Ruth 2:21-23

2:21 Ruth the Moabite replied, “He even ¹  told me, ‘You may go along beside my servants ²  until they have finished gathering all my harvest!’” ³  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. ⁴  That way you will not be harmed, which could happen in another field.” ⁵  2:23 So Ruth ⁶  worked beside ⁷  Boaz’s female servants, gathering grain until the end of the barley harvest as well as the wheat harvest. ⁸  After that she stayed home with her mother-in-law. ⁹ 

[2:21]  ¹ tn On the force of the phrase גָּם כִּי (gam ki) here, see F. W. Bush, Ruth, Esther (WBC), 138-39.

[2:21]  ² 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.

[2:21]  ³ tn Heb “until they have finished all the harvest which is mine”; NIV “until they finish harvesting all my grain.”

[2:22]  ⁴ 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.

[2:22]  ⁵ tn Heb “and they will not harm you in another field”; NRSV “otherwise you might be bothered in another field.”

[2:23]  ⁶ tn Heb “she”; the referent (Ruth) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[2:23]  ⁷ tn Heb “and she stayed close with”; NIV, NRSV, CEV “stayed close to”; NCV “continued working closely with.”

[2:23]  ⁸ 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).

[2:23]  ⁹ 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.”