Wednesday Bible Study: Let's Make A Deal

This week we are up to Ruth 3:16, and this time I am of the opinion we have to do this the "peel the onion" method.

Outer level:   The basics of the story.  Naomi, her hubby and two sons go to Moab during a famine.  Sons marry a pair of local girls, Ruth and Orpah.  Dad dies, then the sons die.  Naomi goes back to Israel, tells the girls to go back to their folks, because, "Am I going to bear you more sons, which you will wait for and marry?"  Orpah tearfully agrees; Ruth refuses swearing loyalty both to Naomi and her God.  They go to Israel, Naomi sorta sets her up with wealthy relative, they get married, have a kid, everyone lives happily ever after.

But it's not quite all that simple.  I think that Naomi was a lot more faithful to her God than hubby Elimelech or the boys.  Because abandoning home during the famine wasn't a real "trust God" thing to do; nor, truthfully, was letting the boys marry Moabite girls.  And SOMEONE had to have been faithful to God, else why would Ruth have been so committed:


Rth 1:16  And Ruth said, Do not entreat me to leave you, to turn back from following you. For where you go, I will go. And where you stay, I will stay. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 
Rth 1:17  Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May Jehovah do to me, and more so, if anything but death part you and me. 

Once again, study brought me to some interesting points of view- and also some ridiculous ones.  One of the interesting ones was that, once the menfolk passed, Naomi was now a woman "without an identity";  in a foreign land, no family to take her part, no kinsfolk at all.  Not surprisingly, she came back home; she came back with a new name, saying, "Call me Mara (bitter), for the Lord has dealt bitterly with me."  The tendency is to read this as her blaming God, but I don't think that was it;  she was just recognizing that God had let her be put into a hard place.  So now we have the stage set with a bitter heroine and a foreign daughter in law trying to find a way to survive.

Second level:  Here we invoke the Kalko Rule- 10 verses to either side of our target verse.  With a narrower focus, let's do an overview again.  Ruth has met the kinsman; Naomi makes a plan to get Ruth married off to the guy; a complication sets in, so the guy (Boaz is his name) also has to make a plan- a deal- to win the girl.  The deal is made, happily ever after.

But again, it just ain't that simple.

Naomi and Boaz know each other, sort of.  Bethlehem is a small town, and  we see in chapter two how familiar everyone is.  Ruth, relying on the Hebrew system of "welfare", goes to glean grain in Boaz's field.  Boaz asks his Foreman who she is, and he says, "Oh, that's the girl that came back with Naomi from Moab."  Boaz has already heard the tale of Ruth's loyalty, and begins his own little test.  He gives her a good meal, a bunch of grain to take home to "Mom", and tells her, "You just stick to my fields, and I'll see that you do okay."  Boaz is a bit older than her- perhaps Naomi's age- but he is interested.  We don't know for sure if it is attraction or sense of duty (since he knows Naomi and figures what her next move will be), but he wants to see if Ruth will want to be attached to him- or start dallying with one of the younger men of his hire.  How do we know all that?  Stay tuned.

So Ruth comes home and gives Naomi the details.  Naomi then commands her to do something that seems strange to us- but not so to them.  She has Ruth get all dolled up, go to Boaz's threshing floor, where she will observe him having a couple drinks and getting loose.  When he goes to his tent to sleep, she is to "go in and uncover his feet, and lie down. And he will tell you that which you are to do.  (3:4)"  

So what will Boaz do, is Naomi's question.  Will he just take advantage of her and send her on her way?  Will he treat her as beneath him, as he is a rich man, and she's a foreigner?  Or will he act with honor and set the Family Naomi up for life?  Naomi is testing Boaz, just as Boaz was testing Ruth.


Now here, we branch off to "bunny trail land".  And like I usually do, I consult what the Jewish teachers taught on the subject.  Without trying to libel anyone or be anti-Semitic, these "scholars" have to be some of the biggest horse's backsides I have ever encountered.  Their take on the situation is that Naomi is using Ruth's youthful beauty to seduce Boaz- and the way they phrased it was basically, "because that's what women do."  They actually compared the whole thing to Lot's daughters getting their old man drunk and seducing him way back in Genesis.  I am finding less useful and more amusing in consulting the scribes and scholars.

Another example of this connects to last week's lesson.  Remember me saying that they claimed Ruth was a granddaughter of the fatly deceased Eglon?  Well they not only include Orpah in this, but suggest that since she didn't go with Naomi, that her curse was she was the grandmother of Goliath the Philistine, just as Ruth was the great-grandmother of David!  Besides the timeline being too far-fetched as I explained last week, I have a feeling that there wasn't a lot of Moabite blood in the giants of the Philistines.  "You mean there was more than one giant?"  Sure.  So was Goliath's brother, and Goliath's son.  See 2 Samuel 21:

20 And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant.

Polydactyly is usually the sign of inbreeding.  A matchup between Orpah and the Giant's kin would make that extremely less likely.  Now I could be wrong on that- after all Moab itself was built from the incest between Lot and his daughter- but I believe it to be a good circumstantial case.

