What Kind of Story is Ruth?

I think I'll just jump into this. I was debating whether to make this admission now or later, but this is the second sermon I've ever given, and the first in many years. I guess I'm asking you to go easy on me a little bit with that. The question I would like to ask is, what kind of story is the book of Ruth? What kind of story is Ruth? You can go ahead and turn over there.

I was noticing something recently, together as a family, we had watched a recent version of Cinderella. That is a story that's been told in books and movies. Something I was struck by in the last one that was done about 10 years ago was how much it paralleled the book of Ruth. In fact, I went and I had the opportunity to teach classes on Ruth at ABC this past year, which was fantastic. It was a really neat experience. But because I'd had it fresh in my mind, I wrote out three pages of parallels between this movie and the story of Ruth. Then I went back and looked at the story of Cinderella, as it's been told over the last 300 years. I noticed in every retelling, it gets closer to the story of Ruth. It's like the story of Ruth is so embedded in people's imaginations, even non-religious people, that they can't help but try to force the story in that direction. And that raises a significant question, which is, we see Cinderella as a great romance, a great love story. So should we read that back into Ruth? And I would make the case that we shouldn't, but it is, I think that we can call the story of Ruth a love story. Maybe not exactly a romance, but it is a different kind of love in this love story. Ruth is placed squarely in this period of time, the beginning, the intro to it, places it in this time of the judges. The narrator of the story does not seem concerned to try to tell you which judge. He just wants you to think about this time in light of where we left off with the judges, which the last few chapters have a lot of words in the Hebrew that kind of link it into Ruth, or more vice versa, really, showing that we're supposed to be putting these things together.

Do you remember where we left off in that story? Things were going downhill. Everyone was doing what was right in his own eyes. Amidst that environment where Israel seems to be just progressing to the chaos, the way that the Canaanite area was before they even got there, we get this story of Ruth, which is like a ray of light in a dark era. And so that's why we see it set. Now, it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land. And I should say, Ruth has a very defined story structure to it. It's got a prologue, it's got four acts, and it's got an epilogue. And the prologue is these first five verses, and they're very efficient. We learn a lot of things really quick, and it really delivers quite a shock.

It's about this man and wife, Elimelech and Naomi, and their two sons, Maphlon and Kileon.

They're experiencing this famine in Bethlehem. They go to Moab, of all places, and right away some things happen. Elimelech dies.

Maphlon and Kileon, the sons, they take Moabite wives, which in the telling of Old Testament stories, that's bad news. These are some of the big baddies of the Old Testament are the Moabites, the earliest of allies. This Moabite widow, and...

Sorry, I lost my place here. The Moabite widow of one of her sons.

This story deftly unfolds in the way that it's told, how Naomi's tragedy turns into triumph, and it recounts how we take this family whose name is in jeopardy. The line of Elimelech, the name of Elimelech, is going to fall out of the story of Israel.

And this family is good as dead. It recounts how God turns that around and places her in the line of David and in the line of Jesus Christ on after that, who is the seed of Abraham through whom all nations would be blessed.

So the story really begins in verse 6. This is where we really move into the first act of the story. It says, Then she arose with her daughters-in-law, that she might return from the country of Moab.

She had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had visited his people by giving them bread.

This is the first of only two mentions by the narrator of the story of God.

Both those two mentions are ones where he says God does something. For the most part, the narrator uses a very light touch in the way he tells this story. This is a technique that invites us to be drawn into the story and how it's going to play out. He's not always telling us exactly what God is doing or how he's working. He's letting us just see it and experience it as it unfolds. So this is the first time that he brings up God. He says that God has brought food, literally bread, back to the house of bread, bread back to Bethlehem.

And one aspect that I can't get into very much in this message, but a very active part of this whole story of Ruth is word plays. This author just loves word plays. And one of the things that he does a lot is, there's a whole collection of words that he just uses two times or three times. And the way that he'll use them is he'll use it the first time in, say, the prologue, and the second time in the epilogue, or in the first act and the fourth act, or the second act and the third act. And so you get this parallel structure that sort of wraps over on itself so that when you encounter words the first time, it's dealing with Naomi's and Ruth's and Orpah's destitution and their loss. But then when you encounter it the second time, you see God's gradual reversal of their fortunes.

And so this is one of those points. God is kicking this story into gear. He sends the bread back, and that's that report of food coming back to Bethlehem that drives it forward.

In verse 8, Naomi says, Go return to each her mother's house. Well, maybe I should step back up here a little bit.

Therefore she went out from the place where she was and her two daughters-in-law with her, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.

And Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, Go return each of you to your mother's house.

The Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.

The Lord grant that you may find rest each in the house of her husband.

Now, this word kindly is way more loaded than it might first appear here. This is the first of three uses, three strategic uses in this book, of the Hebrew word chesed in this story. And that's going to become a major thread that holds the whole story together. And it's going to reveal just what kind of story this is. Is it a romance, or is it some other kind of a story?

So, I'm going to take a sidebar here. We're going to step away from Ruth for a second and come back to just talk about this word chesed for a moment. If you turn over to Psalm 136. Psalm 136.

This is the great Hillel.

It's a call and response song. And it's very interesting. It has this repetition 26 times.

In my new King James, it says, O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. O give thanks to the God of gods, for his mercy endures forever. O give thanks to the Lord of Lord, for his mercy endures forever. And it just keeps repeating that refrain.

And this first phrase, O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever, is almost God's calling card, in some ways in the Old Testament. This exact phrasing is what is said twice in the story of the temple dedication in 2 Chronicles. When Solomon dedicates the temple, it's used as a bracketing device, where we hear it at the beginning and we hear it at the end. And right after it's said the first time is when God's spirit comes into the tabernacle and fills it up.

