Ruth 2:17

2:17 So she gathered grain in the field until evening. When she threshed ¹  what she had gathered, it came to about thirty pounds ²  of barley!

Ruth 3:2

3:2 Now Boaz, with whose female servants you worked, is our close relative. ³  Look, tonight he is winnowing barley at the threshing floor. ⁴ 

¹ 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.

² 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.

³ tn Heb “Is not Boaz our close relative, with whose female servants you were?” The idiomatic, negated rhetorical question is equivalent to an affirmation (see Ruth 2:8-9; 3:1) and has thus been translated in the affirmative (so also NCV, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

⁴ tn Heb “look, he is winnowing the barley threshing floor tonight.”