Ruth and Boaz
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Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Bryan Broome.
We have come to the end of the book of Judges and are picking up with Ruth, which was originally, if I understand correctly, a sort of appendix to the book of Judges. Is that right?
That’s the position that the Jews took and that the church has often adopted as well.
So we were coming to this story and there are a couple of different directions we would like to go with it. It’s a very rich book. The direction we were originally going to go we decided was not as Christmas-y as the other direction that we wanted to go, so we are changing directions on a dime and talking about Ruth and Boaz and their love story and the kinsman redeemer and biblical imagery and stuff like that. Greg, would you tell us the story of Ruth and Boaz?
It begins in Bethlehemjudah. Remember, we just finished the story of Judges and the two stories both involve Bethlehemjudah, and Bethlehem doesn’t come off very well in either of them, and here the beginning is not auspicious.
Bethlehem means ‘house of bread,’ and yet there’s a famine in the land, either a direct judgment from God or drought or as the result of war, which happened a lot, and there is this man who we meet briefly. His name is Elimelech, which means ‘God is king.’ He and his wife Naomi, which means ‘sweetness,’ decide they’re going to take their two boys, Mahlon and Chilion, and go into the land of Moab.
There’s a little bit of irony here. Bethlehem is the house of bread, but they have no bread. The last time we ran into Moab, the children of Israel were trying to get bread from them, and they absolutely refused.
And if that weren’t bad enough, when they get there Elimelech dies. ‘God is king’ is dead. After that, the two young men take wives from Moab, which is not necessarily ideal but not necessarily forbidden. It all depends upon whether they lead them to faith in Yahweh first, and as we read through the answer seems to be yes and no. Anyway, they live there for a while and both these young men, for reasons that are not explained and ways that we have no description, die in Moab.
This leaves Naomi and her two daughters-in-law, who love her – she’s a sweet person after all – but this whole thing kind of sours her. Her husband is dead, her two sons are dead, and now she hears that God has visited his people in mercy and there’s bread again in Israel, in Bethlehem, so she decides she may as well go back. She’s got nothing here. She’s got the two girls, but they’re still young. They’re probably in their 20s or so, still capable of marrying again and having children, but she’s got nothing for them. She’s an older woman now, so she tells them this –
Go, return each to her mother's house. The Lord deal kindly with you, as ye have dealt with the dead, and with me. The Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband. Then she kissed them and they lifted up their voice and wept.
Rest is something we’ll return to later – not rest in the sense of non-activity, but the rest of having someone take care of you and support you and provide for you and love you and create an atmosphere of tranquility and joy in which you will live with him.
Later on, Naomi will say to Ruth, “Should I not seek rest for you?” It’s not the same word as Sabbath, but there’s an overlap of ideas. So Naomi says, “Go back home. I’ve got nothing for you. I love you all, but I hope you find husbands and everything will be okay.”
And Naomi said, Turn again, my daughters. Why will ye go with me? Are there yet any more sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands? Turn again, my daughters, go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say, I have hope, if I should have a husband also tonight and should also bear sons, would ye tarry for them till they were grown? Would ye stay for them from having husbands? Nay, my daughters, for it grieveth me much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord is gone out against me.
Naomi’s take is, “The most important thing for you is to get married,” and she’s thinking here in terms of the concept of Levirate marriage and kinsman redeemer. According to God’s law, when brethren dwelt together, if a brother married a woman and died without issue then the next brother would marry the woman and raise up seed to his name. Naomi says, “I don’t have any more sons who can do that for you. They’re both dead and my husband is dead.”
It’s interesting that she expects Ruth and Orpah to understand this custom.
They probably had talked about it. Ruth seems to know a lot of things. It’s one thing to talk about the faith, to talk theology, and something else to live it out. Here where push comes to shove, she basically is telling them, “The most important thing in life is getting married, so go back to your families. This is what she actually says.
And they lifted up their voice and wept again and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clave unto her. And she said, Behold, thy sister-in-law is gone back unto her people and unto her gods. Return thou after thy sister in law.
“Orpah has gone back to her family and to her pagan religion that will condemn her to hell forever. Why don’t you do the same?” Naomi has got some spiritual issues here.
Maybe not. It’s not in general, and maybe in this case it really isn’t to Ruth. We’re going to see what Ruth does, but this is how bitter Naomi has become and how twisted her theological insight has become. “No, the most important thing – you know, covenant and all that, we must perpetuate the covenant, dominion mandate, get married, have children – that’s the most important thing, and you can’t do that back home because…”
There’s got to be running in the back of her mind, “You will be immigrants. You will be from a despised people that traditionally has been our enemies.” Moab, in the book of Judges, has invaded Israel before and tyrannized over them.