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. It's also used by Jehoshaphat when he goes into battle. He has them sing this, and that's the moment where God intervenes in the battle and wins it for them.

But what's interesting is that this gets translated very differently. If you compare Psalm 136 and all of these refrains, let's say in the New International Version, it says, His love endures forever. So it repeats this, love endures forever, love endures forever.

The New Living Translation says, His faithful love endures forever. The NRSV says, His steadfast love endures forever. The NET says, His loyal love endures.

The ISV says, His gracious love is everlasting.

The NASV, when it first came out in 1995, they reached way back to the earliest English translations to try to find an English word for this word, hesed.

And they landed on a word that was actually coined in English just to try to translate this word, which is loving kindness, which of course we're familiar with from the King James Version, for his loving kindness is everlasting.

And then the NASV changed their minds about 15 years later. They came out with a new edition, or about 25 years later, and they decided to go with faithfulness, for his faithfulness is everlasting.

So which translation is right?

They're all right. They're all right. They can't agree because this word is very hard to translate and covers so much ground.

It's used several hundred times in the Bible, 245 to be exact. If you look them all up, you'll find this word is heavily associated with covenants.

And whether it's God or with people, it always involves not just sometimes covenants, but the emotion that goes beyond the covenant.

Between regular people, just two people, hesed is a relational concept. It has an idea of reciprocity in it. It implies that there's going to need to be reciprocation. For instance, when Rahab hides the spies who come to spy out Jericho, she says to them, I've shown you hesed. Now show hesed to my family when you conquer this city.

There's a reciprocity.

And this is what makes God's hesed stand out.

There's actually no example in the whole Hebrew Bible of a human giving hesed to God, even though most of the references to this word are about God.

The reason for that is because we really can't have a reciprocal relationship with God.

He does require a response from us. We do have to respond to him, but we have no storehouses of things that we can give God. He's got all the stuff. He's got all the resources.

We are in no way God's benefactor.

This is a word that is used three out of four times in talking about God and his steadfast love, the other quarter of times are those cases like Rahab, others where we're dealing with this kind of mutual type of loyal love between people, covenantal love.

But with God, it's always talking about his steadfast love. Whenever Moses, when he's on Mount Sinai, and we've just had the golden calf incident in Exodus 33 and Exodus 34, whenever he says, show me your glory, and God says, okay, get in this cleft right here. I'm going to show you my goodness. And he says this statement about himself. He says, Yahweh, Yahweh El, the Lord, Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abounding in Chesed and truth. God is the God of Chesed love.

Now, I still haven't quite gotten to what it is. What is it exactly? And I really like the way that the Vines dictionary handles this. It can mean a lot of things, but there are three things that it always means. This is what Vine says, in general, one may identify three basic meanings of the word which always interact. Strength, steadfastness, and love, meaning an affectionate type of love. Any understanding of the word that fails to suggest all three inevitably loses some of its richness. So there's three irreducible parts to this word. Strength, steadfastness, and love.

So love is how God is affectionate toward us. For example, in Psalm 36, it says, Your love, your Chesed, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.

Whereas strength, what that's talking about is the fact that this takes place in the real world.

This kind of love manifests itself in real life. It turns into concrete acts. For instance, in the Song of Moses in Exodus 15, you could just jot that down. Moses is singing about how God has just delivered them through the Red Sea, and he says, You have led in your Chesed the people whom you have redeemed, and you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode. The peoples have heard, they tremble, pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia. It's not just a feeling. Chesed is not just a feeling. It is a feeling, and it has to be a feeling, but it's also concrete acts in the real world and the strength to make it happen. And that third element is steadfastness, and this introduces a time element to it. It's not just a glancing thing, a one-time thing that happens, but this is where the covenant side of it comes into. It's a promise that spans time.

For example, in the Ten Commandments, when God is describing himself in the Commandment on idolatry in Exodus 26, he says that he's the one who shows covenant Chesed to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. King David, when he became king, he went around and he looked for a descendant of Jonathan. After Saul had died and Jonathan had died, he said, is there still anyone who is left of the house of Saul that I may show him Chesed for Jonathan's sake? So that this idea is that spans time. He's still loyal to the loyalty that Jonathan had shown him earlier. So it refers to concrete acts in the real world. It refers to an affectionate love and a loyalty that spans time, strength, steadfastness, and affection. And now you can start to see why mercy can be such an inadequate translation, as any kind of individual word can be. For example, I think you're getting the idea that this is like a marriage word. This is the kind of word that really captures what a marriage is all about. But if I got up and I wrote my wedding vows so that what I wanted to say was, I'm going to show you mercy, joy, in our marriage. I'm going to have mercy on you. You can see how this is incomplete. It doesn't quite get there, does it?

You want a little more than just mercy from your spouse. So it's a big word. Steadfast love. I really like steadfast love or loyal covenant love. I think they go a long way to covering most of what's in play most of the time. So we can come back to Ruth now, and we go back to Ruth 1.

And we can see then that this is not just an offhand comment that that Naomi is making to Orpah and Ruth. This is the first time we have a prayer in the book of Ruth, and we have an Israelite praying for a couple of Gentiles while sending them home to their Gentile lands. But it's very noticeable what she is observing about them and what it's saying about them as people.

