Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17
The thin book of Ruth, only four chapters long, is only one of two books of the Bible with a woman’s name attached to it. And it shows up in the lectionary only twice in the three-year cycle. So it’s good, when she makes her appearance, to pay attention to this book. The story of Ruth covers more than what we heard this morning. So let me recap that story a bit.
Naomi and her husband and two sons move from Bethlehem to Moab, which is another country near to Israel. There the sons marry Moabite women, Orpah & Ruth, and all seems well. Until the worst of the worst happens: first Naomi’s husband dies followed by the death of both of the sons. We aren’t told how or why these tragic events transpire, just that they do, leaving behind three widows.
Of course, to be a widow was about as low as you could get socio-economically. The only thing worse would be to find yourself a widow without any sons, which was the situation in which Naomi, Orpah, & Ruth found themselves. And to add to that, Naomi was a foreigner in Moab--a son-less, husband-less, foreign, woman.
Naomi makes the decision to return home, so she would at least be among her kin people. At first, her two daughters-in-law follow her on the sad trek back to Bethlehem. But Naomi stops and says, “Go home...go back to your people. Make lives for yourselves there. I have no more sons to offer you and there’s nothing for you with me.” They argue a bit and eventually Orpah does decide to turn back and cast her fate among the Moabites, and there follows a tearful farewell.
Ruth, however, is a different story. She will not be budged; she insists on following Naomi. She speaks those words to her mother-in-law that many of us have likely heard before:
The thin book of Ruth, only four chapters long, is only one of two books of the Bible with a woman’s name attached to it. And it shows up in the lectionary only twice in the three-year cycle. So it’s good, when she makes her appearance, to pay attention to this book. The story of Ruth covers more than what we heard this morning. So let me recap that story a bit.
Naomi and her husband and two sons move from Bethlehem to Moab, which is another country near to Israel. There the sons marry Moabite women, Orpah & Ruth, and all seems well. Until the worst of the worst happens: first Naomi’s husband dies followed by the death of both of the sons. We aren’t told how or why these tragic events transpire, just that they do, leaving behind three widows.Of course, to be a widow was about as low as you could get socio-economically. The only thing worse would be to find yourself a widow without any sons, which was the situation in which Naomi, Orpah, & Ruth found themselves. And to add to that, Naomi was a foreigner in Moab--a son-less, husband-less, foreign, woman.
Naomi makes the decision to return home, so she would at least be among her kin people. At first, her two daughters-in-law follow her on the sad trek back to Bethlehem. But Naomi stops and says, “Go home...go back to your people. Make lives for yourselves there. I have no more sons to offer you and there’s nothing for you with me.” They argue a bit and eventually Orpah does decide to turn back and cast her fate among the Moabites, and there follows a tearful farewell.
Ruth, however, is a different story. She will not be budged; she insists on following Naomi. She speaks those words to her mother-in-law that many of us have likely heard before:
Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die--there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you. (Ruth 1:16b-17)
Naomi sees how determined Ruth is and gives up trying to convince her otherwise. So the two women continue their journey on the dusty road to Bethlehem.
So we have Naomi and Ruth back in Bethlehem, still without husbands or sons. Naturally, the life of a poor woman was as difficult then as it is now, if not even more so. She had to work from dawn to dusk just to survive. And one of the ways that you could survive was by gleaning.
In the painting on your bulletin covers and now on the screen, the painter Nicholas Poisson shows Ruth meeting Boaz, a kinsman of Naomi who notices Ruth from the very first time. Ruth is an outsider; only a member of the clan because of her persistent attachment to Naomi.
Gleaning was a way that poor people could get grain to make bread for their survival. After reapers went through a field with their sickles bundling the sheaves of grain as they went, they naturally would miss some of the grain, which fell to the earth. Gleaners would come after them and pick up the pieces they missed for their own use. There were laws that allowed people like Ruth to glean and prohibited the landowner from going back to pick up what was missed.
There is a famous painting in the Orsay Museum by Jean-François Millet, painted around the time that Poisson painted his painting, called “The Gleaners.” It’s one of my favorite paintings and a print of it hangs in our apartment. Something about that painting speaks to me. As you can see, gleaning is back-breaking work. Gleaners had to bend over in the stubble that was left behind to find what they could. This painting shows some of that and one can imagine Ruth there, picking through what was left behind to feed herself and Naomi.