Yes, the law forbade Ammonites and Moabites to come into the congregation. The language is a little vague – not until the 10th generation, not forever. The Hebrew word for forever has a lot of stretch to it. It can mean indefinitely, for the foreseeable future, and it can literally mean forever, so it’s not clear whether it would mean 10 generations, never ever ever, or if literally does mean 10 generations (like anyone’s going to pull that one off, but if they did it would be all right).
And here’s the thing – that would be for a male entering the congregation as a ruler or what we would call a voter, someone who can vote, run for office, and hold office and such. That’s the concept of the congregation. The congregation was not just the people who lived there, it’s the people who exercised, in some degree, political authority.
This will be something that we can talk about the next time we do an episode on Ruth. Yes, there were immigration laws. They didn’t keep people out, but they did keep certain people from holding political office until cultural transformation happened, but it applied to the men, not the women. You could marry a Moabite and she could become the mother of your child, and your child could enter or be part of the congregation – of course, if the mom worshiped Yahweh. So that’s what’s going on here.
Naomi is processing all this. She doesn’t say it all, but she obviously knows enough about God’s law and about Israel to understand, “I can’t promise you anything if you come back. You may be completely rejected. There may be no place for you. Sure, the laws technically say you’re allowed to glean, but what kind of life is that? I don’t want to pull you into that, so it would be better if you went back to your gods and went to hell,” is what she’s saying. Her bitterness here over what’s happened to her, over God’s providence, has seriously skewed her understanding of this life, of this world, and of what’s really important.
Intreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
That’s pretty strong. I’ve actually heard people say, “Well, all she’s saying is ‘I love you a lot and I’ll go wherever you will, and I’ll pick up whatever religion you have.’” That’s not what she’s saying. She has just said she knows who her God is, and she takes an oath in the covenant name of Yahweh or Jehovah.
And the phrase “do so to me” – that’s kind of hard to get the meaning across with just words, but clearly there’s some hand motion going on with this.
Probably like your thumb cutting through your throat or tearing up your chest or something. It’s self-maledictory. “May God tear me to pieces if anything but death parts us,” so Ruth is not content to go back.
The other girl loved Naomi as a mother figure, as a friend, as a sweet older lady, as someone who’s really nice, but she wasn’t ready to break with her culture. Although she had to some degree broken with her gods, it was not a heart thing. She was willing to go back, and Naomi pronounces, “She has gone back to her gods. She has abandoned the faith. You should do the same.”
Now, if this had been put forward merely as a test that would be one thing, but there’s no indication here that Naomi is testing her. She’s just really mad.
When she saw that she was steadfastly minded to go with her, then she left speaking unto her.
That means she didn’t talk to her for a long while. “You’re not doing things my way. This is not how I wrote the script. Okay, fine, come, but I’m not saying anything to you for a while.” So they make their way out of Moab.
You can see them walking down the path, and Naomi is always trying to get to the other side of the road so Ruth won’t walk with her. “I’m not speaking to you.”
They come to Bethlehem, and Naomi apparently was quite well-known because it says –
And it came to pass, when they were come to Bethlehem, that all the city was moved about them and they said, Is this Naomi?
And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi [sweetness] but call me Mara [bitterness], for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full and the Lord hath brought me home again empty. Why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?
There’s a couple things here. First of all, Naomi is indeed quite bitter. On the one hand, she recognizes the sovereign hand of God. On the other, she is unwilling to take any responsibility for anything that led up to this fiasco.
Most of God’s people did not fly off to Moab. Most of them waited it out and God was gracious to them. It is Moab that swallowed up her husband and their sons in whatever fashion, but in acknowledging God’s sovereignty she does not acknowledge that God does have a plan for her that is good. Being amongst God’s people, whom she still believes in, in spite of everything, God has a good plan here.
The other thing that she could not possibly know, and no one would know for another 1,000 years, is that someone named Mara (Mary) coming to Bethlehem is a little bit auspicious and prophetic, so we should already be thinking in terms of the promise of God, in terms of the Messiah, as we read backward with 20/20 hindsight.
We can think too of the Passover, of the bitter herb and the house of bread and she’s empty. I hadn’t thought about that before.
You mention Passover. It’s the beginning of barley harvest. It’s Passover time, so things are going to be happening here. As they settle down, we find out that Naomi has a near-kinsman of the family of Elimelech whose name is Boaz, and that just hangs there for a second.
Ruth, who’s called a Moabitess now, focusing on her foreignness, her otherness, says to Naomi –
Let me now go to the field and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace.
She understands the gleaning laws, and we’ll talk more about them the next time we come to Ruth. Basically, God had commanded farmers to not get every single bit of grain out of their fields when they harvested them, but to leave some so the poor could come in.
