Ruth 2

Today’s Passage: Ruth 2

Two widows have come home to Bethlehem with nothing, and now one of them has to go out and find food. Ruth asks to glean, to walk behind the harvesters and pick up whatever falls, and Naomi lets her go. What happens next the narrator tells in the plainest way, and yet nothing in this chapter is really plain at all. Ruth “happens” to come to the field of a man named Boaz, who turns out to be a relative of her dead father-in-law, a man of noble character who has already heard the story of her loyalty to Naomi. He notices her, protects her, feeds her at his own table, and quietly orders his workers to leave extra grain in her path. He blesses her in the name of the LORD, under whose wings she has come to take refuge. She goes home with more than a day’s gleaning could ever explain, and Naomi, hearing the name Boaz, feels something she has not felt in a long time: hope. Watch, all through this chapter, how the God who is never named as the one acting is plainly the one at work, caring for the empty through the kindness of a faithful man.

As you read, hold this: God’s quiet care meets the empty-handed through the kindness of one faithful man, and gathers the outsider under His wings.

Ruth 2:1–3 (BSB)

¹ Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a prominent man of noble character from the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz.

² And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Please let me go into the fields and glean heads of grain after someone in whose sight I may find favor.” “Go ahead, my daughter,” Naomi replied.

³ So Ruth departed and went out into the field and gleaned after the harvesters. And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelech.

Notice how the narrator tips his hand before the story even begins. In verse one, before Ruth has taken a single step, we are told there is a man named Boaz, a relative on Naomi’s side, a man of noble character from the very clan of Elimelech. The reader knows what the two widows do not. Then Ruth goes out, and her request is humble to the ground: she will glean behind someone in whose sight she might find favor, taking nothing for granted, hoping only to be tolerated. And then comes the quietest and most important word in the whole book. She “happened” to come to the field belonging to Boaz. The Hebrew almost smiles as it says it, as if by pure chance, as if it were the luckiest accident in the world. But we have already been told who Boaz is, and we are meant to feel the gap between what looks like coincidence to Ruth and what is plainly the hand of God to us. She thinks she has stumbled onto a random field. She has walked straight into the care of the LORD.

Ruth 2:4–7 (BSB)

⁴ Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and said to the harvesters, “The LORD be with you.” “The LORD bless you,” they replied.

⁵ And Boaz asked the foreman of his harvesters, “Whose young woman is this?”

⁶ The foreman answered, “She is the Moabitess who returned with Naomi from the land of Moab.

⁷ She has said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves after the harvesters.’ So she came out and has continued from morning until now, except that she rested a short time in the shelter.”

The first thing we hear out of Boaz’s mouth tells us the whole man. He comes from town and greets his workers with a blessing, “The LORD be with you,” and they bless him back, and you understand at once that this is a field where the name of God is at home and the master and his laborers regard one another with respect. Then his eye falls on Ruth, and he asks who she is. The foreman answers plainly: the Moabitess, the foreigner who came back with Naomi, who asked leave to glean and has worked steadily from morning with barely a rest. Every word of that report is quietly in Ruth’s favor. She asked permission rather than presuming, she has worked hard rather than idled, and her loyalty to Naomi has already followed her into the field as her reputation. Boaz has not spoken to her yet, but he is already learning the kind of woman she is, and it is disposing his heart toward her.

Ruth 2:8–9 (BSB)

⁸ 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.

⁹ 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.”

Here the law becomes a welcome. Boaz does far more than tolerate a stranger exercising her legal right. He calls her “my daughter,” a word of tenderness and belonging to a foreign widow he has only just met, and he urges her to stay in his field and glean nowhere else. He tells her to keep close to his own servant girls, safe among the household, and then he lifts the two things a woman alone in a strange field would most fear. He has ordered the young men not to lay a hand on her, and he invites her to drink freely from the water his workers have drawn, as though she were one of his own rather than an outsider come to gather scraps. Every sentence is a covering laid over her exposed and vulnerable life. A right on parchment has met a generous heart, and the poor foreigner suddenly finds herself not driven off but drawn in.

Ruth 2:10–13 (BSB)

¹⁰ 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?”

¹¹ 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.

¹² May the LORD repay your work, and may you receive a rich reward from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have taken refuge.”

¹³ “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 is overwhelmed. She falls to the ground and asks the question that has been in her heart since she walked into the field: why should you notice me, a foreigner? And Boaz answers by telling her that her kindness to Naomi is not a secret at all. He has heard the whole story, how she left her father and mother and her own country to cling to a grieving old woman and follow her to a people she did not know. Then he speaks the words that give the whole book its heart. He does not merely thank her; he prays for her, that the LORD Himself would repay her work and grant her a rich reward, the God of Israel under whose wings (כָּנָף) kanaph, pronounced kah-NAHF. Strong's H3671, wing; edge or corner of a garment. The word means a wing, and by an easy and tender extension it also means the edge, the skirt, the corner of a garment, the part of a covering you draw over and around to shelter what is underneath. When Boaz says Ruth has taken refuge under the wings of the LORD, he is picturing God as a mother bird spreading her feathers over her young, the same image the Psalms return to again and again when they speak of hiding under the shadow of His wings. Hold this word, because it does not appear here by accident and it does not stay here. In the very next chapter Ruth will come to Boaz by night and ask him to spread the corner of his covering, the same word kanaph, over her, that is, to take her under his own protection as her redeemer. It is one of the quiet wonders of this book that the God whose wings shelter Ruth chooses to answer her refuge through the outstretched covering of a faithful man. What she asks of the LORD in chapter two she will ask of Boaz in chapter three, and both prayers are the same prayer: cover me, keep me, make me safe. she has come to take refuge. That is the image to hold onto. Ruth has come, like a small bird fleeing the open sky, to shelter beneath the wings of the living God. Boaz sees it, names it, and blesses it. And then, beautifully, God begins to answer that very prayer through the hands of the man who prayed it. Ruth’s reply is all humility: she is not even one of his servant girls, and yet he has comforted her and spoken to her heart.