That she's saying the God of Israel show Hasid to these two Moabites, just as they have shown Hasid to the dead and to her. And so this concept of Hasid love is going to be the engine that powers the story forward from here on out. In verse 9 it says, So she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. And they said to her, Surely we will return with you to your people. And then she gives this significant speech here where she tells them to turn back. They both wanted to come. Both of them were on board to make this journey, which is telling. Orpah is not, she's kind of a mirror of Ruth, but not in too negative a way because she was conventionally good. She fulfilled all of her obligations. Naomi clearly holds her in high esteem, but we're going to see a split here.

Naomi said, Turn back, my daughters. Why will you go with me? Are there still sons in my womb that they may be your husbands? Turn back, my daughters. Go, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, if I should have a husband tonight and should also bear sons, would you wait for them till they were grown? Would you restrain yourselves from having husbands? Know, my daughters, for it grieves me very much, for your sakes, that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me. There's a few things happening here. It's actually teasing where the story's going because she's bringing up the concept of levered marriage, the idea of another son coming along and marrying a widow so that they can raise up a son in the name of the dead son. She's bringing that up here, and that's going to be important in the story later on. But something else that's interesting here is that there's this assumption underlying this. She's saying, if you come back with me to Israel, you got no chances. You don't have a shot with anybody. You're going to be shunned. Nobody is going to take you on. You've got better chances in Moab, and at least you can go back to your parents.

Dr. Dunkel, when he's taught this class before, he's pointed out, Naomi takes the risk of being completely alone here, traveling back to Israel alone, being alone back there. She's taking a risk of being... she's lost everything at this point. All she has left are these two daughters in law, and she is trying to send them away now for the sake of wanting a future for them.

That's what she wants. That is hesed. That is hesed in action. Verse 14, then they lifted up their voices and wept again, and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. Naomi had kissed them. When you when you kiss somebody in the Old Testament, it often implies you're saying goodbye to them. You're sending them off. So she kissed them, but now Orpah kisses her.

So she's... Orpah's turning and she's saying goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

And she said, look, Naomi said, look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods.

Return after your sister-in-law. I like the comments of one Old Testament scholar who said the narrator intends for us to contrast her with Ruth, not because Orpah is selfish or wicked, but because she is sensible. She displays a good common sense and does what anyone reading the story for the first time expects her to do. She weighs the facts and she submits, actually, to her mother-in-law's counsel. And she is only following the logical trajectory of the evidence and doing what she has been told. She heads back to Moab with Naomi's full approval. At the same time, her actions create this big divide, this striking contrast between the sensible good and a truly radical choice that Ruth makes right here. And what follows is Ruth's speech, and it rings very much like a marriage covenant. In fact, sometimes it's incorporated into marriage ceremonies. Ruth says, and treat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following after you, for wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. The Lord, Yahweh, do so to me, and more also, if anything but death, parts you from me. And these are poetic structures. The way it's told, Naomi's instruction that Ruth is a poem, and Ruth's response is a poem. And Ruth's, each one is sort of a concentric structure, where the first part matches the last part, and then it kind of moves inward. But Ruth's has more layers, and every layer is doubled. So the effect of it is that she comes back with some fire here. She is responding in a very active way to Naomi's trying to warn her off. And you can feel it in. That's why it's three times as long here. And it's interesting because there could be some wordplays here where she says, Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. She's saying, Your Elohim, my Elohim. That's the plural for gods. Naomi had just said that, and what she meant was the different gods that you're going to have in the land of Moab. Kimash, and probably a number of others. When Ruth says it in the plural, this is now like the royal kind of a plural. This is the way that that God is sometimes called throughout the Old Testament, Elohim. So there's kind of a wordplay there. But what happens at the end is she says Yahweh's name directly. And that is the mic drop moment right here. This is the only time in the book where Ruth uses God's name directly. As Dr. Dunkel points out, calling on the Lord's name implies believing in Him. So this is really the moment where it's not a matter of Ruth isn't just trading her gods in Moab for her mother-in-law's gods. This is the moment where she is consciously pledging allegiance to the one true God, the God of Israel. I also like this comment from another Old Testament scholar who points out that to most Westerners, there's usually little emotional trauma in being buried away from the family plot. But that kind of casual approach to death was completely unknown in the ancient Near East, in the land of Canaan. Here, this is the place where one of your purposes when you died was to have your bones gathered to your fathers. And it's a very...

it would create a lot of anxiety, the thought to be separated from that. But she says where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. That's an emphatic statement of allegiance, that she is going to even be buried with Naomi.

And I would also point out that we don't know the circumstances of how she got married, how the marriages may have been arranged in the process of Ruth and Orp getting married. So this may be the first chance Ruth has ever had to make a major life decision that's going to determine her life. And this is a moment like Abraham, where she just kind of steps out of the flow of conventional human history and takes a different kind of a turn. So in verse 22, Naomi returned and Ruth the Moabites, her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. Now she came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

Now, when we mention the harvest here, we're reminded the whole thing that kicked the story into gear was one action God took, which was to apparently end the famine and to start crops coming back to Bethlehem. And the report went out from there. He turned that first... if you remember the game, mousetrap, it's like he turned that first crank, and now the story is moving in motion. But the question here now, as they come back to the barley harvest, is God going to do for Ruth and Naomi what he seems to be doing for the people of Bethlehem? Is he going to restock them? Are they going to be replenished? And that's where we move into... you could call it Act Two. Chapter Two here.