This was not exactly a handout because you still had to go in and pick it all up and pluck some of it, and then you had to thresh it and do all of that by the handful rather than by the cartful. And when you were done after a long day’s backbreaking work, you might have enough to feed your family for that night. Then you’d come and do it again. It was hard, and we’ll talk more about why God did it this way.
Ruth is a strong young woman, a diligent young woman, and energetic. She says, “I understand the practice. I understand I have to have permission of the landowner. I’m sure I can find someone who will let me, so let me go do this,” and Naomi said, “Okay, go. We kind of need to eat,” because Naomi is too old for this.
So Ruth goes and she finds a field where there are reapers at work, and apparently gets the permission of the foreman, who was an enlightened man who realized just by looking at her, “You’re not from around these parts, are ya?” Her skin was probably a little darker, different make-up, different clothing, a decided accent, but he says, “All right.”
Later he knows who she is, so he probably asked around just a little bit and says, “Oh, you’re Naomi’s daughter-in-law. All right, here’s how it works. Just stay out of the way of the gleaners and such,” and so she begins early in the morning, for a long time.
The text says it was her hap to light on a part of the field belonging to Boaz. It’s Boaz’s field. Hap is happenstance, chance, luck.
Bryan is doing air quotes for us – yeah, exactly. The Bible does talk that way from time to time. Time and chance happen to us all.
So Boaz shows up and greets his reapers. He says, “The Lord be with you,” and they say, “The Lord bless thee.” Apparently, they’re on good terms. They respect him as an employer. It doesn’t take long for him to say, “Who’s the young lady?” and the foreman says, “Um, it’s the Moabitess damsel that came back with Naomi out of the country of Moab. She asked me if she could come and glean after the reapers among the sheaves.”
She was a little bit bold. It wasn’t just, “Can I wait until they’re done and come and get some,” but “Can I come in? I’ll stay out of their way, but if I can just get in there and pick up the stuff as it’s falling – do you mind? Is it okay?” and he said yes and she continued even from the morning till now, except tarrying a little bit in the house. She probably took a bathroom break. Then Boaz is moved to go talk to her. I think it’s evident that Ruth was very attractive.
Yeah, reading between the lines. His first thing is, “Who’s the girl? Where is she from? I must go talk to her now.” No doubt her character played into this, but you know – but he’s a good deal older than she is. We’re not told exactly how much, but he makes a deal about it later. So he goes over and says –
Hearest thou not, my daughter? Go not to glean in another field, neither go from hence, but abide here fast by my maidens.
He has either girls who are helping with the harvest, or it may be others to whom he’s extended charity.
Let thine eyes be on the field that they do reap, and go thou after them. Have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch thee? [You’re going to be safe here.]
“If you’re thirsty, you can go over and drink some of the water that the young men have drawn” – they may be looking at him like, “Boss, we pulled the water out,” – “and they’ll gladly share it with you.” “Right, boss.” Pulling water out of a well actually is kind of tough work.
Isn’t that traditionally in other places in the Bible women’s work, to draw the water from the well?
It would be, so whether they drew it themselves or their wives got it earlier or whatever, somebody got it, but it was water that was drawn specifically for his workers and he is going to share it with her.
Yes, very good. Then she falls on her face out of respect, bows herself and says –
Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger? [an alien, a foreigner, so why are you being so nice to me?]
And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband, and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore. The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.
He knows more than the foreman told him. She apparently has been a subject of town gossip. Everybody knows about Ruth. She has established herself as a godly young woman who loves her mother-in-law and is a hard worker. She’s been showing up at the synagogue. She’s recognized as someone who is a God-fearer and who trusts Yahweh, so he’s heard all that so he’s like, “Oh, that Ruth, okay, yeah, got that,” so he’s going to be nice to her.
He also knows something else that he doesn’t mention now. He knows that he’s related to Elimelech and thus to Naomi and thus indirectly to Ruth, so there’s a certain feel of family obligation as well, but there’s a hitch that’s kind of the secret turning point of the story later. So he blesses her and affirms that she has come to trust in Yahweh Elohim of Israel.
Then she said, Let me find favour in thy sight, my lord, for that thou hast comforted me, and for that thou hast spoken friendly unto thine handmaid, though I be not like unto one of thine handmaidens.
Dressed differently, hair different, different make-up, different speech patterns, different accent.
And Boaz said unto her, At mealtime come thou hither and eat of the bread and dip thy morsel in the vinegar.
