“Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

“And chance so chanced it…”

Everything just seems to fall into place in the book of Ruth. But while nothing is predetermined, neither are there any accidents. It is no accident that Ruth and Naomi arrive back in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. The author of Ruth knows what he’s doing. If he is going to confront a reading of the law like Ezra’s and Nehemiah’s, he’s going to have to show that he knows biblical law like the back of his hand. The beginning of the barley harvest provides him an opportunity to show how to read the law in a way that leads to life and blessing rather than death and cursing.

In ancient Israel, there were not very many ways for widows like Ruth and Naomi to make a living. So, unsurprisingly, the Hebrew prophets regularly call Israel to care for widows and orphans. The prophets simply called Israel to follow its own law. And this is what the author of the book of Ruth is doing.

Deuteronomy 24:19, 22 

19 When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the orphan and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands…22 Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.

Leviticus 19:9–10

9 When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10 Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

Naomi meets two out of the four criteria listed here and Ruth meets three. And as my Dad would say, “Three outta four ain’t bad.”

“Good Gossip”

Ruth’s plan is to take advantage of these gleaning laws for the vulnerable population. But she will still need to find favor if her lawful right to glean is going to be recognized.

We should be holding our breath as Ruth leaves the safety of Naomi’s side to venture out into the fields around Bethlehem. How will she be met by the locals? If we are clued into the tension of the story between the Israelites and the Moabites, we know how risky this next scene will be. But the book of Ruth surprises us again. Where we expect to find cursing we find only blessing.

In the fields of Boaz Ruth has been met with kindness (even by his workers). Upon Boaz’s arrival to the harvest he notices a stranger gleaning with the others. Boaz questions his supervisor: “Whose is this young woman?”

The answer he receives should sweep us off our feet—not primarily because of what is said, but because of what is left unsaid. Boaz’s supervisor does not speak harshly about Ruth for gleaning and neither does he slander her for being a Moabite. On the contrary, he only has good things to report about her. Chris Green describes the scene like this:

Clearly, Bethlehem is alive with gossip. But this turns out to be good gossip. Although there is surprise, no doubt, and some uncertainty about what [Ruth’s] presence means, there is nothing biting, nothing venomous, in [the supervisor’s] description of her. He praises Ruth for the work she has done, praise sure to remind readers of the matriarch, Rebekah (Gen. 24:44—49). Even he, young as he is, can see that Ruth the Moabite is a woman of ancient, magnificent grace.

This is good gossip! Boaz hears what he should hear about Ruth and not what he shouldn’t hear about her. In a time of unthinkable violence—the time of the judges—this little community doesn’t even use words to violate others.

Let the reader understand.

Recognizing the Unrecognizable

Boaz blesses Ruth just as he blessed his workers upon his arrival. She is welcome here. But she is more than welcome. Not only is she welcome to glean behind Boaz’s workers, she is to go right up to the standing sheaves. She is welcome even to drink from Boaz’s water supply and to have a hardy lunch with him and his workers (with Tupperware to take home!).

Ruth’s response is a key to the meaning of the whole book: “Why have I found favor in your eyes for you to recognize me when I am a foreigner [an unrecognizable].” The play on words is evident. Ruth is a foreigner. She is in a place where no one recognizes her, and yet she is recognized—she is home.

At the heart of the story of Ruth is the converging of what Herbert Marks calls the two archetypical stories in the western literary tradition: 1) the going away from home and 2) the returning home. These are the two plots we like to tell. But the author of Ruth has integrated them into one story. Ruth is leaving her home to go with her mother-in-law, but the author has continually told us that Ruth is herself “returning home.”

Those who lose their home will find it.

Father Abraham, Mother Ruth

This leads to what is perhaps the most significant line in the book of Ruth. Ruth wonders why it is that she has found favor in the sight of Boaz. Boaz’s response is incredibly rich with layers of meaning: “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told me, how you left your father and mother and the land of your kindred and went to a people whom you did not know before” (Ruth 2:11).

This is a blatant allusion to Father Abraham—the patriarch of Israel. Genesis 12:1, “Now YHWH said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you…’”

By leaving her kindred and her land to travel to Bethlehem with Naomi, Ruth has acted like Abraham who left Ur to travel to Canaan. Like Abraham, she is leaving home in order to come home.

The book of Ruth is filled with what Yair Zakovitch calls “inversion stories.” In “inversion stories” similarities are purposely made with another story in order to bring the two stories into conversation. But once the similarities are established between the two stories, a crucial detail of the older story is inverted. The key to reading these stories—according to Zakovitch—is this: whenever there are similarities in two stories, look for the difference. That’s where the meaning is.

Here’s Zakovitch on the inversion happening between the story of Ruth and the story of Abraham:

The inverted comparison between Ruth and Abraham testifies that this Moabite woman, who knows no selfishness, who leaves her country out of commitment to her mother-in-law with no hope to become a mother herself, is a more noble figure than the nation's father, Abraham.

This is the book of Ruth’s provocative, subversive point: We, the readers, are not only expected to say that Ruth is as great as Abraham. We are expected to say that Ruth is much greater than Abraham!

When Abraham was told by God to leave his homeland he was promised that God would bless him and make him into a great nation with too many children to count. Ruth, by contrast, was not promised anything. Naomi virtually guarantees that if Ruth leaves her homeland she will not have any children. But Ruth clings to Naomi even when there is no hope for a future.

Ruth is a more faithful Mother to Israel than Father Abraham.

Ruth and the Spirit of the Law

Ruth is clearly confronting the law. And yet—according to Jewish tradition, the book of Ruth is read each year at the Feast of Weeks. The Feast of Weeks is the Jewish festival which commemorates the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai. If Ruth does indeed confront the law, why would it be read at this time in the Jewish calendar?

Yair Zakovitch puts it like this: “The author of Ruth has to show that he knows biblical law very well, and he does this by showing that he understands the spirit of biblical law very well.”

The book of Ruth is confronting a sense of law. It is contesting a reading of the law (perhaps by characters like Ezra and Nehemiah). It is contesting a dead, dry way of reading the law. But it does this precisely by appealing to the spirit of the law.

The spirit of the law was always meant to lead to life not death, healing not harm, wholeness not fracture, to the flourishing of all humanity not the dehumanizing of human beings.

One way to think about the book of Ruth is to see it doing something like what Jesus did when the religious leaders brought the adulterous woman before him. They had a text. They had the letters of the law. The law says that she must be put to death for her adultery. But Jesus stood between their reading of the law and the vulnerable woman.  The law was (and is) on his side.

The same logic that is at work in the book of Ruth is at work in the Sabbath controversies in the Gospels. The religious leaders are upset that Jesus is healing people on the Sabbath. It is unlawful. They have a text. They have the letter of the law. But Jesus knows the spirit of the law, just as Ruth does. Jesus responds: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).

In other words, human beings were not created in order to bear the weight of burdensome laws, rather the law itself was given for humanity’s flourishing.

This is precisely what the book of Ruth bears witness to: Any reading of the law that maims, harms, or abuses is contrary to the spirit of the law because it is contrary to the Spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. The law and Jesus share the same Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.