There's basically four acts to it that happen in four different locations. On the road back to Moab, in the fields between Ruth and Boaz, on the threshing floor between Ruth and Boaz, and then at the town gate between Boaz and his nearer kinsmen. It's a very structured pattern. Each one starts out with somebody having a plan going out that leads to a climax in the middle of that chapter that is usually determined by somebody else making a critical decision. And then every act of the story, those four acts, all in with Ruth and Naomi talking about what happened at home in Bethlehem. And then it's got the prologue and the epilogue, which established the context of how it starts and how it ends. So here we are. We're beginning this the second act, where Ruth goes out it says first, though, that there was a relative of Naomi's husband, a man of great wealth of the family of Elimelech. His name was Boaz. Now this man of great wealth, this expression is Gebur Hael. This is the phrase that's used for, say, the mighty man of Valor of David. He had his 30 mighty men, various other places where you have this idea of a mighty man of Valor. He's a Gebur Hael. Gebur is the man of Hael is this idea of Valor. And this is another one of our authors' keywords that become bookends for how this story works, because we're only going to encounter this this concept three times in here. The first introduces Boaz. The second one is where we run into an Ishet Hael, which is a virtuous woman. And Proverbs 31 asks, who can find an Ishet Hael? Who can find a virtuous woman? Well, we're going to meet one in this story. And there's going to be a third one, which brings those two threads together. So this word is first used for Boaz, second for Ruth, and then it's used in the blessing and the end of the story of anticipating what their life will be like together. In verse 2, Ruth the Moabite says to Naomi, please let me go out to the field and glean heads of grain after him and whose sight I may find favor. And she said to her, go, my daughter.

One Old Testament scholar, Robert Alter, points out that this re-emphasizes the tension and the boldness of a foreign woman seeking to take advantage of the Israelite laws of gleaning for Naomi's sake. And it kind of reminds me of the woman who came to Tyre, the woman of Tyre, who comes to Jesus. She's putting all her marbles in the trust that this man can help her. And that's what Ruth is doing here in Israel. Apparently, she knows about some of these laws in the Torah, and she's going to try to take advantage of them, even if they don't specifically say they're necessarily for foreigners. I don't think I mentioned earlier, I think I skipped over. One of the interesting things about Ruth that kind of makes it unique is that it seems to go out of its way to feature a lot of different laws in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, and shows them working in action. Some of them you never really get to see anywhere else in the Bible.

It's almost like Bethlehem becomes this sketch. Amidst the end of the time of Judges, when everything was going wrong, Bethlehem becomes this Eden in the wilderness where Torah is firing on all cylinders. People are doing what they're supposed to do, and you get to see what the result of it is. It engages levered marriage, it engages gleaning, it engages rules about land rights, and so we'll see that in this story. Now, it seems like for some reason Naomi can't do hard labor anymore. She's always at home in the story. We don't know exactly what the story is, but we see here Ruth is taking responsibility to provide for both of them. So she left and she went and she gleaned in the field after the Reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Alemolech. And the way this is written, it says basically, her encounter encountered. There's a bump in the story there in the way that it's told. It seems to be the narrator. He doesn't want to say, and God just brought her here, but he sure seems to want to ask you to ask that question. So she happens to come to the the field of Boaz, and this appears to be the little piece of that hidden hand of God in the story, which is a narrative technique you find throughout the Old Testament.

Now behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the Reapers, the Lord be with you. And they answered, the Lord bless you. This is the kind of guy I want to work for. You know, he greets his employees with a prayer, a blessing on them. They bless him.

It seems like a good employer. And one thing that's kind of striking, actually, about the book of Ruth is that no one in the book ever prays for a resolution for their own crisis. It's certainly not wrong to pray for our own things, but just the way this story is told, nobody prays for a resolution for their own crisis. Everybody is praying for the God of Israel, Yahweh, to bless somebody else. This is a mark of Hasid love. Verse 5, Then Boaz said to his servant, who was in charge of the Reapers, whose young woman is this?

And the servant identifies her as the Moabite woman with Naomi. And it's kind of funny. It seems like either he doesn't know her name or he forgot her name, possibly. He, you know, he doesn't pull it up. But by contrast, Boaz immediately addresses her as daughter in the next sentence, just like Naomi did in their last conversation together. Then Boaz said to Ruth, You will listen, my daughter. Will you not? Do not lean in another field, nor go from there, but stay close by my young women. Let your eyes be on the field which they reap, and go after them. Have I not commanded the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink from what the young men have drawn.

And this is a comment from our Bible reading program. The UCG Bible reading program says that Boaz fulfills the instruction God has given Israel to not treat strangers or foreigners differently under the law, and even instructs Ruth to stay and glean in his fields for her protection. However, the way he goes about this is really an extravagant level of kindness. He goes beyond the law. He sees past it to its spirit. He goes beyond the letter. So in terms of cultural custom, drawing water was a job for women, and you would see foreigners do it for Israelites. So this stands out as a significant gesture of hospitality and respect. In verse 10, She fell on her face, bowed down to the ground, and said to him, Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner? And Boaz answered and said to her, I've heard about you. I've heard about you. It's been fully reported to me all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother and the land of your birth. This is this is Abraham language from Genesis 12.

You've left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people whom you did not know before. So he knows her by reputation before he knows her face.

Who's Ruth? She's somebody who's walked away from everything. She's walked away from everything in order to take care of her foreign mother-in-law. This expression, fully told, is sort of this doubled telling. It has been told, emphasizing that you, Ruth, your loyal deeds for Naomi, they're the talk of the town. So verse 12, he goes on, he says, The Lord repay your work in a full reward be given to you by the Lord God of Israel. He's praying for Ruth under whose wings you have come for refuge. Let's just file that under whose wings away for a little bit later.