“You can use the condiment table. Come over here and you can sit down with the reapers. You can come into the company table area and sit down and use the condiments.” He even says, “Don’t eat your stuff here. Have some of mine,” and he reaches some of the parched corn and gives it to her. The text says she did eat and was sufficed and left. That means she had leftovers. He gave her so much she couldn’t even eat it all, so she stashes that away for later and she goes back to work. She doesn’t tarry.
He doesn’t flirt with her. He’s kind of gone over the top in showing her favor, but it’s all been very proper and above-board with a lot of people watching. But now he goes to his guys on the fly and says –
Let her glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her not. And let fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for her.
“Drop some stuff where she’ll get it, but don’t be obvious, okay? Help the girl out but don’t tip the hand here.”
So she gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley.
That’s a good amount for two women to share, so she worked really, really hard. Then she takes it and goes back to her mother-in-law and she takes her leftovers and hands it to Naomi, so there’s immediate food there without having to do a lot of work to prepare it, and Naomi is excited and impressed.
And her mother-in-law said unto her, Where hast thou gleaned to day? and where wroughtest thou? Blessed be he that did take knowledge of thee.
Blessed be he of the Lord, who hath not left off his kindness to the living and to the dead. And Naomi said unto her, The man is near of kin unto us, one of our next kinsmen [kinsman redeemer].
She says “one of,” so she hasn’t checked the genealogies lately and she doesn’t know exactly where he stands, but she’s hopeful. There are prospects here. Ruth says, “He said to keep by the young men until they’ve ended all the harvest,” and Naomi says, “It’s good, my daughter, that thou go out with his maidens and they meet you not in any other field.”
So she kept fast by the maidens of Boaz to glean unto the end of barley harvest and of wheat harvest.
Wheat harvest is several months later, the Feast of Tabernacles, so basically throughout the entire liturgical cycle from Passover to Tabernacles, all the harvest time, she is in the fields for one crop after another. We’re not told whether or not Boaz ever peeks out and looks at her again, or shows up accidentally, coincidentally. “Oh, fancy meeting you here in my fields.” There’s no mention of that at all.
He obviously respects her and admires her. She’s an attractive lady, a hard worker, fears God, loyal to family, and has all kinds of good things going for her, but he isn’t doing anything and several months have passed.
There’s that concept of rest coming back again. “Boaz is of our kindred and he’s winnowing barley tonight in the threshing floor.” I think what this means, and I could be wrong, is that they’re working on wheat harvest but they finally got to the last processing step for barley of winnowing it, and they’re about to finish that off. So when the harvest is in, that’s a celebration.
Tabernacles was in part a harvest feast, where you celebrated all the good stuff that God had done. You brought your tithes of all your crops and all that, so they’re going to be out late tonight. There’s going to be a party. There’s going to be a celebration. He’ll sleep with the workers, so gussy yourself up, more or less is what the original says.
“Take a bath, put on your oils and creams and such, put on some nice clothes and go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let anyone know you’re there until they’re done eating and drinking. And when he lies down, mark where he’s laid down, and when he’s asleep you go in and you uncover his feet and lay down, that is beside him on top of his legs or something, and he’ll tell you what to do.”
Very forward, and Ruth says, “Okay, mom.” She figures Naomi knows what she’s talking about and knows the customs of the day better than Ruth does. In Ruth’s country probably this would not have been that big a deal, just a little weird. “I’d just go up and tell the guy and I would kiss him or something.”
In Israelite culture this looks rather forward, but Naomi’s thought process seems to be, “Boaz is old. He probably thinks he doesn’t have a chance, or he’s a guy and you know how guys are.”
Oblivious. They need a shove. He may not think he has a chance, or he may just need the gumption and the courage. If Ruth starts it, he’s an intelligent businessman. He’ll know the next move once he knows he’s got a green light, so go do this.
The commentators, as I’ve read them over the years, all kind of come to the “uncover his feet and lie down” and say, “We don’t know what that means.” It could simply mean uncover his feet and lie down. That would be the obvious meaning.
Yeah, exactly. On the other hand, the feet are often a euphemism for other lower parts of a man’s body. Whatever it was, although it would seem very forward, it’s not wrong. It’s not immoral. It’s just a little unusual, and she agrees to do it.
She goes down and waits, and he lies down. It’s a big celebration, and she comes softly, uncovers his feet, and lays down. At about midnight he wakes up, he’s afraid, he turns himself, and behold a woman lay at his feet. “Who art thou?”
I am Ruth thine handmaid. Spread therefore thy skirt over thine handmaid, for thou art a near kinsman.
That is, “Enfold me within your cloak. Make us one flesh. Marry me, Boaz.” And this is his response –
Blessed be thou of the Lord, my daughter, for thou hast shewed more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, inasmuch as thou followedst not young men, whether poor or rich.
