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Ruth 2:When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over. 15 As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. 16 Even pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.”
17 So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah.[a] 18 She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.
19 Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!”
Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said.
20 “The Lord bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers.”
21 Then Ruth the Moabite said, “He even said to me, ‘Stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain.’”
22 Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for him, because in someone else’s field you might be harmed.”
23 So Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.
17 So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah.[a] 18 She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.
19 Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!”
Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said.
20 “The Lord bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers.”
21 Then Ruth the Moabite said, “He even said to me, ‘Stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain.’”
22 Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for him, because in someone else’s field you might be harmed.”
23 So Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.
Footnotes:
a.Ruth 2:17 That is, probably about 30 pounds or about 13 kilograms
b.Ruth 2:20 The Hebrew word for guardian-redeemer is a legal term for one who has the obligation to redeem a relative in serious difficulty (see Lev. 25:25-55).
Can you imagine how things might have worked out for Ruth if it weren't meant to be? Ruth was an outsider, a Moabite. Notice in Verse the verse doesn't say "Then Ruth said," it says "Then Ruth the Moabite said,". This distinction is important. It shows Ruth's position as a stranger, a non-Jew. She's the new girl in town and I would even venture to say that she must have been a beautiful woman as well. Boaz took right to her and shared a meal with her.
Gleaning of the fields was done by the poor and strangers. When you have nothing, and you resort to picking up the scraps left, it can be pretty dangerous to do so. The women in the field could very well have seen Ruth as an intruder. That's not how this story goes though. Ruth made it through the day without horrid incident and she met the owner of the field who set her up with a little something extra.
Notice too, that Ruth had enough to eat and some left over to take home to Naomi. We've seen that before. When Jesus fed the 5000 there was enough for everyone and there were leftovers. Ruth was getting along very well.
We don't want to overlook the "guardian-redeemer" legal term here. It's important.
Back in the days when Ruth met Boaz, women couldn't own land. The husband or the father or some blood relative got the land. If Naomi's husband had died while in Bethlehem [instead of in Moab], the land wouldn't have gone to Naomi. The land would have gone to her sons. With that land the responsibility of caring for family went to the close relatives as well.
Naomi knew that Boaz was a guardian-redeemer. He was a relative. This is going to be important as Ruth's story continues.
