I’m
referring, of course, to the Book of Ruth. Ruth was a Moabite woman, the
daughter-in-law of Naomi, who had gone to Moab with her husband Elemelech as
refugees during a famine in Judah. They had taken their sons with them, both of
whom married Moabite women. Over the course of time, Naomi’s husband and both
of her sons died, leaving her with her two daughters-in-law.
Word
came to Naomi that the famine in Judah had ended, so she resolved to go home.
Her daughters-in-law intended to go with her, but she pleaded with them to stay
behind and find husbands among their own people since she had no more sons for
them to marry and no husband to give her more sons (and at any rate they
shouldn’t have to wait for any new sons to be grown before they could marry).
One of the women, Orpah, was eventually persuaded, but Ruth adamantly refused
to be left behind.
“Ruth 1:16 But Ruth said ‘Do not urge me t leave you or to return
from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will
lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there
will I be buried. May Yahweh do so to me and more also if anything but death
parts me from you.’”
Dude, is
it just me, or does that totally sound like a marriage vow? If the authors
aren’t trying to convince us that Ruth is head-over-heels in love with Naomi,
then they way oversold that scene.
Anyhow,
Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem in Judah, where their arrival creates quite
a stir. The people recognize Naomi, but she tells them to call her Mara (which
means “bitter”) instead because she says God has dealt bitterly with her.
Now you
may recall that part of the law is that landowners are supposed to leave any
gleanings dropped in the field so that widows, orphans, and the poor can gather
food for themselves from what’s left over. And since the ladies had arrived in
Bethlehem around the start of the barley harvest, Ruth went out and started
gleaning. One of the fields she came to belonged to Boaz, who was a relative of
Naomi’s dead husband.
Boaz had
come out that day to check with the supervisor of his reapers, and he noticed
Ruth moving along behind them gleaning from what they dropped. He asked the
supervisor who she was, and was told that she was the young Moabite woman who
had come back to Bethlehem with Naomi. So he took Ruth aside and told her to
continue gleaning in his field, where he would instruct his men to make sure
she was safe and to allow her to drink from their water supplies as well. When
she asked why he was being so kind to her, he responded that it was because
he’d heard how wonderful she’d been to his relative’s widow.
He even
did a little better than what he’d said, sharing bread with her at mealtime and
instructing his reapers to leave extra food for her to collect.
When
Ruth went home with all that food, Naomi asked where she had been gleaning.
Ruth told her about Boaz, and Naomi informed her that Boaz was a relative of her
husband’s and one of their redeemers (if you recall, some of the statutes in
Moses’ law aimed at keeping land inheritances in the same family require that
close relatives of someone who has lost or sold their land must be allowed to
buy back, or “redeem,” the property – Boaz is therefore a close enough relative
that he is allowed to redeem the property of Naomi’s deceased husband). She
advises that Ruth would do well to keep by him. So Ruth spends the rest of the
harvest season gleaning on Boaz’s fields.
At the
end of harvest time, things get a little odd. I mean, the idea seems
straightforward enough, but the text goes to such extremes to avoid coming
right out and saying it that it gets hard to know for sure exactly what is
going on.
Naomi
has a conversation with Ruth heavy with implication and short on detail. She
seems to be suggesting that she wants Ruth to have a husband so she won’t have
to go gleaning in the fields for food all the time, and advising her on how
best to arrange to seduce Boaz. She tells Ruth that Boaz will be late at the
threshing floor, and she should go down there and spy on him until he’s done
eating and goes to lie down for the night.
“Ruth 3:4 ‘But when he lies down, observe the place where he lies.
Then go down and uncover his feet and lie down, and he will tell you what to
do.’”
Now, I
suppose it’s possible that her instructions were meant to be taken literally.
It seems a bit more likely to me, however, that it’s some kind of euphemism for
a sexual act (“uncover his feet” could easily be interpreted to describe
lifting his robe), since it hardly seems productive toward catching a husband to
slip up on a sleeping man and remove his shoes.
Anyhow,
Ruth agrees to this plan. She goes down to the threshing floor and watches
until Boaz has eaten and drunk some wine, and goes off to the end of a heap of
grain to lay down and sleep. When he does, she slips up beside him, “uncovers
his feet” and lays down with him. Around midnight he wakes up and is surprised
to find her next to him (I guess he slept through whatever she was doing, or
was only half-awake thinking it a dream, or something). At first he doesn’t
know who she is in the dark, but she identifies herself and asks him to “spread
his wings (or his garment, depending on translation)” over her as her redeemer.