He isn’t as young as everybody else, but here it is. Here’s the plot twist.
And now, my daughter, fear not. I will do to thee all that thou requires, for all the city of my people doth know that thou art a virtuous woman. And now it is true that I am thy near kinsman; howbeit there is a kinsman nearer than I.
“Oh, we thought you were just lame and needed a shove. Do you mean there’s actually a legal problem here?”
He’s done his homework. Now, there is a technicality here. The law said if brethren dwelt together the kinsman redeemer law could be invoked.
He had stepped out of the protection of the law. He’s forfeited it. Now, the next of kin can proceed out of grace and charity, and for financial reasons because these people who left didn’t forfeit the title to their land. They’ve come back and there might be good reasons to marry such a person, but it’s no longer a requirement, and the person who refuses is not necessarily in sin or uncharitable. They may have other concerns. And apparently, we would presume the law does not apply if you’re already married, because bigamy was right out and this does not undo that.
We should spend a little time on that because the law does describe what should happen for a woman whose husband takes another wife, so clearly it wasn’t unheard of, but that doesn’t make it okay. It doesn’t mean it was okay then, but she was still entitled to certain rights, right?
You mean the whole bigamy thing? Yeah. The Old Testament, as far as I can see, never approves of bigamy, but it does recognize it as a thing that people would do. The practical problem that we don’t get in the 21st century because of the influence of the gospel, both culturally and technologically. In that culture if a woman married a man, she became financially dependent upon him in most cases. And for a man to marry two women was to put them both, in a sense, at his mercy. He became financially responsible for both of them.
Were he to send one packing, that would leave her without resources, without fallback, without a visible means of support. She probably would have no financial reserves and no skills for taking care of herself, which meant basically she could sell herself into slavery or she could become a prostitute.
When we get to the New Testament we see this being worked out. When Paul gives orders concerning such things, he says that the leaders of the church are to be one-woman men, but he doesn’t say, “And all of you people who have multiple wives, get rid of a bunch of them,” because that would not be kind. They got themselves into a situation where they are responsible for another human life. They shouldn’t have, but they have.
Ezra did. Nehemiah is something else. In Ezra’s case they had married unbelievers. The covenant males had married unbelievers, and basically their father God annulled the marriages by force, and there it wasn’t bigamy, it was, “You’ve been married a year or so. Send them back to their father’s house,” or – and I think the implication was, “If that doesn’t happen, you still have to take care of them. They just won’t be your wives.”
It was an awkward situation and the gospel began to rectify it as soon as the gospel entered the world. By saying that pastors and elders are to have only one spouse it set a precedent for the rest of the church. You want leadership in the church? You want to matter? Then you better not be marrying a bunch of ladies. That’s not the way of things.
And of course, there’s the example of Christ himself who has one bride, the church. But in the old covenant when they were still trying to figure out how many gods they had, God did not emphasize this as much as we might think he would have, but he’s God and he knows what he’s doing.
When you look back over the Old Testament you think, “All of those guys who had so many wives…” – but there weren’t that many. We know about Abraham. He had two. Isaac only had one. Jacob had four. One of them was not his idea, and the other two were at the insistence of his two wives. Hannah’s husband, Elkanah, had two and that didn’t work well at all.
The people we find who had multiple wives mostly were the kings of Judah and Israel. They tended to have a lot, although there were a few exceptions.
Right, and when Jesus is asked about it he says, “He who made them in the beginning made them male and female. What God hath joined together let not man put asunder. These two shall be one flesh,” not these three, four, or five.
Genesis doesn’t actually say “these two.” Jesus added that because he’s God and may have been the one who said it. He may, as the angel of the Lord, have been standing there saying it. If not, he said it through Adam or Moses, so he can explain to us what he meant. He meant “you two are one flesh,” and that was the original plan.
The Bible never saw polygamy as any kind of thing that anybody should be following, but given the fact in that culture that it was so common and they were still starting out – “Okay, we’ve got five gods, five wives…”
If you’re going to do that, don’t rob your wife of her clothes and raiment and food and stuff.
And that was true whether it was a second wife or whether it was an un-endowered wife, because that’s with respect to concubines. Whether you’re taking her on as a junior wife (yuck) or whether she’s your wife but you’re not treating her as a free woman, she still has that protection. The law still protected women, far more than the law of any other nation. And with the coming of Christ, that has transformed in that all of God’s daughters are free women and to be treated as such by their husbands.
But we’re talking about kinsman redeemers, and I thought you were going to say, “How about the rest of the kinsman redeemer law?”
