Ruth 3:8

3:8 In the middle of the night he was startled ¹  and turned over. ²  Now ³  he saw a woman ⁴  lying beside him! ⁵ 

Ruth 3:2

3:2 Now Boaz, with whose female servants you worked, is our close relative. ⁶  Look, tonight he is winnowing barley at the threshing floor. ⁷ 

Ruth 1:12

1:12 Go back home, my daughters! For I am too old to get married again. ⁸  Even if I thought that there was hope that I could get married tonight and conceive sons, ⁹ 

Ruth 3:13

3:13 Remain here tonight. Then in the morning, if he agrees to marry you, ¹⁰  fine, ¹¹  let him do so. ¹²  But if he does not want to do so, I promise, as surely as the Lord lives, to marry you. ¹³  Sleep here until morning.” ¹⁴ 

[3:8]  ¹ tn Heb “trembled, shuddered”; CEV, NLT “suddenly woke up.” Perhaps he shivered because he was chilled.

[3:8]  ² tn The verb לָפַת (lafat) occurs only here, Job 6:18, and Judg 16:29 (where it seems to mean “grab hold of”). Here the verb seems to carry the meaning “bend, twist, turn,” like its Arabic cognate (see HALOT 533 s.v. לפת, and F. W. Bush, Ruth, Esther [WBC], 163).

[3:8]  ³ tn Heb “and behold” (so KJV, NASB). The narrator invites the reader to view the situation through Boaz’s eyes.

[3:8]  ⁴ sn Now he saw a woman. The narrator writes from Boaz’s perspective. Both the narrator and the reader know the night visitor is Ruth, but from Boaz’s perspective she is simply “a woman.”

[3:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “[at] his legs.” See the note on the word “legs” in v. 4.

[3:2]  ⁶ 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).

[3:2]  ⁷ tn Heb “look, he is winnowing the barley threshing floor tonight.”

[1:12]  ¹¹ sn Too old to get married again. Naomi may be exaggerating for the sake of emphasis. Her point is clear, though: It is too late to roll back the clock.

[1:12]  ¹² tn Verse 12b contains the protasis (“if” clause) of a conditional sentence, which is completed by the rhetorical questions in v. 13. For a detailed syntactical analysis, see F. W. Bush, Ruth, Esther (WBC), 78-79.

[3:13]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “if he redeems you”; NIV “if he wants to redeem”; NRSV “if he will act as next-of-kin for you.” The verb גֹּאֵל (go’el) here refers generally to fulfilling his responsibilities as a guardian of the family interests. In this case it specifically entails marrying Ruth.

[3:13]  ¹⁷ tn Or “good” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “well and good.”

[3:13]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “let him redeem” (so NIV); NLT “then let him marry you.”

[3:13]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “but if he does not want to redeem you, then I will redeem you, I, [as] the Lord lives” (NASB similar).

[3:13]  ²⁰ sn Sleep here. Perhaps Boaz tells her to remain at the threshing floor because he is afraid she might be hurt wandering back home in the dark. See Song 5:7 and R. L. Hubbard, Jr., Ruth (NICOT), 218.