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.

The Loyalty of Ruth

In last week’s post I described how Ruth trumped Esther in pretty much every category that mattered when it came to who was a better role model.  This week I want to explain why I admire her so much.

To set the scene:

Naomi was married to a dude named Elimelek.  They had two sons (Mahlon and Kilion), who married the Moabite women, Ruth and Orpah.  Through circumstances that aren’t described in the book, all the husbands die, and Ruth and Orpah (not Oprah, though that would’ve been awesome) accompany Naomi to the border of the Moabite lands.

Ruth and Orpah are Naomi’s daughters-in-law, but not even that because they aren’t married to anyone who is related to Naomi.  Despite this, when Naomi encourages her ex-daughters-in-law to leave her, everyone bursts into tears (Ruth 1:9-10, 14).  We don’t know how much time they spent together before their respective husbands died, but we do know that they had a deep relationship and were deeply grieved to be separated.

Orpah leaves Naomi, and returns to her people and gods.  Ruth wants to stay.  Naomi pleads with Ruth, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods.  Go back with her.”  Then we hear Ruth’s response, and one of the most beautiful declarations of loyalty in the scriptures:

“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you.  Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.  Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.  May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”

Wow.  Just, wow.

Ruth is willing to leave behind everything she knows, either because she is convinced that Naomi’s god is the true God, or that by Naomi’s example she’s become convinced that she must help this wonderful woman.  Both Ruth and Naomi are widows now, and they both know that their lives will be very hard from here on out, yet Ruth’s response isn’t a “let’s pool our resources”, it’s a “I’m sticking with you, whatever the cost, life or death, I’m with you.” 

I think that having someone to constantly back you up isn’t a necessity of life, but it sure helps to know you’ve got someone in your corner, not because they need to be there, but because they want to be.  That’s awesome.

Do you have someone in your life like that?  Someone who says “life or death, I’m with you”?

Are you that type of person to someone else?

We’ll continue talking about Ruth next week.  See you there.