If it’s done properly and in the right context – that is, the brethren have dwelt together and it’s a legal obligation and someone skirts it – then the bride was supposed to go to the man, take off his shoe, spit in his face, and then give the shoe to someone else and say, “So shall it be done to him that refuses to raise up seed to his brother in Israel.”
That doesn’t happen here, possibly for a couple reasons. Possibly because it was kind of embarrassing and Israel stopped doing it, because that’s what Israel tended to do when they didn’t like God’s law, but it may have been more specifically because this wasn’t a requirement, so there was no shame involved. But there was still going to be the transfer of responsibility, “Okay, now you get to stand in my shoes” kind of thing, so that was maintained.
The thing is that Boaz, despite the fact that he loves Ruth after some fashion, loves her in the sense that he respects her, likes her, thinks she’s really cool, and is willing to take responsibility for her and take care of her for the rest of his life, so we could call that love. We’re not told whether he had the hots for her, as my generation would have said, or found her sexually attractive. He is willing to make the commitment, which is far more important than getting emotionally and hormonally excited about a young lady, but he’s going to play by the rules.
That’s something else our culture doesn’t understand. “What? You love her? Just take her and run off with her. No one needs to know. Run to Vegas, get married, and disappear and you’re fine.” He’s not going to do that. He’s going to go look the other guy in the eye and say, “Look, this woman needs someone to take care of her. You’re next in line. And if you’re not going to do it, I’m next, so what are we going to do here?”
Tarry this night, and it shall be in the morning, that if he will perform unto thee the part of a kinsman, well, let him do the kinsman's part.
You can see her cringing. “I don’t even know who this guy is and you’re willing to give me off to him? What?”
But if he will not do the part of a kinsman to thee, then will I do the part of a kinsman to thee, as the Lord liveth. Lie down until the morning. And she lay at his feet until the morning.
So is there physical contact going on here? Yes, not sexual. I knew a gentleman who would say things like, “All touch between a man and a woman is sexual.” Well, if you mean that two different sexes are involved, sure, but come on. That would say some things about Jesus and some of the women he let touch him. We have to be careful here.
It does not need to be either immodest or immoral for a man to touch a woman or even hold a woman to keep her warm or keep her safe during the night, and they are very careful here because before it’s sun-up, before the evening star has sunk he gets her up and says, “We don’t want anyone knowing that a woman spent the night here,” because that would call everybody’s integrity into question.
People would question Boaz, “What were you doing out there in the middle of the night with a woman?”
“Oh, Ruth! Here we thought you were this goody-two-shoes and you went out and hung out with a man all night. Well!” He’s going to protect her reputation. This is huge.
One of the things that I try to remember to tell the young men in my class is, “This girl that you say you love? You’re responsible not only for her purity, but you’re responsible for her reputation. You should not be putting her in an awkward spot where people are going to wonder what kind of girl she is. She needs to be above reproach, and it’s your job to make that happen.”
I’m also fond of looking young men in the eyes and saying, “You just got engaged? Guess who’s the greatest threat to this girl now?”
“Yes, because it’s so easy to make excuses and to pretend, ‘Well, we’re nearly married.’”
Anyway, so he has her bring her veil that she had and he puts a bunch of barley in it as sort of a dowry, because he hasn’t got anything else on him. I’m sure he doesn’t carry money or VISA out in the field.
No, he didn’t have the ring ready. So he says, “Take this back to your mother-in-law,” and she comes back. And Naomi, probably knowing such people, fell asleep in the armchair, waiting, waiting, listening for every little noise, and here Ruth comes back. It’s about sun-up now, and I love the question.
“Do we have a name change to work on here?” and Ruth tells her everything. “And here’s what he sent to you, all this food!” Then Naomi says –
Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall, for the man will not be in rest until he have finished the thing this day.
“Okay, got the picture, understand the hold-up. He was being honorable. Yeah, well, okay, her honor. He’s going to fix that, though. He’s going to find this guy and he’s going to settle it, and one way or another you’re going to be ready to get married by the end of the day. So just wait and trust God for 24 hours.”
I can picture Naomi as a Mrs. Bennett sort of person and she’s like, “Calm down, child!” and she’s the one all a-fluster.
Exactly. So Boaz goes to the gate, which in those days functioned as City Hall, and he sees the kinsman in question, whose name we’re never given because it’s so irrelevant. He says, “Ho, such a one!” and we’re not even given his name. “Hey, guy, pal, get over here.”
Yeah, exactly. Then once he’s got him, he gathers around 10 of the elders and tells them to sit down. He’s a man of influence in the city council and he recounts what’s happened. “Naomi has come out of Moab. She’s selling a parcel, presumably under some kind of debt or a lien or something, that was Elimelech’s, and I wanted to tell you about it. You can buy it and take responsibility for it and it will be yours – that is, Naomi is getting old and the jubilee is far enough off that it will go into your family. She doesn’t have heirs, as such.”
