Ruth 2:4-12
The LORD be with you
He greets the reapers and they answer him, which tells you what kind of household this is. He has already heard what Ruth did for Naomi, and says so before she asks for anything.
People of the Bible
Boaz
Kept the law past the point the law required, and then went to the gate and did it properly.
Boaz is a man of standing in Bethlehem and he arrives in the story greeting his harvesters, which is the first thing we learn about him. He notices a stranger in his field and asks who she is before he speaks to her. Then he does more than the gleaning law asks: he tells her to stay, gives her water and a place at the meal, and quietly instructs the young men to leave extra for her. When she comes to the threshing floor at night, his answer is not to take what is offered but to name a nearer relative who has first right, and to settle it publicly in the morning.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Boaz
- 01
- 02
Ruth 2:14-16
Let her glean among the sheaves
Gleaning law covers the edges and the dropped stalks. He sends her into the standing sheaves and has handfuls pulled out for her on purpose, with orders that nobody shame her.
- 03
Ruth 3:8-13
There is a kinsman nearer than I
Startled awake at midnight he blesses her, promises to do everything she asks, and then immediately names the obstacle rather than hiding it. He sends her home before it is light enough to be recognised.
- 04
Ruth 4:1-12
The sandal at the gate
He sets it up in the open with ten elders. The nearer redeemer wants the field until the widow comes attached to it, then withdraws and hands over his sandal, and the whole town witnesses the transfer.
Why it matters
Nothing Boaz does is spectacular and all of it is deliberate. The book uses him to show what the law looks like when someone keeps it generously rather than minimally, and the scene at the gate is the closest thing the Old Testament has to a property transaction recorded in full, sandal and all. He is the son of Rahab and the great grandfather of David, which puts two foreign women on either side of him in the same genealogy.
7 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
