Ruth 1:12

1:12 Go back home, my daughters! For I am too old to get married again. ¹  Even if I thought that there was hope that I could get married tonight and conceive sons, ² 

Ruth 2:21

2:21 Ruth the Moabite replied, “He even ³  told me, ‘You may go along beside my servants ⁴  until they have finished gathering all my harvest!’” ⁵ 

¹ sn Too old to get married again. Naomi may be exaggerating for the sake of emphasis. Her point is clear, though: It is too late to roll back the clock.

² tn Verse 12b contains the protasis (“if” clause) of a conditional sentence, which is completed by the rhetorical questions in v. 13. For a detailed syntactical analysis, see F. W. Bush, Ruth, Esther (WBC), 78-79.

³ tn On the force of the phrase גָּם כִּי (gam ki) here, see F. W. Bush, Ruth, Esther (WBC), 138-39.

⁴ tn Heb “with the servants who are mine you may stay close.” The imperfect has a permissive nuance here. The word “servants” is masculine plural.

⁵ tn Heb “until they have finished all the harvest which is mine”; NIV “until they finish harvesting all my grain.”