Ruth 2:17-23 – “Jesus”

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

¹⁷And she gleaned in the field until the evening and she threshed [that] which she had gleaned and it was about an ephah of barley. ¹⁸And she carried and she came [to] the city and her mother-in-law saw [that] which she had gathered and she brought out and she gave to her [that] which she had spared from her fullness. ¹⁹And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you glean (intensively) today and, oh, please, [where] did you work? Blessed be the one noticing you.” And she made known to her mother-in-law whom she had worked with and she said, “The name of the man with whom I worked today [is] Boaz.” ²⁰And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “Blessed be he by the LORD, who has not left his kindness to the living and to the dead” and Naomi said to her, “The man [is] near to us. He [is] [one of] our kinsman-redeemers.” ²¹And Ruth the Moabitess also said, “He said to me, ‘Stay near my young men until they finish the all of my harvest.’” ²²And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “[It is] good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women and not will they (masc. pl.) hurt you in the field of another. ²³And she clung to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the harvest of the barley and the harvest of the wheat and she dwelt with her mother-in-law.

Just a few random observations, then I’m going back to my James study for a while.

As I have studied chapter 2, I’ve been very pleased to meet this man Boaz who is so much like Jesus. Of course he typifies Jesus as the kinsman-redeemer of the story. But it goes far deeper than that – he actually is a man like Jesus! One of the ways I see this is in how he protects Ruth. Notice, in v5, Boaz asked, “Whose young woman is that?” In their culture every woman would (or should) have a man who protected her, whether it was her father, her husband, a brother, or her master. Boaz is probably immediately wondering that very thought – who protects this girl? When he’s told she is Ruth, Naomi’s daughter-in-law, he immediately would have realized how vulnerable she was. He addresses her as “my daughter” and then make provisions for her care and safety. He perhaps sympathetically knew there was no one else.

Think how encouraging it would have been for Ruth to have “a man of standing” publically address her as “my daughter.” Everyone else standing around heard that. Word travels fast in small towns. The instant the words left his mouth, everyone would have known that this young woman Ruth has somehow come within the protective reach of Boaz. He of course leaves nothing to chance and tells them all to “leave her alone,” but I suspect that only reinforced what everyone already knew: Mess with this Ruth and you’ll have Boaz to deal with! Even in her humility, Ruth would have known this was true the minute he addressed her as “my daughter.”  

What a wonderful blessing for Ruth, to suddenly no longer be this unprotected young foreign widow. Now someone (a man of standing) has stepped forward to be her protector. A sweet, godly girl suddenly finds herself drawn under the protective embrace of a good, godly man.

Another random observation – see how Ruth exemplifies a Proverbs 31 woman. She
“looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness… she gets up while it is still dark and provides food for her family … she sets about her work vigorously.” Ruth will make a good wife for Boaz because she’s first of all simply a good person. That shows particularly in the fact that she is a hard worker. This hard working young woman, who will scrounge in a field all day just for a single meal for her and Naomi, will work just as hard to take care of a husband and family. We can’t emphasize too much how important it is to be a hard worker. I would suggest that is something faith should produce in anyone who truly believes.

One of the things that attracted me to my wife was that I could see she was a very hard worker. And I’ve certainly not been disappointed. That same hard work has meant endless blessings for me for a lifetime. There’s never anything I think she “should have done” that doesn’t get done anyway, because she just simply “looks well to the ways of her household.” She simply is a good woman. I’ve also been very proud of my children. I knew early they would all do fine because they weren’t afraid of work. I remember seeing them as little tikes standing on a chair by the sink doing dishes and just knowing in my heart, “They’ll do okay.” Daniel’s track coach pulled me aside one day and told me how much he admired his “work ethic.” He said, “Just when you think Daniel’s got to be finished, he’ll run another lap just as hard.” Ruthie finished the top girl in her class in school and Esther has always been a girl who puts her mind to a job and then nothing stops her.

Just like Ruth, when a young person is obviously a hard worker, you know they’ll “do okay.”

One last thought – observe how Naomi responds when Ruth gets home. As I said in my posts regarding chapter 1, I completely disagree with the nearly unanimous opinion that Naomi was a bitter old woman. I believe she was a very sweet, godly woman who got run over by a freight train of overwhelming trials. Like Job and Jeremiah (in Lamentations) and like David in Psalms 88, she is a fragile human being who takes a while to recover after their entire beings get crushed. Back in 1:8,9 Naomi is thanking her daughter-in-laws and praying God’s blessings on them. Even when she sounds bitter in 1:11-13 and 20-21, notice that to her everything in life has to do with God. Like Job, she may be misinterpreting what the Lord is up to (and again, remember this woman buried her husband and her only two boys), but at least she sees everything as having to do with the Lord.

So now notice how she responds to Ruth. She asks her, “Where did you glean today?” and immediately adds, “Blessed be the man who took notice of you!” The first thought in her mind is to wish blessing on someone. That is not a bitter, angry woman. A bitter mind might have thought even an ephah not enough, or griped that now, when night has already fallen, they still have yet to prepare a meal. She could have immediately suspected Ruth of using some less than honorable means of acquiring so much. There are so many ways a bitter, angry person might have (and would have) responded. Yet Naomi’s immediate response is to wish blessings on people.

And when Ruth tells her it was Boaz, what does she say? “The Lord bless him!” Naomi is a woman who, in spite of her own very deep sorrows, still wishes only kindness and blessings on people around her. Think about it – in Boaz we see the kindness of Jesus in His strength, in Ruth we see the kindness of Jesus in His humility, while in Naomi we see that same kindness of Jesus which He shared even as He Himself suffered on the Cross. “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me,” He cried, then said to the thief beside Him, “Today you shall be with me in Paradise” and prayed, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I would suggest that our misunderstanding of Naomi is actually a result of our own immaturity, not hers. We know little of her kind of faith and perhaps few of us have ever been clobbered as hard as she was. I suspect it is the old proverbial case of a bunch of spiritual pygmies hacking on the ankles of a giant. Like Job’s miserable comforters, we, in our own immaturity, can’t comprehend a relationship with God so deep it allows us to be completely (and feebly) human.

Ah, what a treasure, this book of Ruth. I feel so blessed to have spent the last few weeks with such sweet, godly people as Boaz, Naomi, and our Ruth. What particularly warms my heart is that I feel like I’ve been not so much with them but with Jesus! What a blessing that people of real faith turn into people who remind us of Jesus! That’s how it should be, yes? As we bask in the wonder of His grace and nurse on the bounties of His kindnesses, as we behold His gentle face in our hearts, He makes us just like Him! Would that were true of all of us!

Lord help us all, whether it be in times of our strength or of our humility or even of our own deepest trials, may the world around us see Jesus.

“But thanks be to God,

who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ

and through us spreads everywhere

the fragrance of the knowledge of Him”

(II Cor 2:14).