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.

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.