Then she said, Let me find favor in your sight, my Lord, for you have comforted me, literally, you've spoken to the heart, you've comforted me, and have spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your maidservants. And then later at mealtime, Boaz said to her, Come here and eat of the bread, and dip your piece of bread in the vinegar. So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed parched grain to her. And it uses a rare word that's only used here in the Hebrew Bible. They say he passed it to her with the hand to emphasize that he's serving her himself. And she ate and was satisfied, and kept some back. She had some left over. So Ruth leans in the field and comes back with this massive haul.

If memory serves, I think it's enough to, in another place in the Bible, it's enough to feed 50 men in for one day, or maybe for one meal. She comes back with this massive amount of grain. And it's partly because Boaz had asked his men to drop extra bundles of grain off behind them in front of her so that she would collect more, but also partly due to her own industry working all day that day. So she comes back. In verse 19, her mother-in-law says to her, Where have you gleaned today? And where did you work? Blessed be the one who took notice of you. So she told her mother-in-law with whom she'd worked, and she said, The man's name with whom I had worked today is Boaz. And we remember at the end of the last act, where we had Naomi last, she was in a very dark spot. She was in a very low spot. But to her credit, she's the first one to see God's hand and what's happening here. Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, Blessed be he of the Lord, who has not forsaken his Hasid to the living and the dead. Again, that phrase Hasid referring to the living and the dead. And Naomi said to her, This man is a relation of ours, one of our close relatives, one of our goel in Hebrew, one of our kinsmen redeemers. And one thing that's interesting here, this is one of two places in Ruth, where there's a statement made about something that's happened, Hasid for the living of the dead, where it's not clear what the sentence, what the antecedent is. In other words, it's not clear whether this is talking about the Lord or talking about Boaz.

And that's going to be something that we might talk about at the end as well, as we kind of reflect on what this whole story means. Naomi said to her, This man is a relation of ours, one of our goel.

This idea of a redeemer, a kinsmen redeemer, comes from mostly Leviticus 25. It's the idea of a close relative who serves a number of different functions. It's somebody who could buy back the land, the family land, if it had been sold away, if one of their poor relatives had had to sell it. They might buy back a family member if the family member had sold themselves into bond service.

They received compensation for a wronged family member if that family member was, say, died by accident and couldn't receive it themselves. And they also had this role of avenging the murder of a relative. There's another concept in the Torah of levirate marriage, where you would have a brother marry his sister-in-law to raise up a son and raise up a name for his dead brother, and be able to continue his line in Israel. It's kind of interesting. Those aren't ever explicitly crossed anywhere in the Bible, except when Ruth talks to Boaz about it. It seems like Ruth kind of assumes that those concepts of a levirate marriage and a kinsmen redeemer are somehow intertwined. But it may be Ruth is the only one who ever actually does it. And Boaz responds, again, to seeing the spirit of the law of what's trying to be accomplished here to protect the family name of Lemelak and goes along with it, because he sees this is what God wants to happen. Ruth 2 22. Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, it is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women and that people do not meet you in any other field. So Naomi is concerned about Ruth's personal safety. Ruth is concerned about Naomi's long-term food situation. Everybody here is concerned about the other's interests. This is Hasad. And so we move into chapter 3. It seems like we've solved the food problem for now, but we still have the security problem. We still have the problem with what's going to happen to Ruth and Naomi. What's going to happen to Lemelak's name, Matalan's name? Will their line die out in Israel?

And so Naomi, her mother-in-law, said to her, my daughter, shall I not seek rest for you, security for you, that it may be well with you? Now Boaz, whose young women you were with, is he not our relative? In fact, he is winnowing barley tonight at the threshing floor. Therefore, wash yourself and anoint yourself, put on your best garment and go down to the threshing floor.

But do not make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. Then it shall be, when he lies down, that you shall notice the place where he lies, and you shall go in, uncover his feet, and lie down, and he will tell you what you should do. And she said to her, all that you say to me, I will do. So she went down to the threshing floor, and did according to all that her mother-in-law instructed her. And after Boaz had eaten and drunk, and his heart was cheerful, he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain, and she came softly, uncovered his feet, and lay down. So Naomi was anticipating this time where she could talk to Boaz alone. Couldn't really do that in the city, but she could do it out here. This was an opportune time when he would be well fed, he would be well watered, and there would be an opportunity for them to have this conversation in private. But this was a very risky plan. This is a very risky plan. Boaz could have reacted in his response of waking up a number of different ways.

This is not a totally unexpected kind of situation. Threshing floors were kind of like the red light districts of this time in history. There are passages in the prophets that talk about Israel going after other gods, like a harlot on every threshing floor. I don't have it in my notes, but there are references to that like that. Because this is where you can get to men when they're away from their families, and they're out here, and they're alone. There's that kind of backdrop to this as well. It's a risky plan for her to go out here and do this, and he might take it as an invitation for sex. Instead, though, he again shows his principles, Boaz does, by waking up, and he responds with the the most terse thing that he says in the entire book. He wakes up and he says, or who are you in Hebrew? And she answers. She says, I am Ruth, your maidservant. Take your maidservant under your wing, for you are a close relative, a goel. So remember, he blessed her at the climax of the last chapter is where he blessed her, and he says he prays for God to bring her under his wing. And now at the climax of this chapter, she's saying, you know that thing you prayed?

It's you. You can be the one to do that. Take your maidservant under your wing, for you are a goel.