This is where today’s story picks up. As I said, Boaz has already noticed the Moabite outsider named Ruth and knows of her connection to his kinswoman, Naomi. This is important, because the laws of inheritance required that a dead man’s property would go to his next-of-kin; property was not only land but widows and any other dependent relatives. The trick is that even though Boaz has obviously taken a shine to Ruth and Ruth, with Naomi’s help and advice as we heard in the first part of today’s reading, works to get into Boaz’s heart; but even though Boaz is a kinsman, he’s not the next-of-kin. That’s someone else and Boaz very cleverly get this other kinsman to give up his right to Naomi’s husband’s property and that Maobite woman. Which nicely leaves Boaz able to take Ruth as his wife. And we all heard how Ruth then gives birth to a son and, in the process, Naomi is taken care of. A true rags to riches story. Happy ending, curtain down.
Except I’m going to fast-forward us a few centuries to the point in time of the books of Ezra & Nehemiah. Ezra & Nehemiah are from the period of the return of the exiles from Babylon. As you probably remember, Judah was overrun by the Babylonians, Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed, and many of the people of Judah were taken into exile into Babylon. There they remained several decades--long enough for another generation to be born, a generation that had never seen the glory of the Temple and had never set foot in Jerusalem. This generation grew up in Babylon, learning its language and in some cases taking spouses from the Babylonian population.
Upon their release and subsequent return to Jerusalem, a faction appeared that wanted to purify the people. They wanted to rid themselves of foreign influences, including these outside wives. Ezra and Nehemiah are about these attempts, including the rebuilding of the Temple from the ruins of that once noble city. They were attempting to step backward in time. As we all know, when looking back, things are always better, as we put on our rosy-colored glasses for our hindsight vision. It was no different then then it is now.
The leaders at the time of Ezra & Nehemiah sought to cleanse their society and purge out all elements that didn’t seem like it fit with their ideal world. Except this tale of Ruth, the Moabite woman, comes onto the scene. Ruth, who not only is a foreigner who marries into the Jews, but is also the mother of a long, important line of Jewish leaders. That’s why that final line in today’s reading is so important: They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.
David, you probably realize, is none other than King David, the best and most revered ruler that Israel had ever known. Yes, David’s, King David’s, great-grandmother was a Moabite, the worst foreigner you could think of. By recounting this tale during the time of Ezra & Nehemiah, somebody was saying “Not so fast with this attempt at purity. Remember our history. Remember our past when God intervened through a foreign woman and we got David out of it.”
The story of Ruth and its subsequent use years later does sound somewhat familiar, at least it does to me. For example, we hear cries about immigrants from far and wide; how they’re taking over and changing our culture; how they’re taking jobs away from hard-working Americans. Yet, we put on those rose-colored glasses when we look back and miss the fact, somehow, that all of us, unless we have Native American blood in us, came from immigrant stock at one point or other. We forget that the Irish and Italians and Chinese and those from many other lands all suffered when they first come to this country because they were immigrants. And we’ll leave aside for the time being the forced immigration of countless Africans before the slave trade ended. But we forget that immigration has always been with us, as we put on those rosy-colored glasses and look back smilingly.
Those rosy-colored glasses, however they’re used for hindsight viewing, will always get you into trouble. It’s as true now as it was during the era when the exiles returned from Babylon. They blind us to truths that we have to face and recognize; and sometimes to occasions for celebration.
The lesson from Ruth, one of them at least, is that we are all gleaners. We all are seeking to pick up the bits of our past that will help us survive in this day and age. We have to rely on the kindness of the field owner as well as on the fact that the ones who own the field will follow the rules and laws that are made to help the least of these and keep us alive.
The Book of Ruth is a very thin work, just a few pages long. But its story is one that speaks through the ages over and over again.
Top painting: Summer, or, Boaz and Ruth by Nicholas Poisson, 1860-1864
Second painting: The Gleaners, Jean-François Millet, 1857
So we have Naomi and Ruth back in Bethlehem, still without husbands or sons. Naturally, the life of a poor woman was as difficult then as it is now, if not even more so. She had to work from dawn to dusk just to survive. And one of the ways that you could survive was by gleaning.
In the painting on your bulletin covers and now on the screen, the painter Nicholas Poisson shows Ruth meeting Boaz, a kinsman of Naomi who notices Ruth from the very first time. Ruth is an outsider; only a member of the clan because of her persistent attachment to Naomi.