Ruth 2:14–16 (BSB)

¹⁴ At mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come over here; have some bread and dip it into the vinegar sauce.” So she sat down beside the harvesters, and he offered her roasted grain, and she ate and was satisfied and had some left over.

¹⁵ When Ruth got up to glean, Boaz ordered his young men, “Even if she gathers among the sheaves, do not insult her.

¹⁶ Rather, pull out for her some stalks from the bundles and leave them for her to gather. Do not rebuke her.”

Now the kindness deepens again. At mealtime Boaz calls Ruth over, not to eat apart at a distance as a foreigner might expect, but to sit down among the harvesters and share the common meal. He hands her roasted grain himself, and she eats until she is full and still has some left over, a small abundance from a man who keeps giving more than the moment requires. Then, when she rises to go back to work, Boaz turns to his young men and quietly rigs the whole field in her favor. She is not merely to be left alone; they are to pull stalks out of the gathered bundles on purpose and drop them where she will find them, and no one is to shame her or scold her for gleaning boldly. It is a generosity that hides itself. Ruth will spend the afternoon thinking she is having a remarkably good day of gleaning, never knowing that the path in front of her is being seeded with grain by the master’s command. This is exactly how the providence of God so often works: not in thunder, but in the deliberate, unadvertised kindness of a faithful person, so that the one being cared for feels only that grace has been unusually near.

Ruth 2:17–20 (BSB)

¹⁷ So Ruth gathered grain in the field until evening. And when she beat out what she had gleaned, it was about an ephah of barley.

¹⁸ 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.

¹⁹ Then her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today, and where did you work? Blessed be the man who noticed you.” So she told her mother-in-law where she had worked. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said.

²⁰ 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.”

Ruth works till evening, and when she threshes out what she has gathered it comes to about an ephah of barley, an astonishing haul for a single day of gleaning, far more than a poor woman working alone could ever normally carry home. She hauls it into town, and Naomi sees it and can hardly believe her eyes. On top of that, Ruth brings out the food she saved from her own meal and gives it to the older woman, still thinking of Naomi before herself. Naomi’s first question is where, and her first word is a blessing on whoever it was that showed her daughter-in-law such notice. Then Ruth says the name: Boaz. And something breaks open in Naomi. This is the woman who came home from Moab insisting the LORD had turned against her and brought her back empty. Now she blesses that same LORD, praising Him for a kindness that has not been withdrawn from the living or the dead, and then she says the word that changes everything: the man is a close relative, one of our kinsman-redeemers (גֹּאֵל) goel, pronounced go-ALE. Strong's H1350, kinsman-redeemer, one who redeems or avenges on behalf of a relative. A goel is a redeemer, and in Israel it named a very particular person: the near relative whose covenant duty was to step in and rescue his own when they could not rescue themselves. If a family member fell into poverty and had to sell their land, the goel could buy it back and keep it in the family. If a relative was sold into servitude, the goel could pay to set him free. He was the one who took another’s loss upon himself and made it right, the family’s rescuer written into the law. When Naomi says that Boaz is one of their kinsman-redeemers, she is not making small talk about a distant cousin. She is realizing that the kind man in the field is exactly the kind of man who could restore what her family has lost, and the whole rest of the book will turn on that word. It is worth carrying past Ruth’s story too, for Scripture will take this same picture and lift it higher, to the Redeemer who takes His people’s poverty and bondage upon Himself and buys them back at the greatest cost, so that the empty are made full and the outsider is brought home. . For the first time since her sorrow began, Naomi is looking at a door she thought was shut, and beginning to hope.

Ruth 2:21–23 (BSB)

²¹ Then Ruth the Moabitess said, “He also told me, ‘Stay with my young men until they have finished gathering all my harvest.’”

²² And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law Ruth, “My daughter, it is good for you to work with his young women, so that nothing will happen to you in another field.”

²³ 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.

Ruth tells Naomi the rest: Boaz had invited her to stay with his workers right through the harvest, and Naomi, hearing it, agrees at once that this is good, that Ruth is safest staying in Boaz’s field where no harm will reach her. So Ruth does exactly that, keeping close to the servant girls of Boaz and gleaning through both the barley and the wheat harvests, which is to say for weeks and weeks, provided for the whole season under the covering of this one faithful man. And the chapter closes with a line so quiet it is easy to pass over: she lived with her mother-in-law. The loyalty that began at the border of Moab has held. The two widows who came home empty are being fed, and safe, and are still together. Nothing dramatic has happened. No miracle has torn open the sky. And yet by the end of this ordinary harvest the God who was never once described as acting has fed the hungry, sheltered the exposed, and set the whole rescue in motion, all through the plain kindness of a good man in a barley field.