Ruth 1 to 2 · Story · Kindness
Ruth's Kindness to Naomi
Ruth the Moabite left her own land to stay with her widowed mother-in-law Naomi and gleaned in Bethlehem to feed them both.
A landowner of Bethlehem told his young men to pull stalks out of the bundles and leave them for a foreign widow to gather.
Boaz replied, “I have been made fully aware of all you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth, and how you came to a people you did not know before.
- Where
- Moab, Bethlehem
- Who
- Ruth, Naomi, Boaz
- When
- in the days when the judges ruled
Summary
Ruth 1 to 2 tells of kindness between two widows, a woman of Bethlehem who had lost her husband and both her sons in Moab and the Moabite daughter-in-law who would not leave her. Ruth showed kindness to Naomi, Boaz showed it to Ruth, and Naomi traced it to the LORD, who she said had not withdrawn His kindness from the living or the dead. Ruth was both a widow and a foreigner, two of the poor for whom the law of Moses left part of every harvest.
- When Naomi urged her to follow Orpah home, Ruth swore to stay with Naomi, her people and her God until death (Ruth 1:15 to 17).
- Boaz kept Ruth safe among his servant girls, gave her water and bread, and named as his reason what she had done for her mother-in-law (Ruth 2:8 to 14).
- Naomi told Ruth that Boaz was a close relative and one of their kinsman-redeemers (Ruth 2:20).
Kindness From Moab to Bethlehem
The first two chapters of Ruth record who was kind to whom on the road out of Moab and in the field at Bethlehem.
Kindness between people who owe each other nothing is rare, and the two women of these chapters had little left to give each other but loyalty and work. These chapters belong to kindness because they show the value at work between people with nothing to gain from it.
The story raises two questions. What did kindness look like on a road out of Moab and in a harvest field? Why did Naomi, who had said she came home empty, speak of the LORD's kindness after Ruth's first day in the field?
The Events of Ruth 1 to 2 in Order
The story moves from a household's losses abroad to two women living on gathered grain in Judah.
Ruth's oath on the road is the fourth of eight events.
- A famine, and the family's move from Bethlehem to MoabRuth 1:1 to 2
- About ten years in Moab and three deathsRuth 1:3 to 5
- The road to Judah, and Naomi's release of her daughters-in-lawRuth 1:6 to 14
- Ruth's oath to NaomiRuth 1:16 to 17
- Arrival in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvestRuth 1:19 to 22
- Ruth gleans in the field of BoazRuth 2:1 to 17
- Naomi blesses Boaz by the LORD and names him a kinsman-redeemerRuth 2:18 to 20
- Ruth gleans until the barley and wheat harvests are finishedRuth 2:21 to 23
A timeline of eight events in Ruth 1 and 2, each with its verses. The text gives no calendar year, so the events stand in order and not to scale.
Naomi blesses Boaz by the LORD and names him a kinsman-redeemer, Ruth gleans until the barley and wheat harvests are finished
Ruth's Kindness on the Road and at Home
Ruth stayed with Naomi on the road, went out to glean for the household and brought home what she had saved.
Naomi had gone to Moab with her husband Elimelech and their two sons because of a famine in the days of the judges, and there she lost all three (Ruth 1:1 to 5). When she heard that the LORD had provided His people with food, she set out for Judah with her two daughters-in-law (Ruth 1:6 to 7).
Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you to your mother’s home. May the LORD show you loving devotion, as you have shown to your dead and to me.Naomi's prayer shows that the two Moabite women had already shown loving devotion to their husbands who had died and to her, and she asks the LORD to repay it.
Albert Barnes, in his Notes, Explanatory and Practical, judged that the two women's going with Naomi to the edge of their land "would probably be an act of Oriental courtesy". He wrote that "Naomi with no less courtesy presses them to return."
Naomi argued that she had no more sons to give them as husbands, and Orpah kissed her goodbye (Ruth 1:11 to 14).
But Ruth replied: “Do not urge me to leave you or to turn from following you. For wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you live, I will live; your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD punish me, and ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”Ruth's answer refuses Naomi's urging to go back, and its last line calls on the LORD to punish her if anything but death parts the two women.