I think
this is supposed to be an expression of desire to marry him. This is part of
what’s makes this section hard to understand – I mixes double entendre with
legal points from the rather alien (from our modern perspective) Mosaic law.
But I did a little digging around, and this is what I think is going on.
Boaz is
eligible to redeem the property of Naomi’s deceased husband Elimelech. But with
that comes the responsibility to continue Elimelech’s household by fathering
children who will be considered the offspring of Elimielech’s line. Ruth, as
the widow of one of Elimlelech’s sons, is the one that would have to bear those
children. So by redeeming Elimelech’s house, Boaz would be getting Ruth into
the deal. Boaz is evidently quite flattered by the request.
“Ruth 3:10 And he said ‘May you be blessed by Yahweh, my daughter.
You have made this last kindness greater than the first in that you have not
gone after young men, whether poor or rich.’”
So here
we have the implication that Boaz is a good bit older than Ruth, as he seems to
feel that she could easily have gone after a younger man. Also… if the kindness
of asking him to be her redeemer is greater than “the first,” what was her
first kindness? Whatever she did in “uncovering his feet?” Again, the
implication that something more than the literal uncovering of feet is present.
And I
should point out that I’m not speculating about this in order to cast
aspersions on their behavior. I’m just trying to understand the story. Even if something
sexual had just gone on between them, I’m not at all convinced it’s a bad
thing. Hell, this midnight seduction may possibly be the most mutually healthy
sexual encounter described in the Bible thus far. I’d also argue that even from
a Biblical perspective there’s nothing wrong with this since, for all the
highly specific proscriptions on who can have sex with who, I don’t recall
reading anywhere that an unmarried widow was prohibited from sleeping with an
unmarried man.
But to
get back to the story, Boaz is amenable to Ruth’s request, but he points out
that Elimelech has another relation who is ahead of him in terms of having the
right to redeem his property (interestingly, this is the first implication in
the Bible that there’s a hierarchy of who can be a redeemer). So he’ll have to
check with that guy to make sure he doesn’t want to do so. He then asked her to
stay the night there with him.
In the
morning Ruth gets up to go before it’s light enough for people to be
recognized, and Boaz gives her six measures of barley to take back to Naomi.
She heads home, where she tells Naomi how the night went. Naomi is confident
that Boaz will be quite eager to seal the deal, and in fact he sets about
resolving the matter that very morning.
Boaz
waits outside the gate of the city until he sees the other potential redeemer
heading into town. He takes that guy aside, and tells him the Naomi is planning
to sell Elimelech’s property and he’d like to know if the other guy intends to
redeem it. At first, the other fellow says that he will. But then Boaz points
out that if he does so, he’d be responsible for propagating Elimilech’s line
through Ruth.
“Ruth 4:6 Then the redeemer said ‘I cannot redeem it for myself,
lest I impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself, for I
cannot redeem it.’”
So
again, just expressing my understanding of what’s going on here, as I’m not a
legal scholar. I believe he’s saying that he doesn’t want to spend any of his
own family’s inheritance to purchase property that would be inherited by any
kids he has with Ruth (and he’d be obligated to father children), since those
children would be legally considered to be of Elimelech’s line and not his own.
So he tells Boaz that he’ll step aside and let Boaz act as redeemer.
So Boaz
buys Elimelech’s property from Naomi, marries Ruth, and together they have a
son named Jesse, who would then be father to David. Naomi stays on as nurse to the
baby, end of Book of Ruth, and everyone lives happily ever after.
As
confusingly vague and legalistic as the details of this book were, it was
certainly a welcome respite from the unremittingly horrible nature of the Book
of Judges. I think it’s the first actually pleasant book of the Bible. It’s
also the only one so far in which 1) God doesn’t make any personal appearances,
and 2) no mass killings occur. I think those two circumstances are related.
Hope you’re
enjoying yourself, and that all will be well with you until the next installment
when we start tackling the First Book of Samuel. That one’s thirty-one chapters
long, so it’ll probably take a few posts to get through.
In the ot, feet are often a euphamism for the penis. They definitely got it on.
ReplyDeleteWell, I kinda figured that, and it's how I'd interpret the story. But I encountered a lot of objections to that idea in looking up some background, and since it's not explicitly stated in the story it seemed only fair to hold it open as a possibility.
DeleteThough it seems to me that using local cultural euphemisms to convey plot elements is an inherently flawed way to tell a story.