Ruth 2:16-23

2:16 Make sure you pull out ¹  ears of grain for her and drop them so she can gather them up. Don’t tell her not to!” ²  2:17 So she gathered grain in the field until evening. When she threshed ³  what she had gathered, it came to about thirty pounds ⁴  of barley!

Ruth Returns to Naomi

2:18 She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw ⁵  how much grain ⁶  she had gathered. Then Ruth ⁷  gave her the roasted grain she had saved from mealtime. ⁸  2:19 Her mother-in-law asked her, ⁹  “Where did you gather grain today? Where did you work? May the one who took notice of you be rewarded!” ¹⁰  So Ruth ¹¹  told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked. She said, “The name of the man with whom I worked today is Boaz.” 2:20 Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be rewarded by the Lord because he ¹²  has shown loyalty to the living on behalf of the dead!” ¹³  Then Naomi said to her, “This man is a close relative of ours; he is our guardian.” ¹⁴  2:21 Ruth the Moabite replied, “He even ¹⁵  told me, ‘You may go along beside my servants ¹⁶  until they have finished gathering all my harvest!’” ¹⁷  2:22 Naomi then said to her daughter-in-law Ruth, “It is good, my daughter, that you should go out to work with his female servants. ¹⁸  That way you will not be harmed, which could happen in another field.” ¹⁹  2:23 So Ruth ²⁰  worked beside ²¹  Boaz’s female servants, gathering grain until the end of the barley harvest as well as the wheat harvest. ²²  After that she stayed home with her mother-in-law. ²³ 

¹ tn The infinitive absolute precedes the finite verb for emphasis. Here שָׁלַל (shalal, “pull out”) is a homonym of the more common Hebrew verb meaning “to plunder.” An Arabic cognate is used of drawing a sword out of a scabbard (see BDB 1021 s.v.).

² tn Heb “do not rebuke her” (so NASB, NRSV); CEV “don’t speak harshly to her”; NLT “don’t give her a hard time.”

³ tn Heb “she beat out” (so NAB, NASB, NRSV, NLT). Ruth probably used a stick to separate the kernels of grain from the husks. See O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 63.

⁴ tn Heb “there was an ephah.” An ephah was a dry measure, equivalent to one-tenth of a homer (see HALOT 43 s.v. אֵיפָה). An ephah was equivalent to a “bath,” a liquid measure. Jars labeled “bath” found at archaeological sites in Israel could contain approximately 5.8 gallons, or one-half to two-thirds of a bushel. Thus an ephah of barley would have weighed about 29 to 30 pounds (just over 13 kg). See R. L. Hubbard, Jr., Ruth (NICOT), 179.

⁵ tc MT vocalizes ותרא as the Qal verb וַתֵּרֶא (vattere’, “and she saw”), consequently of “her mother-in-law” as subject and “what she gathered” as the direct object: “her mother-in-law saw what she gathered.” A few medieval Hebrew mss (also reflected in Syriac and Vulgate) have the Hiphil וַתַּרְא (vattar’, “and she showed”), consequently taking “her mother-in-law” as the direct object and “what she gathered” as the double direct-object: “she showed her mother-in-law what she had gathered” (cf. NAB, TEV, CEV, NLT). Although the latter has the advantage of making Ruth the subject of all the verbs in this verse, it would be syntactically difficult. For one would expect the accusative sign אֶת (’et) before “her mother-in-law” if it were the direct object of a Hiphil verb in a sentence with a double direct object introduced by the accusative sign אֶת, e.g., “to show (Hiphil of רָאָה, ra’ah) your servant (direct object marked by accusative sign אֶת) your greatness (double direct object marked by accusative sign אֶת) (Deut 3:24). Therefore the MT reading is preferred.

⁶ tn Heb “that which”; the referent (how much grain) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁷ tn Heb “she”; the referent (Ruth) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁸ tn Heb “and she brought out and gave to her that which she had left over from her being satisfied.”

⁹ tn Heb “said to her.” Since what follows is a question, the translation uses “asked her” here.

¹⁰ tn Or “blessed” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV). The same expression occurs in the following verse.

