Ruth 2:8-13
Why Have You Noticed Me
8Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Listen, my daughter. Do not go and glean in another field, and do not go away from this place, but stay here close to my servant girls.
9Let your eyes be on the field they are harvesting, and follow along after these girls. Indeed, I have ordered the young men not to touch you. And when you are thirsty, go and drink from the jars the young men have filled.”
10At this, she fell on her face, bowing low to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me, even though I am a foreigner?”
11Boaz replied, “I have been made fully aware of all you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth, and how you came to a people you did not know before.
12May the LORD repay your work, and may you receive a rich reward from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have taken refuge.”
13“My lord,” she said, “may I continue to find favor in your eyes, for you have comforted and spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your servant girls.”
Berean Standard Bible
Boaz speaks to her, and the first thing he calls her is my daughter. Then comes a run of instructions that are shelter wearing the clothes of orders. Do not glean anywhere else. Do not leave this place. Stay close to my servant girls and follow along behind them. He is not tolerating her presence on his land. He is attaching her to his own household.
Indeed, I have ordered the young men not to touch you.
He says it to her face, which means it needed saying. A foreign widow working alone among hired men was not safe, everybody in that field knew it, and Boaz does not pretend otherwise. He gives the order to his men, and then he tells the woman that he gave it, so she can bend over the stubble all day without watching the far end of the row.
Then the water. Ruth is the one gleaning, which puts her below everybody else in that field, and he tells her to go and drink from the jars his young men have filled. The people above her drew it. The woman underneath them is told to help herself. She goes down on her face in the dirt.
Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you should take notice of me, even though I am a foreigner?
She is the one who raises it. Not Boaz, not the foreman, not one of the servant girls. Ruth says the word foreigner about herself, because she knows exactly what she is on that land and has not forgotten it all morning.
Boaz answers by telling her what he has been made fully aware of. That she left her father and mother and the country she was born in and came to a people she had never met. That she has looked after her mother-in-law since her husband died. All of it had reached him. She walked into his field believing she was nobody, and she had already been spoken about kindly. Then he blesses her.
May the LORD repay your work, and may you receive a rich reward from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have taken refuge.
Wings are a bird covering her young, and Boaz puts that picture, the God of Israel and a woman out of Moab into a single sentence.
Ruth takes the kindness and declines the rank. She thanks him for comforting her and speaking kindly, then adds that she is not like one of his servant girls. He has been treating her as though she were. She will not claim a place she has not been given.
How We Know
Boaz describes Ruth's life without her having told him any of it, and what he describes matches what the reader watched happen.
He says she left her father and mother and the land of her birth and came to a people she did not know. Chapter 1 shows exactly that: the road out of Moab, the refusal to turn back, and the vow that Naomi's people would be her people.
Ruth does not correct him or fill anything in. The two accounts line up with neither pointing at the other, which supports one telling behind both. How Boaz came to know it he says himself in verse 11: he had been made fully aware of it.
Her own word in verse 10 is the sharper detail. She calls herself a foreigner, and Deuteronomy 23:3 bars Moabites from the assembly of the LORD to the tenth generation. The book gives the objection to her rather than to a critic, and then has Boaz answer it with a blessing.
Questions
1 Who here has been the new person in a room where everybody else already knew each other?
AnswerAlmost everybody has, and most of us remember the exact moment somebody spoke to us first. Ruth is that person in a field full of workers who have known each other for years, in a country where her nationality is the first thing anyone says about her.
2 What does Boaz tell Ruth to do, and what does he tell his own men?
AnswerHe tells her to stay in his field, to keep close to his servant girls, and to drink the water his men have drawn. He tells the young men not to touch her. Then he tells her that he has told them.
3 Why does it matter that he told her about the order at all?
AnswerBecause it means the danger was real, and because a danger you have been told is gone stops costing you anything. He removes the risk, and then he makes sure she knows it is removed, so she can work without spending the day looking over her shoulder.
4 What does Ruth call herself, and who else in the scene brings it up?
AnswerShe calls herself a foreigner, and nobody else in the scene raises it with her at all. Boaz does not say it. The foreman said Moabitess to his master rather than to her. Ruth is the one who puts her own standing into a question and asks why a man like this would take any notice of her.
What This Means for Us
Boaz names who the refuge belongs to. May the LORD repay your work, he says, and may you receive a rich reward from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have taken refuge. He does not present himself as her security. He points at who is actually covering her and then behaves accordingly.
That is what his instructions are for. The order to his men, the water, the telling her he had given the order: none of it is Boaz being the answer. It is Boaz putting himself under the wings he just described and acting like somebody who lives there.
So think of somebody who would work easier today for knowing where they stand with us. Go and put it in words, and do it as someone who is sheltered rather than as someone providing shelter.
Prayer
Father, you notice people who are sure nobody is looking. Thank you that Ruth was being spoken about kindly while she thought she was invisible. Make us the sort of people who take the fear out of a room and then say we have done it. Amen.