Gleaning was a way that poor people could get grain to make bread for their survival. After reapers went through a field with their sickles bundling the sheaves of grain as they went, they naturally would miss some of the grain, which fell to the earth. Gleaners would come after them and pick up the pieces they missed for their own use. There were laws that allowed people like Ruth to glean and prohibited the landowner from going back to pick up what was missed.
This is where today’s story picks up. As I said, Boaz has already noticed the Moabite outsider named Ruth and knows of her connection to his kinswoman, Naomi. This is important, because the laws of inheritance required that a dead man’s property would go to his next-of-kin; property was not only land but widows and any other dependent relatives. The trick is that even though Boaz has obviously taken a shine to Ruth and Ruth, with Naomi’s help and advice as we heard in the first part of today’s reading, works to get into Boaz’s heart; but even though Boaz is a kinsman, he’s not the next-of-kin. That’s someone else and Boaz very cleverly get this other kinsman to give up his right to Naomi’s husband’s property and that Maobite woman. Which nicely leaves Boaz able to take Ruth as his wife. And we all heard how Ruth then gives birth to a son and, in the process, Naomi is taken care of. A true rags to riches story. Happy ending, curtain down.
Except I’m going to fast-forward us a few centuries to the point in time of the books of Ezra & Nehemiah. Ezra & Nehemiah are from the period of the return of the exiles from Babylon. As you probably remember, Judah was overrun by the Babylonians, Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed, and many of the people of Judah were taken into exile into Babylon. There they remained several decades--long enough for another generation to be born, a generation that had never seen the glory of the Temple and had never set foot in Jerusalem. This generation grew up in Babylon, learning its language and in some cases taking spouses from the Babylonian population.
Upon their release and subsequent return to Jerusalem, a faction appeared that wanted to purify the people. They wanted to rid themselves of foreign influences, including these outside wives. Ezra and Nehemiah are about these attempts, including the rebuilding of the Temple from the ruins of that once noble city. They were attempting to step backward in time. As we all know, when looking back, things are always better, as we put on our rosy-colored glasses for our hindsight vision. It was no different then then it is now.
The leaders at the time of Ezra & Nehemiah sought to cleanse their society and purge out all elements that didn’t seem like it fit with their ideal world. Except this tale of Ruth, the Moabite woman, comes onto the scene. Ruth, who not only is a foreigner who marries into the Jews, but is also the mother of a long, important line of Jewish leaders. That’s why that final line in today’s reading is so important: They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.
David, you probably realize, is none other than King David, the best and most revered ruler that Israel had ever known. Yes, David’s, King David’s, great-grandmother was a Moabite, the worst foreigner you could think of. By recounting this tale during the time of Ezra & Nehemiah, somebody was saying “Not so fast with this attempt at purity. Remember our history. Remember our past when God intervened through a foreign woman and we got David out of it.”
The story of Ruth and its subsequent use years later does sound somewhat familiar, at least it does to me. For example, we hear cries about immigrants from far and wide; how they’re taking over and changing our culture; how they’re taking jobs away from hard-working Americans. Yet, we put on those rose-colored glasses when we look back and miss the fact, somehow, that all of us, unless we have Native American blood in us, came from immigrant stock at one point or other. We forget that the Irish and Italians and Chinese and those from many other lands all suffered when they first come to this country because they were immigrants. And we’ll leave aside for the time being the forced immigration of countless Africans before the slave trade ended. But we forget that immigration has always been with us, as we put on those rosy-colored glasses and look back smilingly.
Those rosy-colored glasses, however they’re used for hindsight viewing, will always get you into trouble. It’s as true now as it was during the era when the exiles returned from Babylon. They blind us to truths that we have to face and recognize; and sometimes to occasions for celebration.
The lesson from Ruth, one of them at least, is that we are all gleaners. We all are seeking to pick up the bits of our past that will help us survive in this day and age. We have to rely on the kindness of the field owner as well as on the fact that the ones who own the field will follow the rules and laws that are made to help the least of these and keep us alive.
The Book of Ruth is a very thin work, just a few pages long. But its story is one that speaks through the ages over and over again.
Top painting: Summer, or, Boaz and Ruth by Nicholas Poisson, 1860-1864
Second painting: The Gleaners, Jean-François Millet, 1857
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