And the Bible scholar Robert Alter notes that she delicately avoids the word marriage directly here, instead using this more general term of shelter. And that word wings connects back to Boaz's prayer for Ruth. She's proposing to him exactly how it might be accomplished through a human who is doing Yahweh's will. And in doing this, she's sort of seizing the initiative. He asks, who are you? And in a way, she is flipping it and raising the question, who is Boaz? Who is Boaz going to be here? And in what she says here, when she says, take me under your wing, it may be a triple entendre, in a way, because it can mean that to spread one's wing over is a metaphor for refuge in Yahweh, in the God of Israel. It's used that way. That would be the first way that you expect it to be read here, so that she's saying, take me under your wing, let me come under your security. It is also a term, though, the wing is often used for the edge of the garment. So she could be literally saying, he trembled here, he shivered here, and she's shivering, too. It's cold here on the threshing floor. Another way of reading it is saying, spread your garment over me. And then the third way is that it is a euphemistic term for marriage. So in a way, it's, you know, part of the flare of the story, perhaps, or the way that we read it here, it can mean all of those things at the same time.

Now, this is a significant test for Boaz at this time. It strikes deep at the theme in Ruth of identity, seeing things on the inside or the outside, who somebody really is. So what does sleepy, merry-hearted Boaz see right here? Does he see a gold digger? Does he see a woman who is presuming to elevate her own status? Or does he see her reverting to type, the stereotypical loose Moabites who should be thrown out of this situation? Is that how he reads it? Or worse, does he see her as an opportunity, someone he can take advantage of and, you know, have a relation here at night and then toss her off like we would expect during this time period in these dark last days of the judges?

Or does he see a girl who's just really into him? This is deeply appealing to a lot of us, I think, when someone shows his attention to think, well, maybe they're attracted to me, you know? That would be a natural place for your mind to go. Or does he see a true Israelite, a true Israelite who is performing the Hasid spirit of the Torah for the sake of her mother-in-law at great personal risk?

I thought I'd read to you this one write-up by Carolyn Custis James, another Old Testament scholar of Ruth. She says, considering the fact that Ruth had lost a 10-year battle with barrenness, her proposal is simply astonishing. Boaz sees it right away, which is why his first response is a flood of praise for this radical display of Hasid love.

True to her vow, she is making an unprecedented sacrifice to rescue Naomi's family, and Boaz knows it. Ruth is voluntarily sticking out her neck in a dozen different ways and exposing herself to all sorts of potential humiliations. But Ruth never seems to travel on safe roads, and she's walking through a minefield here. She risks his refusal. She risks reopening one of the most painful chapters of her own life by trying once more to conceive a child. She risks public embarrassment if anything goes badly and word gets out. Instead of making life better for herself as Naomi desired, Ruth has deliberately put her future in greater jeopardy.

So here's how he answers. He says, "...Blessed are you of the Lord, my daughter, for you have shown more Hasid at the end than at the beginning, in that you did not go after younger men, whether poor or rich. And now my daughter do not fear. I will do for you all that you request, for all the people of my town know that you are a virtuous woman." So Boaz, even just here, sleepy, just waking up, trying to read what's happening here, he manages to put all the pieces together.

And he has this realization which really speaks to his character. He realizes that Ruth is not here for herself. She's not even here necessarily because she's attracted to Boaz. She's here because of Naomi. That's what he understands. He sees that she could have gone after these other men, which might have set her up, but wouldn't have necessarily helped Naomi. Instead, she's going after this apparently older man because she has cussed love for the living and the dead, for the memory of a limolec and mathlon, and for the security of her mother-in-law.

And that is what impresses Boaz. That is what moves his heart when he sees that. And he responds with the exact same sentence she said to Naomi when Naomi proposes this plan. She says, I will do all that you ask, which is her phrase. Again, if this story is a romance, the engine that drives it is not physical attraction, but it's cussed love.

Boaz and Ruth, if they're what you might call soulmates, it's soulmates of character. It's in their desire to loyally work for the good of those in need. Now, one thing that's fascinating here, this is where we encountered this word, Isha Chael. Boaz was the Gebur Chael. He was the mighty man of valor, the rich man. But she is the Isha Chael. All the town knows that you are a virtuous woman. For him, this description is external. You can see it on the outside. You could observe him from a distance and realize, okay, well, this guy is a big deal.

But for Ruth, she's got practically no social status. For her, this noble status that he's talking about is completely derived from Ruth's behavior. It's revealing her inner character. She's the perfect match to Boaz, but only on the inside. So he says, he goes on, Now it is true that I am a close relative. However, there is a relative closer than I.

Stay this night, and in the morning it shall be, that if he will perform the duty of a close relative for you, good, let him do it. But if he does not want to perform the duty for you, then I will perform the duty for you as the Lord lives.

Lie down until morning. When she came back to her mother-in-law in verse 16, she said, her mother-in-law said, Is that you, my daughter? So she doesn't say, Is that you, my daughter? She says, Mayette? The exact same thing that Boaz said when he first woke up. Mayette? Who are you?

And so most of our English translations will try to kind of gloss this because it's a really weird question for Naomi to ask. Who are you when she comes back? But my best guess is that this is a literary technique that the storyteller is doing. Naomi asks, Who are you? Boaz asks, Who are you? And right in the middle then is that climax where he says, I know who you are. The whole town knows who you are. You are an Ishet HaYel, a virtuous woman. It's dealing with her identity.

So in verse 16, then she told her all that the man had done for her. And she said, These six Ephazah barley he gave me, for he said to me, Do not go empty-handed to your mother-in-law. This is another one of our words that shows up twice. Naomi said, God has brought me back empty. And Boaz now says, You're not going to go home to Naomi empty-handed. You will not be empty.

