May 07, 2024 | Be God's Light
Ruth Gleans from the Fields of Boaz
Scripture: Ruth 2 (NIV)
1 Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz.
2 And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.”
Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” 3 So she went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek.
4 Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem and greeted the harvesters, “The Lord be with you!”
“The Lord bless you!” they answered.
5 Boaz asked the overseer of his harvesters, “Who does that young woman belong to?”
6 The overseer replied, “She is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. 7 She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”
8 So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with the women who work for me. 9 Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.”
10 At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She asked him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me—a foreigner?”
11 Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. 12 May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”
13 “May I continue to find favor in your eyes, my lord,” she said. “You have put me at ease by speaking kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your servants.”
14 At mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar.”
When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over. 15 As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. 16 Even pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke her.”
17 So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. 18 She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.
19 Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!”
Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said.
20 “The Lord bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers.”
21 Then Ruth the Moabite said, “He even said to me, ‘Stay with my workers until they finish harvesting all my grain.’”
22 Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It will be good for you, my daughter, to go with the women who work for him, because in someone else’s field you might be harmed.”
23 So Ruth stayed close to the women of Boaz to glean until the barley and wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.
Devotional
Naomi the Israelite arrived in Bethlehem with her daughter-in-law Ruth the Moabite at the time of the barley harvest. Hungry and husbandless, the two women had to think of a way to get food. In their day, women from that part of the world who didn’t have a husband or father to provide for them often had to resort to begging or prostitution to make ends meet. But they had a better option.
So, Ruth went to pick up leftover grain that the barley harvesters missed. This field belonged to Boaz, a relative of Naomi. This man Boaz was the son of an Israelite named Salmon and his wife Rahab, a Canaanite and former prostitute who helped the Hebrew people conquer her hometown of Jericho (see Joshua 2). It is ironic that, in order to not resort to prostitution, Ruth gleans grain from the field of a man who was born to a former prostitute.
In fact, the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1 lists five women in the forty-two generations listed. For each one, what does this say about how God works in our lives, no matter who we are?
Tamar (Matthew 1:3; Genesis 38) – She was a Gentile woman who veiled her face and pretended to be a prostitute in order to have sexual relations from her father-in-law Judah, after the death of her husband.
Rahab (Matthew 1:5; Joshua 2) – She was a Canaanite prostitute who hid Joshua’s spies so that they could overthrow the city of Jericho. She married Salmon and they had a son named Boaz.
Ruth (Matthew 1:5; Book of Ruth) – She was a Moabite woman who moved to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law after all the men in the family died. She married Boaz and they became the great-grandparents of King David.
Bathsheba (Matthew 1:6; 1 Samuel 11-12) – She was the wife of a Hittite soldier named Uriah, but had an affair with King David when her husband was away at war. After David arranged for Uriah’s death, she married David and gave birth to Solomon, who would become the next king.
Mary (Matthew 1:16) – A thousand years after Solomon, Mary was betrothed to a man named Joseph when she became pregnant with the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Poem
Prophetic Gleaning
Fields harvested
Bounty extracted
Mine exhausted
Abandoned
Only the needy
The ones on the fringe
Stoop for the crumbs
Under table
To grind grain
Small loaf
For empty mouth
For starving soul
Last meal?
Oil spent?
Prophetic gleaning
