2:4 Now at that very moment, 1 Boaz arrived from Bethlehem 2 and greeted 3 the harvesters, “May the Lord be with you!” They replied, 4 “May the Lord bless you!”
1 tn Heb “and look”; NIV, NRSV “Just then.” The narrator invites the audience into the story, describing Boaz’s arrival as if it were witnessed by the audience.
2 map For location see Map5-B1; Map7-E2; Map8-E2; Map10-B4.
3 tn Heb “said to.” Context indicates that the following expression is a greeting, the first thing Boaz says to his workers.
4 tn Heb “said to him.” For stylistic reasons “replied” is used in the present translation.
5 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).
6 tn Heb “look, he is winnowing the barley threshing floor tonight.”