In Bethlehem Ruth's kindness took the form of work. She asked Naomi's leave to glean heads of grain after someone in whose sight she might find favor (Ruth 2:2). The foreman told Boaz that she had kept at it from morning on, with a short rest in the shelter (Ruth 2:7).
She picked up the grain and went into the town, where her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. And she brought out what she had saved from her meal and gave it to Naomi.This verse closes Ruth's first day in the field, with Naomi fed from the grain and from Ruth's own meal.
Boaz's Kindness to Ruth
Ruth's first day in the field of Boaz ran from morning until evening.
Boaz was a relative of Naomi's husband, "a prominent man of noble character from the clan of Elimelech" (Ruth 2:1).
Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Listen, my daughter. Do not go and glean in another field, and do not go away from this place, but stay here close to my servant girls. Let your eyes be on the field they are harvesting, and follow along after these girls. Indeed, I have ordered the young men not to touch you. And when you are thirsty, go and drink from the jars the young men have filled.”Boaz's first words to Ruth forbid his young men to touch her and give her water from the jars they had filled.
At this, she fell on her face, bowing low to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me, even though I am a foreigner?”Ruth asks why a landowner of Israel should take notice of a foreigner, and Boaz answers her in the next two verses.
Boaz prayed that the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings she had taken refuge, would repay her work (Ruth 2:12).
“My lord,” she said, “may I continue to find favor in your eyes, for you have comforted and spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your servant girls.”Ruth thanks Boaz for his comfort and for speaking kindly to her, so the kindness she names in this verse is a kindness of words.
At mealtime Boaz called her to eat bread dipped in the vinegar sauce with the harvesters, and he offered her roasted grain until she was satisfied and had some left over (Ruth 2:14).
When Ruth got up to glean, Boaz ordered his young men, “Even if she gathers among the sheaves, do not insult her. Rather, pull out for her some stalks from the bundles and leave them for her to gather. Do not rebuke her.”Boaz's order leaves more grain for Ruth than the gleanings her place behind the harvesters would give her.
When Ruth beat out what she had gathered that evening, it came to about an ephah of barley (Ruth 2:17).
Ruth 2:13, Ruth 2:15 to 16
The Foreigner and the Widow in the Harvest Law
Leviticus and Deuteronomy name who might gather what the harvesters left behind.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You must not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the LORD your God.This is the law Ruth gleaned under.
If you are harvesting in your field and forget a sheaf there, do not go back to get it. It is to be left for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.Deuteronomy names the widow beside the foreigner and gives the reason for the law as the LORD's blessing on the owner's work.
Ruth 1 to 2 is set in the season this law governed.
What the Two Chapters Leave Unsaid
The narrator leaves unsaid how Ruth came to the field of Boaz.
The Kindness Naomi Named
Naomi prayed for the LORD's kindness on the road and named it again at home.
Naomi had come home asking the women of Bethlehem to call her Mara, because the LORD had brought her back empty (Ruth 1:20 to 21).
Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the LORD, who has not withdrawn His kindness from the living or the dead.” Naomi continued, “The man is a close relative. He is one of our kinsman-redeemers.”The Berean text capitalizes His in this verse, and so it reads the kindness Naomi names as the LORD's.
Both times her word is chesed. The Greek translation of the Old Testament renders it eleos, the Greek word for compassion, in both places, and Brenton's edition of that text reads to eleos autou in her blessing of Boaz.
Teachers on the Kindness of Boaz
Theodoret of Cyrus, Matthew Henry and John Wesley each wrote on the kindness Boaz showed Ruth in the field.
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible, drew a lesson from Ruth 2:13 for anyone set above others. He wrote, "Those that are great, and in high places, know not how much good they may do to their inferiors with a kind look or by speaking friendly to them".
1703 to 1791 · John Wesley
John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament, explained the notice Ruth wondered at in Ruth 2:10 as "respect and kindness" shown to her.
She Lived With Her Mother-in-Law
The two chapters end as Ruth's oath on the road had promised.
So Ruth stayed close to the servant girls of Boaz to glean grain until the barley and wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.The last verse of chapter 2 gives the length of Ruth's work in the field and the home she kept with Naomi.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Lancelot C. L. Brenton, The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, Greek text (1851), public domain.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, on Ruth 1:8.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)
- Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Ruth.
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)
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