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While waiting for Morpheus to stop by, I figgered I'd write this, some stuff I've learned about Boaz through study over the last nearly-four years. I haven't read Ruth in a couple of months, and I wanted to go back through it and get some of this written down semi-coherently. And while I'm at it, I do want to say thank you to all those who actually read my blatherings. Boaz is my hero, and I want to point out some things that have changed my life, or at least given me the goal to aim at.
Too often we forget that the people in the Bible were real people, and we think of them only as impossible heroes or types of Christ, instead of the flesh-and-blood humans with personalities. Sometimes the Bible is a little light on some things, and imagining a whole person from what you're given can be like reconstructing a dinosaur from two legs, or a piece of an ear. You've gotta be careful not to make the text fit what you already have in yo' head. But these are some characteristics of Boaz that God showed me, mostly throughout 2005, and I've been chewing on them a lot since then.
If you don't know the story of the book of Ruth, here's the Cliff Notes: Elimelech and Naomi left Israel during a famine, taking their sons, Mahlon and Chilion, with them to Moab. Mahlon and Chilion married the Moabites Ruth and Orpah, and then Elimelech, Mahlon and Chilion died in Moab. Naomi left to go back home; Orpah stayed in Moab, and Ruth stuck with Naomi, saying, "Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me."
In chapter 2, Ruth told Naomi that she was going out to "glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace." God had sent a famine to Israel as punishment for not obeying his law (Deuteronomy 28:15-68); but Ruth trusted that she would find somebody who had been doing right (Deut 11:13-14). She happened to come onto Boaz's field; Boaz was a relative of Elimelech.
Boaz came back from Bethlehem and greeted his servants: "The Lord be with you." His reapers said, "The Lord bless thee." Boaz wanted God's presence; the servants wanted the physical blessings. Job 22:21: "Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace: thereby good shall come unto thee." Job 7:2: "...a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and...an hireling looketh for the reward of his work."
Then Boaz asked who the babe was. But notice he took care of his obligations first, checking on his reapers. The reapers explained who she was, and that she had worked from the morning until then, and had "tarried a little in the house". Maybe waiting around to meet the man who had been blessed: The house is the place of fellowship and communion, not labor.
I believe Boaz had been in Bethlehem taking the tithe from his crops there, as was required by the law. Proverbs 3:9-10: "Honour the Lord with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall they barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine." Malachi 3:10-11: "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat (food) in my house, and prove (test) me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground...."
Leviticus 23:14: "And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brough an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings." Note the term "parched corn", because that figures later in the story. And maize, corn as we know it, was unknown in Israel in Bible times; 'corn' is a generic term for grain, and is still used that way in some parts of England. If Boaz was doing right, he wouldn't have touched the corn until he had tithed off of it.
Boaz had apparently been following the law, because, best I can tell, he flourished enough as a farmer to survive a famine, and had enough work to hire servants. He could afford to tell Ruth to not to worry about having to go to another field, but to stay by his servants, and told her that he had charged his reapers not to bother her. He also allowed her to drink of the water they had drawn for themselves.
She asked why Boaz "took knowledge of her", because she was a foreigner, and he told her that he knew the hard decisions she had made, leaving her home and following Naomi to a strange country, taking her God as her own. He also told her that God would give her a full reward for her work. She thanked him for comforting and speaking friendly to her, though she didn't have the status that even his servants had.
Boaz invited her to eat with him and his reapers. 2:14 says, "And she sat beside the reapers; and he reached her parched corn...." He showed that extra care by serving her himself, instead of leaving her to fend for herself among the reapers. Through the whole book, Boaz goes the extra mile to treat her well, with kindness and comfort.
After she left, Boaz commanded his reapers to let her glean from the crops themselves, and not from what the reapers happened to drop on the ground, or leave in the corners of the field. Leviticus 19:9-10: "And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of they field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest. [T]hou shalt leave them for the poor and the stranger." He even told them to "accidentally" drop "handfuls of purpose" for her. Boaz went above what the law required to show her extra kindness. Ruth worked the rest of the evening and went home with over a bushel of barley.
Naomi was surprised at how much she had gleaned, and asked whose field she had been in. Ruth told her it was a man named Boaz. Naomi praised God and told Ruth that he was a kinsman. She also gave Ruth one of the best pieces of advice: "It is good, my daughter, that thou go out with his maidens, that they meet thee not in any other field." After all the kindness Boaz had shown her, it would have been rude and ungrateful to seek sustenance elsewhere. When God is meeting your needs in one field, don't go to another. Ruth was satisfied with what he had to offer, and showed respect and consideration for how he had supplied her need. She stayed through the barley harvest and wheat harvest.
Naomi had told Orpah and Ruth in 1:9, "(May) the Lord grant you that ye may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband." In 3:1, Naomi says, "Shall I not seek rest for thee, that it may be well with thee?" She told her to pretty herself up and go down to the threshing floor and wait until Boaz was done eating and drinking, then to go where he was lying down and uncover his feet and lay down also. When Boaz's heart was merry (Deut 14:26), he went to lie down at the end of a heap of corn. She uncovered his feet and lay down.
