Ruth 2:8-16 – “Beautiful People”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁸And Boaz said to Ruth, “Listen, my daughter; do not go to glean in another field, and also do not leave from this, and remain here with my young women. ⁹Your eyes in the field which they (masc., plural) reap, and go after them (fem., plural). I have commanded the young men not to touch you, and you are thirsty and go to the vessels and drink from which the young men draw water. ¹⁰And she fell upon her face and bowed herself down [to] the ground and she said to him, “Why have I found grace in your eyes to notice me and me [being] a foreigner?” ¹¹And Boaz answered and he said to her, “It has surely been told to me all which you have done for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband and you left your father and mother and the land of your birth and you went to a people which you did not know in the past up to now. ¹²May the LORD reward (intensively) your conduct and may your wages be complete from the LORD, the God of Israel, which you have come to seek refuge under His wings.” ¹³And she said, “I have found grace in your eyes because my lord has comforted me and because you have spoken upon heart of your maidservant and I, I am not like one of your maidservants.” ¹⁴And Boaz said to her at the time of the meal, “Draw near here and eat from the bread and dip your morsel in the vinegar and sit at the side of the reapers and he held out to her roasted grain and she ate and she was satisfied and she had spare. ¹⁵And she arose to glean and Boaz commanded his young men saying, “Even between the sheaves she may glean and do not humiliate her ¹⁶and also you shall surely draw out to her from the bundles and you will leave and she will glean and do not rebuke her.”

I’m not even close to being finished studying this passage but I have to stop and exclaim – this has to be one of the most beautiful exchanges of dialogue that ever two human beings shared.

The matchless beauty of this encounter issues from two genuinely godly and virtuous hearts. Two people here cross paths first of all because they are godly and virtuous. Boaz arrives because, as an employer, he would personally mind the affairs of his workers. Ruth arrives, of course, because she would care for herself and her mother-in-law, though it meant humiliation and possible danger for her, a defenseless young woman among strangers.

Notice that the encounter doesn’t somehow make them virtuous – it happens because they’re virtuous. Everything they say and do only proves and displays the virtue already resident in their hearts. Here, seemingly by pure coincidence, meet two people of real faith, two people who are what they are, who do what they do, who say what they say because their faith in the God of Israel has given them virtue.

See what happens: Because Boaz is a genuinely good man, in verse 10, he speaks graciously and kindly to this poor widowed foreigner. In verse 11, Ruth responds to that kindness out of the goodness of her own heart, which shows itself in sweet and genuine humility. That genuine humility, in verse 12, moves the good man Boaz, it would seem, to explode in a well-earned recounting of her character! In v13, she responds to all that praise by putting the focus back on his kindness and noting that he does it all in spite of the fact that she doesn’t have the standing of even one of his servant girls. See how virtue engenders virtue. Each one’s virtue only calls out more of the others’. Their very encounter cannot help but broadcast to the world that here before our eyes are two people in whom faith has restored the likeness of God and made them people the rest of us can admire.

I’m belaboring this point for a reason. I would suggest that, in American Christianity, we have completely forgotten that one of the great aims of grace is to make us people of virtue. The entire point of grace is that we might truly know God (John 17:3) and the inevitable result of actually knowing Him is to be changed into His likeness (II Cor 3:18). The average American Christian would, of course, object and say, “Of course we know that!” but, I would suggest that knowing and doing are two very different things. American Christianity has fallen victim to pervasive “bait and switches,” this being one of them. We say with our mouths that faith should change us, but then we deviously insert our own traditions, “making the Word of God of no effect.”  When someone longs to be “truly” committed, we urge them to volunteer and spend more time at the church building (and call it ministry). The more they volunteer, the more we congratulate them for being so spiritual. We tell them the whole point of it all is “to tell people about Jesus,” and let them think it’s actually a good thing to rudely force truth on people whether they’re ready to hear it or not. We give them lists upon lists of important rules to keep and let them think they’re “growing” because they got a haircut.

No doubt Jesus watches from Heaven and says, “Martha, Martha, you are troubled about many things, but only one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” As Martha bustled back and forth all it got her was tired. As Mary sat there at Jesus’ feet in the wonder of Who He was, she was being transformed into His image, even as she listened. When she got up to walk away, she would be different, her life would be a testimony to grace, her life would adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. She would have become even in some small way a more virtuous woman, because she sat at His feet, because she knew the priority was to nurture her own personal relationship with her God.

As I sit here and read again and again this exchange between Boaz and Ruth, what I see is two people who “got it right.” Faith has made these two people beautiful. Grace has effaced Adam’s image and stamped Jesus’ in its place. As I read it again and again, it’s almost unbelievable how much Boaz is like Jesus. If I could read it for the first time and someone had inserted the name Jesus everywhere Boaz appears, there would be nothing in the text to make me suspicious of the ruse, besides the fact that of course Jesus didn’t have servant girls, etc. Boaz talks and acts and treats people just like Jesus would some 1200 years later. Take a minute and read the account of Jesus and the Centurion in Luke 7:1-10. The parallels are amazing. And Ruth beautifully pictures the humble, self-effacing submission of Jesus to His Father, Him who “made Himself nothing and took the very nature of a servant” (Phil 2:7).

Grace should change us. And the change is that it should make us like Jesus – not a person who’s “busy” at church or who “keeps the rules” but rather people who, because we know our God and because we spend time at His feet, have been transformed into His image – people of real virtue that can’t help but display itself even in dusty barley fields in the middle of hot afternoons outside obscure little villages, in the seeming humdrum of simple everyday life…just like Boaz and Ruth.

God deliver us all from the seemingly “good” traditions we’ve let “make the Word of God of no effect.” May our hearts be consumed with knowing You and may Your very face in our hearts make us like You. Even as we struggle and bump along, may people actually see the Gospel in our lives, may our lives be the “aroma of Christ” and may He “spread everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of Him among those who are being saved and to those who are perishing” (II Cor 2:14-16), like Boaz and Ruth...two people who “got it right.”

Two truly beautiful people.