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.

Esther was a punk; Ruth was a CHAMP

I get kinda frustrated and disappointed when I ask one of my sisters-in-christ who their favorite bible character is, and they answer with “Esther”.

Esther, the chick who effectively just stood there and looked pretty for a king so she could get married to him.

Esther, who’s greatest heroic action was to save her people from annihilation (very good), because her uncle Mordecai told her to (well, at least she was dutiful), risking death by approaching the king unsummoned, (okay, that’s heroic), by buttering up the pagan king for three days (okay, less risky), then buttering him up for two more days (alright, much less risky), by asking a favor of the king on behalf of herself and her national-hero uncle (are you serious?), to please, please, please, don’t kill her people.

Really?  That’s your favorite bible character?

Granted, there might be more going on there that I am not aware of, but at least from my cursory look at the circumstances, Esther isn’t really that impressive to me.

Ruth though, hoo boy Ruth.  She’s not just heroic, she’s heroinic.

Let’s start by setting up the scene for you:

Ruth was written after Judges, when the Isrealites were in the Promised Land, but before the coronation of David.  It was believed that Ruth was written in defense of David's right as king.

Ruth was a Moabite, and there was an injunction against Moabites from joining Israel up to the tenth generation.  David was Ruth’s great-grandson, and therefore not technically allowed to join isreal for at least another six generations.  This poses a conundrum to someone who is to be the new leader of Isarel.

But Ruth isn’t your typical Moabite: she abandons her gods, her ancestral home, and her family to stick with her mother-in-law, even after her mother-in-law’s son has died and Ruth has no reason to stay around (indeed, Naomi’s other daughter-in-law, Orpah, leaves Naomi, and Orpah is in deep distress to go, but she still takes her chance to exit when she could). 

Ruth is different: she is deeply convinced that Naomi’s god is the true god, and throughout the narative she understands that she has no right to the benefits available to Abraham’s descendents, and respects that boundary between the two peoples.  The sin of Moab was abandoning the Israelites when they most needed them, the righteousness of Ruth was completely distancing herself from her people, and staying with an Israelite even when she was asked again and again to leave.

A lot of people say God won’t make exceptions to extraordinary people.  For Ruth, God made the exception, and raised one of her descendents to be king of Israel, and later, the King of Kings.

Luke and Matthew record the genealogy of Jesus, and in Matthew (the gospel most likely written for a Jewish audience),Ruth is also included in the in this list (Matthew 1:5).  Most people accuse Christianity and Judiasm as being chauvenistic, but the fact that Matthew included women in the genealogy of the world’s savior shows that these women contributed greatly to the nation of Israel. Compounded with the fact that the genealogy is also pretty much a “highlight reel” of Jesus’s most important ancestors, this doubles the emphasis of Ruth’s importance to Israel’s history and Jesus’s heritage. (Also worth noting is that Esther doesn’t show up in there.)

Ruth was faithful, humble, diligent, and deeply loyal, enough to be included in the genealogy of Jesus and to exempt David from the injunction against the Moabites.  Next week, I’ll show you why this is true.

See you there.