Then she says, Sit still, my daughter, until you know how the matter will turn out. For the man will not rest until he has concluded the matter this day. We don't know anything about Naomi and Boaz's backstory, but for some reason at every turn it seems like Naomi has some kind of insight into Boaz's character that she greatly trusts. So we don't know what happened before they went to Moab or what their relationship was, but you see that there's this high degree of mutual respect and trust between Naomi and Boaz. So that moves the story into chapter four, which if you think about it, there's probably a way you could tell this story, say if the story was composed a couple hundred years later, because it's leading to where King David becomes King David. You can imagine a version of the story where you don't really need to tell chapter four. You could sort of jump forward the complication of the nearer kinsmen and tell a simpler version of it that just gets you to how everything turns out. But this does serve a function beyond giving us the legal history of showing Boaz in a kind of situation that again mirrors act one, chapter one and chapter four. You've got Ruth and Orpah, a conventional good versus a radical good, and then you've got in this next chapter Boaz and his nearer kinsmen here. So he goes to the city gate and he sits down, he takes 10 witnesses and sits them down from the elders of the city, and lo and behold the the redeemer comes along right then. Imagine that. He's called in Hebrew, Polonie al-Moni, which just means such and such. Or I've seen some people say Joe Schmo is a good name for it. There's an irony here because what's going to happen is he's going to be asked to carry on... he's going to be asked to marry Ruth and carry on a limilex name, and he doesn't do it in order to protect his own family name. And we don't have his name in here. We lost his name in this process. But I would take that as... again, there's no bad guys in this story. That's a soft judgment on him. What he does is the conventional thing here, and it creates a chance to show the mirror of who Boaz really is.

So they sit down and Boaz proposes this to him. He explains that you're the redeemer.

We need... maybe I should just read it here. He says, Naomi, who's come back from the country of Moab, sold the piece of land which belongs to our brother, a limilex, and I thought to inform you, saying, buy it back in the presence of the inhabitants and the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if you will not redeem it, then tell me that I may know, for there is no one but you to redeem it, and I am next after you. And then he says, I will redeem it. I'll go and redeem it. Then Boaz says, on the day that you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you must also buy it from Ruth the Moabitis, the wife of the dead, to perpetuate the name of the dead through his inheritance. Okay, so here's a complication. And this is a more complex arrangement than we can really get into here, which has a number of different possibilities. It's not exactly for sure what is happening here. The most likely one is probably the most obvious one that we read here, which seems to be that if he marries Ruth and raises a son for a limalek and matlawn, then that will be the inheritor of this land, and the inheritance won't go to the children that he already has. And perhaps the cost of this field is so great that it's not worth it, or maybe he's not somebody of means to support two families. We're not sure. Well, we don't know exactly. That's just one of the different branches of the possibilities here. The point, though, is that he doesn't do it. But this is...

we're really getting beyond the bounds of what the Torah really dictated. We're in relations that are probably farther off than just the next brother. And so what Boaz is asking Polonie Almonie here to do is honor the spirit of the law. We're outside the letter. We're into the spirit. Who's going to see that these needs are taken care of? And the reason I say kind of go light on Polonie Almonie a little bit is we don't really know what he would have done if Boaz was not there. He clearly reads that Boaz is willing to do this. So, you know, maybe he would have taken this on if there was nobody else. We don't know. But the point is Boaz steps up, where this guy does not. And so he says, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I ruin my own inheritance.

You redeem my right of redemption for yourself, for I cannot redeem it.

Now, this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning, redeeming, and exchanging. To confirm anything, one man took off his sandal and gave it to another, and this was a confirmation in Israel.

That's kind of a clue that the story is being written much after the events here, because we're having to explain something that was not known to the readers of the story when it was read. This looks similar to something that was in the Pentateuch, but it may not have been exactly the same custom either. Therefore, the close relative said to Boaz, buy it for yourself. So he took off his sandal, and Boaz said to the elders and all the people, you are witnesses this day that I have bought all that was a limalex and all that was kylians and mathlons from the hand of Naomi.

Moreover, Ruth the Moabites, the widow of Mathlon, I have acquired as my wife to perpetuate the name of the dead through his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brethren and from his position at the gate. You are witnesses this day.

And all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, we are witnesses. The Lord, make the woman who is coming into your house. There's an addiction prayer here. The Lord make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and Leah. The two who built the house of Israel and may you prosper in Iphrathath and be famous in Bethlehem. Literally, to proclaim a name in Bethlehem. Now, it's interesting that there were 10 witnesses. This is another one of our words that appears only twice. And in these bookending places here, 10 years of Naomi's destitution in Moab, 10 years of barrenness. And here we see that being unwound by these people saying, we are witnesses to what's happening. These 10 witnesses. One witness for every year of Naomi's trial here. And this word where it says, and may you prosper in Iphrathath, a lot of translations will go more with something like, may you act worthily. And this is our third appearance of Chael. We met Boaz, the mighty man, the Gebur Chael. We met Ruth, who has now been revealed to be an Isha Chael. And now this benediction is, imagine what life would be like with two people like this together. What would be accomplished when you have people of this kind of character living a life together? And that's what this statement, may you prosper, implies. And what it invites us to consider and meditate on. No longer than the Moabites, but now she's the woman coming into your house.

