Ruth 3:8-9

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  3:9 He said, “Who are you?” ⁶  She replied, “I am Ruth, your servant. ⁷  Marry your servant, ⁸  for you are a guardian of the family interests.” ⁹ 

[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.

[3:9]  ⁶ tn When Boaz speaks, he uses the feminine form of the pronoun, indicating that he knows she is a woman.

[3:9]  ⁷ tn Here Ruth uses אָמָה (’amah), a more elevated term for a female servant than שִׁפְחָה (shifkhah), the word used in 2:13. In Ruth 2, where Ruth has just arrived from Moab and is very much aware of her position as a foreigner (v. 10), she acknowledges Boaz’s kindness and emphasizes her own humility by using the term שִׁפְחָה, though she admits that she does not even occupy that lowly position on the social scale. However, here in chap. 3, where Naomi sends her to Boaz to seek marriage, she uses the more elevated term אָמָה to describe herself because she is now aware of Boaz’s responsibility as a close relative of her deceased husband and she wants to challenge him to fulfill his obligation. In her new social context she is dependent on Boaz (hence the use of אָמָה), but she is no mere שִׁפְחָה.

[3:9]  ⁸ tn Heb “and spread your wing [or skirt] over your servant.” Many medieval Hebrew mss have the plural/dual “your wings” rather than the singular “your wing, skirt.” The latter is more likely here in the context of Ruth’s marriage proposal. In the metaphorical account in Ezek 16:8, God spreads his skirt over naked Jerusalem as an act of protection and as a precursor to marriage. Thus Ruth’s words can be taken, in effect, as a marriage proposal (and are so translated here; cf. TEV “So please marry me”). See F. W. Bush, Ruth, Esther (WBC), 164-65.

[3:9]  ⁹ tn Heb “for you are a גֹאֵל [go’el],” sometimes translated “redeemer” (cf. NIV “a kinsman-redeemer”; NLT “my family redeemer”). In this context Boaz, as a “redeemer,” functions as a guardian of the family interests who has responsibility for caring for the widows of his deceased kinsmen. For a discussion of the legal background, see F. W. Bush, Ruth, Esther (WBC), 166-69.