'Round midnight (had to slip a Thelonius Monk reference in), Boaz had a start and woke up, and noticed somebody was there, and demanded to know who it was. She said, "I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt (of his robe) over thine handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman." If you compare this with Deuteronomy 22:30 and 27:20, she is actually proposing to him. So much for quiet, bashful women in the Bible. Lol, indeedy.
Since Boaz was a kinsman of Elimelech, he could redeem the fields Elimelech owned, to keep them in the family. In 4:5, it states that Ruth would come with the field. I'm a little fuzzy at this time of night on all the details, but land was supposed to stay in the family of those who had died, and by redeeming the field and marrying Ruth, Boaz would keep it in the family. This would also keep the name of her deceased husband alive in the land by proxy, instead of his lineage dying out. See Deuteronomy 25:5-6 for more.
In 3:10, Boaz compliments her, because she had shown "more kindness in the latter end than at the beginning, inasmuch as thou followed not young men, rather poor or rich." This indicates to me that he was a noticeable bit older than her, and he thanked her for considering him rather than going for somebody close to her age. Boaz sowed kindness to Ruth, and reaped much more than a bushel of grain. He showed her respect and admiration for the right choices she had made, and she reciprocated by putting enough faith in his uprightness to marry him.
In 3:12-13, Boaz told her that, though he was a close relative to her deceased husband, there was somebody else who was closer, and that he had first dibs on the land, and, by extension, her. He promised to go to the man the next day and tell him the situation. "...if he will perform unto thee the part of the kinsman, well; let him do the kinsman's part: but if he will not do the part of a kinsman to thee, then will I do the part of the kinsman to thee...." Boaz wasn't about to go against God's commands, even though he had invested in her and there was a mutual interest.
Ruth lay at his feet until the morning, and before she left, he gave her six measures of barley, and she went home. I don't get all crazy about numerology, because so much of it is circular reasoning, but if I were God, I would certainly delight myself in having fun with numbers in the Bible, tucking them away in places where people wouldn't often notice them. But in Biblical numerology, six is the number of man. Usually it's not in a good context, but in this case, I think the number represents that Boaz was again showing his manhood by supplying her needs. Not by sweet talk and flirtation, but by giving her something real. He was willing to feed her physically and spiritually with kindness and the fruits of his obedience, and he proved it over and over.
Boaz went to the gate of the city, where the elders would sit and adjuticate, and called ten of the elders together, and found the nearer relative, who remains unnamed. He explained the situation, that Naomi had come back and needed to sell the parcel of land that had belonged to their brother, Elimelech. Knowing how the Bible uses "relative terms" (yuk, yuk), the kinsman was probably a brother, and Boaz a half-brother or cousin. Just a guess.
The kinsman said he would buy the field, and then Boaz pulled the ace out of his sleeve and said, "This chick Ruth comes with it, and you'll need to have kids with her to raise up our brother's name from the dead, so his descendants can have his inheritance." The kinsman reneged, saying that he didn't want to damage his inheritance, probably by having to split it with any kids he already had. Boaz then bought all that was Elimelech's, Mahlon's, and Chilion's from Naomi; in doing so, he bought Ruth as his wife, and would raise up the dead brother's name. This was her wedding ceremony.
Of course, Boaz is a type of Christ, redeeming a Gentile bride and putting her in the line of Christ.
In 4:14, the women of the city said to Naomi, "Blessed be the Lord, which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman, that HIS name may be famous in Israel." Under the law (Deuteronomy 25:6), the dead man's (Elimelech's) name should have been the one that was kept alive. But in this case, the name of the redeemer, Boaz, was preserved. It's not about the redeemed, but about the Redeemer. Every time someone calls someone else a Christian, the name of Christ is preserved, and the emphasis shifts from the name of the redeemed to the name of the Redeemer.
Boaz had seen how his father, Salmon (also referred to as Salmah) had taken a prostitute named Rahab, and rescued her from death (Joshua 6:17) and married her (Matthew 1:5). He knew the power of redemption quite well. He also knew the benefits of following what God had commanded, instead of what the culture around him taught. Incidentally, Rahab, a Canaanite (descendant of Ham), was black (as was Moses's wife). Boaz was half-black; David was 1/16th black, and Jesus had more black blood in his line than white blood. So much for the Bible being against interracial marriage. You really do find the most interesting things in your Bible when you study it.
This story gives more press time than any other in the Bible to a man and a woman finding and marrying each other. And it's interesting that no flirtation is involved, but neither is an extended period of friendship. I'm not saying that a relationship founded on friendship is wrong at all, but in this story, the man was doing what God wanted, and God brought the woman to him, and it was their mutual respect for the right choices that each had made that attracted them to each other. I like what Miss Donna told me that Marvin had said to her: "The God in me loves the God in you."
3:10 PM
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