Yahweh make her like Rachel and Leah, the great matriarchs of Israel. And it's kind of odd that Rachel is mentioned first here, because Leah is the matriarch of this whole clan. She's Jude's ancestor. And so it could be that Rachel's being mentioned first. It's possible that what's on their mind is thinking about Rachel's own barrenness, how she was barren for a long time, and then God opened her womb. And they could be praying that the same now is going to happen for Ruth. Which is exactly what happens. In verse 13, this is one of the fastest-paced sentences in the book. You see the resolution to a bunch of problems in five verse that just fall over each other as they come out. So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. And when he went into her, the Lord gave her conception and she bore a son. Very fast, fast solution to a problem that was a long time in coming. The rapid fire in this kind of illustrates that it's God's blessing on this. In fact, this is the other time. This is the second time where the narrator mentions God. And in both cases, it's to show that God is stepping in directly and doing something. And I'm just going to call it out here and say it like I see it. This is what the narrator is doing here. The Lord gave her conception and she bore a son. In verse 14, then the women said to Naomi. One other time we ran into this line. It was when the women said to Naomi, I think I skipped over it before, is this is this Naomi? She came back old and haggard and you know in a poor state. Now the women say to Naomi, blessed be the Lord who has not left you this day. He's not left you this day without a goel and may a close relative, a kinsman redeemer, and may his name be famous in Israel. And may he be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is better to you than seven sons has borne him. What more appropriate way to praise Ruth than to talk about her is being worth seven times what this whole story has been obsessed with, which is producing a male heir, that she is better than seven sons. Then we have a genealogy that follows here, where we find this whole thing leads to King David. And it's told from Peres, so that the way it counts up we get to 10 with David. Again, maybe reflecting back on the 10 years, this is all part of a plan God's doing that leads to 10 with David. Boaz, in that list then, is number seven. The man of rest, as Naomi calls out in the story, the one who she was seeking rest for her daughters with, is number seven, Boaz. And then the story ends linking several sections of the Bible together. The beginning line was in the days the judges ruled, the very last word in it is David, which is where this story is going. I like this paragraph now kind of concluding, considering what this story means. I like this one by an Old Testament scholar named Daniel Block. He said, Underlying every episode is God's determination to produce David the king from the depressing and chaotic Israelite environment during the days of the judges.

Unlike the book of Judges, however, here, his hand is not driving the movers and shakers in Israel.

David does not emerge because of divine manipulation of the ruling class. On the contrary, the seeds of the great dynasty that would arise in the future are being sown in this private family of Bethlehem. This family consists of the most unlikely candidates for divine service, a widow left without husband or sons, an alien in a similar state, and a bachelor from the humble town of Bethlehem. The story has this international dimension as well. It's the story of Ruth changing tribal allegiances and therefore adopting the God of Israel, Yahweh, as her God, which strongly prefigures a concept to which the Pentateuch was already pointing and which gets developed further by the prophets in the Old Testament. And that is that Israel is to become the gateway to which all the nations will return to God. And Jerusalem is going to become, I like to say, the first IHOP, International House of Prayer, you know. And so this is all developing that. It gets developed in Boaz's first speech to Ruth, where he extends to her the rites of an Israelite, effectively recognizing her as one because of her Hasad for Naomi, which has already been reported to him.

There's a dimension in the story of inside character versus outside status. Boaz, on the outside, is this mighty man of valor. And we find that Ruth is the equivalent on the inside.

She is a true Israelite, and God is looking for true Israelites that are going to come to him in faith. And every act of the story, chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, chapter four, has a center point where it hinges on someone's ability to discern the true nature of somebody else. The story illustrates the hidden hand of God, that God often works indirectly in our lives in ways that only become apparent in time. And God is only explicitly credited with two direct interventions in the book, at the beginning and the end. But within this, God's will is being accomplished. It's being accomplished through people. There's this picture we get in Ruth of the kinds of ways God most enjoys acting in the world through divine human partnerships. That's the model for how God has his will normally done. That's what it means for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, is whenever people are obeying God, when they obey God, they are his image and his will is done. And that's his favorite way to intervene in the world. The story presents several episodes where people pray for God's intervention, and then we find their prayers being fulfilled by the actions of other people.

In doing that, they fulfill not just the letter, but the spirit of Torah. And God's will most often works through godly people doing godly things. The narrator seems to hint at that in two passages. I think I alluded to this before, that there are two places in verse 220 and 414, where it's unclear whether people are saying that what has happened is because of God or because of this person. That's because when we are in line with God's will and doing what his will is, it looks like we're doing it, but God still gets all the credit for it because he was behind it. That is what these divine human partnerships look like in the world. We never actually talk about covenants by name, but the whole content of covenant is very much present in this book. Divine will and human action go hand in hand. Everybody practices chesed love. We're not told what inspires them to do that, but in our story, the life of integrity of human responsibility and kindness, kindness above and beyond the call of duty, is portrayed, recommended, and shown to be attainable. What makes Ruth a true Israelite is that she, like others in the story who are generically Israelites, she behaves like one. That's what makes her an Israelite, and those are the kind that God is looking for. Is Ruth a love story? Yes, it's one of loyal covenant love. Ruth is all in to take care of Naomi in a strange land where she has no prospects for herself, and she takes great personal risks for the sake of Naomi. Boaz sees in her character that he himself values as he goes about taking care of his workers, who bless him and goes above and beyond and seeking needs and taking care of them. He sees her same character, and we see that in Boaz as well, in the way that he extends hospitality to a stranger. So make no mistake, God is pulling the strings all the way along in this story to bring about the rise of his servant David. But Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, they are showing what it means to be true Israelites, modeling God's steadfast covenant love and by obeying God in some small way, being the instrument of God's hand in the world, and bringing about his will on earth as it is in heaven. May we all be all the more inspired to follow in their footsteps.