Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17 Commentary

Commentary on Ruth 3:

Sunday School may not have given us exactly the right idea about what is going on in Ruth chapter 3. In our Sunday School imaginings, Ruth may seem to have more in common with a Disney princess than a desperate and resourceful Moabite widow in Israel. Her first day in the field was the start of the barley harvest. Now all of the fields have been cleared, the grains have been collected and the labor-intensive work of threshing the chaff from the grain has begun. And all the while, Ruth has been hunched over picking up leftover stalks to provide a subsistence living for herself and her mother-in-law. We don’t hear anything about how – if at all — the relationship between Ruth and Boaz has progressed.

And someone is growing impatient. Naomi counsels her daughter-in-law: “My daughter, I must find a home for you, where you will be well provided for. Now Boaz. . .” Ah, motherly advice. It’s timeless, isn’t it? “Now Boaz. . .” The important thing to remember here is that Ruth is perfectly free to marry anyone who might have interest. SHE would be adopted into the home of a new husband and family seamlessly. She doesn’t need to marry a relative of her deceased husband in order to survive. But NAOMI. . .Naomi’s only hope of continuing on her family line, requires that the closest living relative (who is willing) marry this daughter-in-law of hers and, more importantly, provide an heir to guarantee her ongoing social and economic status.

“Now Boaz. . .” You remember Boaz, right? “with whose women you have worked, is a relative of ours. Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing floor. Wash and perfume yourself, and put on your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing floor, but don’t let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, go to the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.”

I’m not sure we can understand the strangeness of this advice outside the context of ancient Israel but try this picture: Naomi comes to Ruth and says, “Boaz is on a business trip so what I want you to do is fix up your hair real pretty, put on your make up – and use the red lipstick, would ya? Wear that nice miniskirt, with those stiletto heels of yours and, after Boaz has returned from eating and drinking on the company expense account – say around 2am — just pop around to his hotel room and knock on his door. Don’t worry, he will tell you what to do.”

This is her mother-in-law for goodness sake! And if what she is asking Ruth to do sounds scandalous to you, that’s because it is supposed to. In fact, this whole chapter is filled with phrasing and word choices that the original Hebrew audience would have understood as double entendre.

While the lectionary very thoughtfully and very demurely leaves this part out, Ruth follows Naomi’s instruction. When Boaz opens the door, as it were, and realizes it is Ruth, he quick looks down the hallway in both directions to make sure no one has seen her and then yanks her into the privacy of his room. There Ruth remains until the pre-dawn when she leaves as secretly as she came. But she comes home with a shawl full of grain and a promise.

When we paint the Disney princess version of this story, we assume he is smitten by Ruth’s good looks and charm. That’s an addition to the text, my friends. Boaz has an obligation – well, no, wait. He doesn’t even have an obligation. There is someone – a closer relative – who should be providing for Naomi by marrying Ruth. Boaz could easily pawn the responsibility off on him. But he doesn’t. He promises to go to the city gate and advocate for Naomi. Why do Ruth and Boaz engage in this very strange ritual? Out of exceeding, abundant kindness – the Hebrew word for this is HESED – out of the sense that something more could be done and they are the ones to do it on behalf of Naomi. Their kindness compels them toward a very strange obedience.

Illustration

Remember film? Remember loading up a roll of film in your camera, sending it off to be processed?  When I was in high school, we made the transition to digital photos for yearbook editing.  But the first couple years, I remember hanging out in a dark room while the cool, artistic kids processed their photos.  And the way that works is through a photo-negative captured on film.  The colors are reversed until, through a process of chemical baths, the negative’s colors are reversed and the snapshot is revealed at last.

The book of Ruth, especially in the first and fourth chapters, works in much the same way.

Commentary on Ruth 4

Let’s return to the women of the town who function as a kind of Greek chorus for this story.  They make their appearance in chapter 1, greeting Naomi as she enters into the town: “Can this be Naomi?” And Naomi goes to town. You can almost hear the tires on the welcome wagon screeching to a halt. The needle scratching the surface of “For she’s a jolly good lady” as Naomi demands. “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara (call me bitter) because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.”

Well then! Way to kill the party, Naomi. AWKWARD! The women look at each other, step out of the way and watch Naomi with her little tag-along daughter-in-law plow through the crowd until they arrive at their ancestral home.

So the women stay in the background throughout the rest of the narrative. Perhaps some of them worked alongside Ruth in the fields. Until, at last, the women, shut down in their efforts to throw a welcome home party are finally given a chance to celebrate at the end of this story. Parading the child born of Ruth to Naomi’s house, the woman shout and clap for joy: “Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter in law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”

In chapter one, Ruth really is an invisible addendum to Naomi’s self-concerned outcry. Standing virtually unnoticed beside Naomi is the solution to all her problems. But we didn’t know that back then. All we knew was that Naomi was without a husband and without sons in the world. Everything about her survival depended upon having a son. What does she have? A foreign daughter-in-law. So it is a step of grace that, in the women of the town’s hymn of thanksgiving, Ruth is acknowledged as the one who loves Naomi and is “better to (her) than seven sons!” One foreign woman, filled with kindness is better than seven sons! At last our heroine’s actions are acknowledged!

The wise women of Bethlehem’s prayer of thanksgiving is not only in praise of Ruth or in celebration of Naomi’s turn of fortune. They petition the LORD, “May he become famous throughout Israel!”

By the close of the story, we learn the child’s name: Obed, the father of Jesse, the Father of David, the named ancestors of Jesus the Messiah. And it is this child — this child of a child of a child of a child all the way back to Obed, the child of Naomi, the child of Ruth and Boaz — who will be the “good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”  And THIS baby changes everything.