Most would think this was a selfish decision, but it actually is a financially sensible one: if he married Ruth, any children she had would still have the right to the land after he died.  He probably didn’t have the money to work both his and Naomi’s lands, and after maintaining it he would die and the children with his first wife wouldn’t have any claim to it after.

The only amazing thing I can find about this story is how public Boaz decides to be when he makes the arrangements to marry Ruth.  Not only did he go to the city gates, but he summoned the elders.  Not only did he summoned the elders, he gathered the people around him to witness it.  Tradition stated that only two people were needed to witness a legal matter, the fact that Boaz gathered a crowd shows how public he wanted the transaction to be: he was unashamed to be marrying a widow from a foreign land, and his commitment was total to his action.

My final thoughts on the book of Ruth is that I really appreciate the first two chapters the most, and especially like Ruth’s declaration of loyalty to Naomi  I just hope that someday, I can be that loyal too.

Will you?

Next week I’ll be talking about the construction of the Bible, and the common criticisms towards its authenticity.  See you there.

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.