“Except did I mention there is kind of an heir because she has a daughter-in-law who needs a husband, so if you buy the land you’ve kinda gotta marry the girl,” so everyone holds their breath.
Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance. And the kinsman said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance.
That doesn’t really explain, nor does it matter, economic calculating. He may already have a son. Maybe he’s a widower. We don’t know exactly what’s going on here, and again it really doesn’t matter. He suddenly realizes that throwing a wife into the equation is going to confuse what inheritance goes where, and whatever plans he had set are not going to happen. And since he’s not required – and apparently there’s no shame in this – he simply says, “I can’t do this.”
Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things a man plucked off his shoe and gave it to his neighbour, and this was a testimony in Israel.
Again, either because this had become the new norm or whether it just didn’t apply the same way here, he takes his shoe and gives it to Boaz and he now has only one shoe. Then Boaz turns to the elders and says, “You’re all witnesses that I’ve bought the land and I’m taking Ruth to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance” – that is, their first child will inherit the line, the title, the property of the whole family actually, because it would all revert to her now.
“You are witnesses” and all the people say, “We are witnesses.” It’s a covenant-cutting kind of thing. And they respond –
The Lord make the woman that is come into thine house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel, and do thou worthily in Ephratah and be famous in Bethlehem. And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bare unto Judah.
But apparently they had grown enough in their understanding that they got past the neo-Victorian hurdles and realized that what Tamar had done as a Canaanite and a Gentile was to worm her way back into the covenant family, having been invited in and thrown out, and they were okay with that because it was through her that the promised line was continuing, the line that would lead to the king eventually, so they include her.
Boaz took Ruth and married her and she was his wife and she conceives a son. Then the women say to Naomi --
Blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that his name may be famous in Israel.
Now they’re talking about the baby, “Because he’s going to grow up and he’s going to take care of you in your old age.”
And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life and a nourisher of thine old age, for thy daughter in law which loveth thee, which is better to thee than seven sons, hath born him. And Naomi took the child and laid it in her bosom and became nurse unto it. And the women her neighbours gave it a name, saying, There is a son born to Naomi, and they called his name Obed.
Up to this point we’re saying, “Okay, this is all interesting. It’s a sweet love story. It’s one of the most complete novelettes in scripture. Only Esther compares.” They’re both stories about women, by the way. “But what has this got to do with anything? Why is this in the Bible?”
And the book ends with four verses that trace the genealogy from Pharez all the way down through Obed to Jesse to David.
It would be an appropriate book for someone like Samuel to write in the days when David was on the run and people might be wondering, “Who is this David guy? Isn’t Saul the lawful king, and shouldn’t we maybe side with Saul? Shouldn’t David be arrested and killed or something?”
“There’s more to this story than you know. This is the line that leads to Messiah.”
When we get to Matthew’s gospel, Matthew includes the name of four women in the line of Messiah: Rahab, Bathsheba, Tamar, and Ruth.
No, “She who had been the wife of Uriah.” And one thing about those women, depending on how you look at it, is that they were all Gentiles. Bathsheba may have been a Hebrew by birth, but she was married to a Hittite so by covenant she was Hittite. Tamar was Canaanite, Rahab was Canaanite, and Ruth was Moabite, which means had a lot of Canaanite blood in her, and yet it doesn’t matter. When we get to Samuel this will make more sense.
We’ve already seen that the Mosaic covenant was unraveling because the spiritual force was gone. The promises were there, but the people designated to proclaim the promises, the Levites, for 300 years weren’t doing their job. And when we come to Samuel we’re going to see that the priests aren’t doing their job, and then we’re going to lose the Ark of the Covenant. Then we’re going to get a king who’s a murderer and consults with witches. It’s like the whole thing is about to be lost.
Meanwhile in this quiet little town that has a checkered past, God does something special. He has an old man marry a young woman. He has a kinsman redeemer marry a Gentile bride, and out of that everything is turned around and it leads directly in a couple generations to David, the man after God’s own heart, the one with whom God will renew his covenant.
So is it a Christmas story? It’s pretty close. We’ve got ‘Mary’ coming to Bethlehem. We have a reference to the covenant of David, a hint that it’s coming, that promises the king who will reign over Israel forever, and at the heart of it is a love story like God’s love for his people.
Here Boaz reaches out in love to rescue this Gentile widow. She doesn’t have a husband. She’s forsaken, barren, isolated, alienated, and he’s playing by the rules and moved by more than the rules. The rules don’t require him to do this but he’s moved by grace, he’s moved by love, not the love of infatuation and lust, but the love of, “Here’s someone I need to help.” And yet at the same time he observes the rules, works through them and in terms of them, to bring about a successful marriage and a fruitful one, that leads to David and the new covenant.
