Ruth 3:2

3:2 Now Boaz, with whose female servants you worked, is our close relative. ¹  Look, tonight he is winnowing barley at the threshing floor. ² 

Ruth 3:12

3:12 Now yes, it is true that ³  I am a guardian, ⁴  but there is another guardian who is a closer relative than I am.

¹ 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).

² tn Heb “look, he is winnowing the barley threshing floor tonight.”

³ tc The sequence כִּי אָמְנָם כִּי אִם (ki ’omnam ki ’im; Kethib) occurs only here in the OT, as does the sequence כִּי אָמְנָם כִּי (Qere). It is likely that כִּי אִם is dittographic (note the preceding sequence כִּי אָמְנָם). The translation assumes that the original text was simply the otherwise unattested וְעַתָּה כִּי אָמְנָם, with אָמְנָם and כִּי both having an asseverative (or emphatic) function.

⁴ tn Sometimes translated “redeemer” (also later in this verse). See the note on the phrase “guardian of the family interests” in v. 9.