Leaving bunny trail land we go to the 10 verses after.  Boaz, being both honorable, and pleased that Ruth had passed his test and come to him instead of the young men (3:10), said he was willing to do his duty towards Ruth- BUT there was a wild card in the deck.  A not so rich guy named Tov (so say the "scholars") who was ahead of Boaz in the kinship game.  So now Boaz had to work his plan.  After assuring that Ruth made it home with no damage to her reputation, he called the townsmen together so he could ask Tov if he wanted to assert his right to redeem Elimelech's land.  Now, of course, Tov knew that Naomi "came with the deal"- ie she would have to be supported off the profits of the land- but that was okay with Tov, because she had already had her children, and wouldn't have to "raise up children in the name of his dead brother."  So he was going to say yes, I'll assert my rights.  But then Boaz played his ace- Ruth came with the land, and Tov WOULD have give her children for her dead husband.

Tov had one, and possibly two, problems with that.  The main one, which is sideways mentioned in the Bible, is that if he gave Ruth a baby, HIS kids would have to divide their inheritance with those children.  Thus, he made the excuse that he couldn't afford that, and let Boaz have the whole match.

But I have to wonder- as did the scholars- if it wasn't more of a "I'm not sleeping with that unwashed Moabite woman" that made him turn down the deal, and the inheritance was just a good excuse.  Either way, it being a small town, we can assume that Boaz was fairly confident of what Tov would choose, and was secure that he was going to win Ruth- IF she was going to choose him above the young men in his test.  So Ruth passed his test, he passed Naomi's, and the three cornered deal between Boaz, Naomi, and Tov when just the way he had planned.

One more bunny trail:  The scholars go to great lengths to point out that, while some paint this as a romantic story, Boaz was merely doing his duty and the story was one of proper action in society rather than love.  I disagree, and here's why.  If it was just duty, why would he have been worried about Ruth and the young men?  If it was just about doing the right thing, all he had to do was kick her out of the tent and say, "It is Tov's duty, not mine."  If it was about the land, all he would have been gaining was land he didn't really need (rich, remember) and a minimum of two more mouths to feed.  I think he was in love when he asked his foreman who she was.

And Ruth?  She stepped a bit beyond what Naomi told her to do.  Look at 3:9:

And he said to her: Who art thou ? And she answered: I am Ruth, thy handmaid: spread thy coverlet over thy servant, for thou art a near kinsman. 

The word translated "coverlet" has a special meaning to me.  During my recent fast and Bible Study, one of the passages God led me to- which I'm sure I will get to sharing when the Lord leads- was Psalms 61.  Look at v4:

  Let me make my home in your tent forever; let me hide under the shelter of your wings.

The same word translated coverlet in Ruth was translated wings here.  And if David was talking about God's love and protection there, then Ruth was talking more than duty here, IMHO.

Anyway, one more layer...

Core:  The verse itself.  Ruth gets home that morning from Boaz's tent...

 And when she came to her mother-in-law, she said, Who are you, my daughter? And she told her all that the man had done to her. 

The phrase "Who are you, my daughter?" is the subject of a great deal of controversy.  There are a number of ways to interpret the original:  my own Bible actually has, "Is that you, my daughter?", which would make a bit of sense if you thought it was still dark enough that she couldn't clearly see her- but why then, the commentators say, would Naomi call her "my daughter?"  Others say it comes out more like, "How did it go, my daughter?"  But again, I don't think this digs deep enough.

Remember way back in the outer layer, I mentioned that Naomi had become a "woman without an identity"?  Well, once in Israel, Naomi had her identity back- but now Ruth was the "nameless one" with no real kin in a foreign land.  Naomi wasn't the scheming gold-digger that the scholars wanted to paint- she was trying to give to Ruth for what Ruth had given to her.

Who was Ruth?  She might have been still a poor, rejected foreign girl without prospect or hope;

She might have been the "shameless whore" that Boaz took advantage of; OR, she might be the "future Mrs Boaz."  "Who are you, my daughter?"  What name did the night give to you?

That Naomi WAS planning in the way I'm describing, and was asking in the way I suggest, and was pleased with the answer she got, is confirmed in her reply to Ruth:

Rth 3:18  And she said, Sit still, my daughter, until you know how the matter will fall. For the man will not rest until he has finished the thing today. 

For she knew Boaz had passed HER test.  And if you want a little more assurance, let me give you one more verse.  A verse I claimed as a promise when I was alone after my divorce.

Psalms 68:6 God causes the lonely to dwell in families. He leads prisoners into prosperity, but rebels live on parched land. 

And just like He kept that promise to Ruth and Naomi, He kept it to me- and will keep it to you should you ask.