Ruth2chapter 2

Ruth 2:1-2

The book names Boaz before Ruth reaches his field, so the reader knows what she does not. The word rendered kinsman here is not the word of verse 20: Albert Barnes reads it as an acquaintance or near relation, while the next kinsman of verse 20 is goel, a wholly different term, so the office the whole book turns on is held back for nineteen verses. The phrase mighty man of wealth is the warrior phrase, the same Hebrew the angel uses of Gideon at Judges 6:12. Ruth proposes the work herself, and the right she claims is Leviticus 19:9-10 and Deuteronomy 24:19, which leave the corners and the dropped ears to the poor and the stranger; she is both.

Ruth 2:3-4

Her hap was to light on a part of the field is the narrator's own phrase, and it is the flattest way the Hebrew has of saying chance. Writers from Matthew Henry onward read it as understatement, since verse 1 has already told the reader whose field it is. Boaz greets his reapers with The Lord be with you and they answer The Lord bless thee, which is the only exchange of its kind between a master and his workers in Scripture, and it falls inside the period Judges describes.

Ruth 2:5-7

Boaz asks whose she is rather than who she is, which is the question a landowner asks about a household. The overseer answers by nation before name, the Moabitish damsel that came back with Naomi, and she is still unnamed when the exchange ends. Her request in verse 7 asks for more than the statute gives, since gleaning among the sheaves is neither the corners of Leviticus 19:9 nor the forgotten sheaf of Deuteronomy 24:19, and the servant reports the request without saying that he granted it. Boaz grants it himself at verse 15.

Ruth 2:8-9

Boaz calls her my daughter, which is Naomi's word for her at 1:11 and again at 2:2, and he gives her four things: one field to work, the company of the maidens, a charge laid on the young men, and water she did not draw. Have I not charged the young men that they shall not touch thee states plainly what a foreign widow alone in a field could otherwise expect, in the same generation that produces Judges 19. The water runs against the usual direction, since at Deuteronomy 29:11 and Joshua 9:21 the stranger is the drawer of water and here the stranger drinks what Israelites drew.

Ruth 2:10-11

She asks why, and the word she uses of herself is the stronger of the two Hebrew terms for an outsider, the foreigner rather than the resident alien who held standing in the law. Boaz answers with the whole of chapter 1 in one sentence, that she left her father and her mother and the land of her nativity and came to a people she did not know beforehand. Keil and Delitzsch and Matthew Henry both hear Genesis 12:1 behind that clause, where Abram is told to leave his country and his kindred and his father's house.

Ruth 2:12-13

Under whose wings thou art come to trust uses kanaph, wing, and the same word is the skirt Ruth asks him to spread over her at 3:9, so what he prays for here is what he is later asked to become. The image runs through Psalm 17:8, 36:7, 57:1 and 91:4, and Christ takes it up over Jerusalem at Matthew 23:37. Boaz names the Lord God of Israel to a Moabitess and says she has already come to trust under him, and the question Deuteronomy 23:3 raises about a Moabite is never argued anywhere in the book, only left standing beside sentences like this one. Her answer claims nothing for herself, though I be not like unto one of thine handmaidens.

Ruth 2:14-16

He seats her beside the reapers and reaches her the parched corn himself, and the verse ends with she did eat, and was sufficed, and left, which is the portion she carries home at verse 18. Then he commands the young men twice over, to let her glean among the sheaves and to let fall handfuls of purpose for her. The law set a floor at the corners and the forgotten sheaf, and nothing in Leviticus 19 or Deuteronomy 24 asks a man to drop grain deliberately.

Ruth 2:17-18

About an ephah of barley is one of the few measures the book gives, and Exodus 16:36 fixes an ephah at ten omers. An omer was one man's manna for one day, so a single day of gleaning carried home ten days of bread for one person, which is why writers from Matthew Henry to Keil and Delitzsch call the yield remarkable rather than ordinary. She beats the grain out in the field before carrying it, and the first thing she does in the city is hand Naomi the food she had saved from the meal she was given.

Ruth 2:19-20

Naomi blesses the man before she is told who he is, and only then hears the name Boaz. Her word kindness is chesed, the same word she used of her daughters in law at 1:8, and here it belongs to God and reaches the living and the dead, meaning Elimelech and her sons, the line she had argued was past help at 1:11-13. Then she names the office, near of kin unto us, one of our next kinsmen. That is the goel of Leviticus 25:25 and 25:48-49, the relative bound to buy back a kinsman's sold land or a kinsman sold into service, and the remaining two chapters turn on whether he will.

Ruth 2:21-23

Ruth reports Boaz as saying keep fast by my young men, where verse 8 has him say abide fast by my maidens, and Naomi steers her back toward the maidens in the next breath. The chapter closes on barley harvest and wheat harvest together, which is the stretch from the wave sheaf to the feast of weeks in Leviticus 23:10-16, so roughly seven weeks pass inside the last clause. Across all of it she gleaned and dwelt with her mother in law, and chapter 3 opens with Naomi as the one who moves.