¹¹ tn Heb “she”; the referent (Ruth) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

¹² tn Many English versions translate this statement, “May he [Boaz] be blessed by the Lord, who has not abandoned his loyalty to the living and dead.” In this case the antecedent of אֲשֶׁר (’asher, “who”) would be the immediately preceding “the Lord.” However, this understanding of the construction is not accurate. The antecedent of אֲשֶׁר is Boaz, not the Lord. Elsewhere when אֲשֶׁר follows the blessing formula בָּרוּךְ (barukh, Qal passive participle) + proper name/pronoun, it always introduces the reason the recipient of the blessing deserves a reward. (For this reason one could analyze אֲשֶׁר as a causal conjunction in this construction.) If אֲשֶׁר refers to the Lord here, then this verse, unlike others using the construction, gives no such reason for the recipient being blessed. 2 Sam 2:5, which provides the closest structural parallel to Ruth 2:20, supports this interpretation: בְּרֻכִים אַתֶּם לַיהוָה אֲשֶׁר עֲשִׂיתֶם הַחֶסֶד הַזֶּה עִם־אֲדֹנֵיכֶם עִם־שָׁאוּל, “May you [plural] be blessed by the Lord, you who [plural]/because you [plural] have extended such kindness to your master Saul.” Here אֲשֶׁר refers back to the second plural pronoun אַתֶּם (’atem, “you”) in the formula, as the second plural verb עֲשִׂיתֶם(’asitem) after אֲשֶׁר indicates. Though יְהוָה (yÿhvah) is in closer proximity to אֲשֶׁר, it is not the antecedent. The evidence suggests that Ruth 2:20 should be translated and interpreted as follows: “May he [Boaz] be blessed by the Lord, he who [i.e., Boaz]/because he [i.e., Boaz] has not abandoned his loyalty to the living and dead.” Cf. NIV, NCV, CEV, NLT. See B. A. Rebera, “Yahweh or Boaz? Ruth 2.20 Reconsidered,” BT 36 (1985): 317-27, and F. W. Bush, Ruth, Esther (WBC), 134-36. By caring for the impoverished widows’ physical needs, Boaz had demonstrated loyalty to both the living (the impoverished widows) and the dead (their late husbands). See R. B. Chisholm, From Exegesis to Exposition, 72.

¹³ tn Heb “to the living and the dead” (so KJV, NASB).

¹⁴ tn The Hebrew term גָּאַל (ga’al) is sometimes translated “redeemer” here (NIV “one of our kinsman-redeemers”; NLT “one of our family redeemers”). In this context Boaz, as a “redeemer,” functions as a guardian of the family interests who has responsibility for caring for the widows of his deceased kinsmen.

¹⁵ tn On the force of the phrase גָּם כִּי (gam ki) here, see F. W. Bush, Ruth, Esther (WBC), 138-39.

¹⁶ 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.

¹⁷ tn Heb “until they have finished all the harvest which is mine”; NIV “until they finish harvesting all my grain.”

¹⁸ tn Naomi uses the feminine form of the word “servant” (as Boaz did earlier, see v. 8), in contrast to Ruth’s use of the masculine form in the preceding verse. Since she is concerned for Ruth’s safety, she may be subtly reminding Ruth to stay with the female workers and not get too close to the men.

¹⁹ tn Heb “and they will not harm you in another field”; NRSV “otherwise you might be bothered in another field.”

²⁰ tn Heb “she”; the referent (Ruth) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

²¹ tn Heb “and she stayed close with”; NIV, NRSV, CEV “stayed close to”; NCV “continued working closely with.”

²² sn Barley was harvested from late March through late April, wheat from late April to late May (O. Borowski, Agriculture in Ancient Israel, 88, 91).

²³ tn Heb “and she lived with her mother-in-law” (so NASB). Some interpret this to mean that she lived with her mother-in-law while working in the harvest. In other words, she worked by day and then came home to Naomi each evening. Others understand this to mean that following the harvest she stayed at home each day with Naomi and no longer went out looking for work (see F. W. Bush, Ruth, Esther [WBC], 140). Others even propose that she lived away from home during this period, but this seems unlikely. A few Hebrew mss (so also Latin Vulgate) support this view by reading, “and she returned to her mother-in-law.”