So Merry Christmas. There’s the story. It’s a story about the true nature of godly love and what courtship can look like. There’s a lot of violation of things that normally you don’t really want to happen in a courtship relationship. You don’t really want to send your young lady out and say, “Go find the guy while he’s alone and after he’s had a lot to drink, and lay down…” but context is everything – the context of their character, of their relationship, of what she was doing and was proposing legitimate marriage, knowing that he was under a constraint of some sort to comply, and he was a gentleman and he protected her. What comes out of it is a beautiful marriage and one of the greatest love stories in the Bible, second to, of course, the love that Jesus has for his church.
Awesome. I think that pretty much wraps it up. We should do some recommendations.
I do, actually. Now I’m on the fence, so I’ll throw two at you, a Christmas special bonus recommendation from Emily. One is going to be “Entreat Me Not to Leave You” – the choral setting by Dan Forrest, which is just remarkable and delightful.
Then the other is also musical. It’s Andrew Peterson’s album, “Behold the Lamb of God.” It’s a Christmas album, but it spends a lot of time in the Old Testament and ties the story together, as it should be done. He often does a livestream concert around Christmastime, so I’m hoping he’ll do one of those and I can rent the streaming video, because I don’t live anywhere near Nashville.
Yes, Sinclair Ferguson’s Advent devotional. I don’t remember when he published it, because he published another one for this year, but it’s called Love Came Down at Christmas and it is a parts of verse by parts of verse exposition of 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, and how Christ fulfills it in himself, and why it was necessary for him to be incarnated in the first place, and how his incarnation is an expression of that particular quality of love.
My wife and I have been going through it this Advent and it has been just wonderful and lovely each morning to look at how Christ is love.
Wow, that outclassed everything I was going to suggest, so there’s only one place I can go from there to go up, and that’s to go to the Bible itself. I got to tell the Christmas story to my Bible class today. I didn’t read it from the text. I did not even tell them what I was doing. I said, “I’m going to tell you a story.”
“It was a long time ago in this town out on the periphery, a despised town. Yeah, there was a military presence, but there wasn’t much going on, a little foreign traffic. And there was this man, a contractor who worked with wood a lot.” Finally I had to say, “He was a carpenter,” trying to get past that one real fast. “His name was Joe,” at which point everyone goes, “Oh!” Some people still didn’t get it, apparently, until I said, “And his fiancé went off to visit her cousin, Liz,” and they said, “Oh, I see what you did there.”
Anyway, it was fun telling it from Joseph’s point of view and what would have gone through his mind and trying to take it out of what we often make it, which is fairytale land, a little Gnostic sweet otherworldly tale, and to tell the story like it really happened with all the pains and the anguish and the not-so-silent night and all of that.
It was a joy to me to tell it, and they were quiet the whole time I was telling the story and they listened, and a few of them came back later and said, “That was great. We really enjoyed that.” One girl said, “It was better when you set it in modern times,” because I’ve done that before – Mary and Joseph fleeing Sacramento because the governor is after them in their little VW bug. The shepherds become migrant workers, the wise men become Russian ambassadors, and they’re fleeing to Tijuana.
That is one of the things that I’ve found interesting. The specific example I’m thinking of gets used for political point scoring, but when you think of it like, “Well, Jose and Maria and their small child, Jesus, are fleeing from a violent dictator who is murdering children in Jesus’ age range. Will you have pity on them?”
I called her Maria and they called the child Jeshua and they finally figured it out. So tell the Christmas story to your children. Tell it not like a fairy tale. Tell it as it in fact is, as it really happened in history. It will be fresh and it’s always exciting and it’s always new and very human and very divine, so there’s my recommendation.
I should tell you, Greg, I should have opened with this because if this doesn’t sell you on listening to Andrew Peterson’s album that I recommended, I don’t think anything will. He has a song that starts out with the line, “It was not a silent night.”
I forget who I was talking with, but I think it was on Twitter and I mentioned something about how that song is a little bit Gnostic. I called it “Baby Jesus, the glow stick” – radiant beams…
That’s alright. I’ll just direct people to Andrew Peterson’s song, Labor of Love. “It was not a silent night. There was blood on the ground.”
So on that note, somehow we still managed to end on a downer, even though we were talking about Ruth and it’s like the happiest love story ever. Anyway, thank you, guys, so much for this conversation. It’s been a pleasure.
Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband. Thank you to our financial supporters. We appreciate you keeping the show rolling. If you’d like to join their number you can visit our website, anchor.fm/haltingtowardzion.
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