Ruth and Boaz--Integrity or Exploitation?
The narrative of the book of Ruth ushers us into the inner sanctum of the average Israelite family’s existence. It is filled with profound experiences of poverty and loss, hope and disappointment, crisis, injustice, bias, and, at last, resolution. One broken dream after another rock the foundations of these characters’ lives, and our hearts break with theirs. But in the midst of the sorrow, we discover a most exceptional sort of integrity. Where the uncommon loyalty of an unwanted outsider, and the system-bending courage of a well-established insider, create safe space for a destitute widow and her forgotten family.
Or do we?
At the climax of this narrative we the reader are ushered into a veiled and ambiguous scenario. A very wealthy man and a very desperate woman find themselves alone on the edge of town. Insulated from the standard means of accountability, under the influence and in the dark, the reader is confronted with a critical question: Are Ruth and Boaz truly the people of character we’ve been told they are? Or are we to expect a steamy scene of manipulation and compromise?
Let’s get caught up. As we all know, the story begins with the Bethlehemite Elimelech who is forced by famine to abandon his patrimony and move to Moab with his wife Naomi and their two sons. The boys marry while in Moab and according to law and custom remain within their father’s household. But within the first paragraph a second crisis of much larger proportions arises: Elimelech and his as-of-yet-childless sons die. In the patriarchal and patrilineal society of the ancient world, this leaves Naomi in crisis. She is a widow in a foreign country with no paternal kin, no grandchildren, no patrimony, and nothing to offer her widowed daughters-in-law.
By all definitions of Israel’s patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal society, these three women are in desperate straits.
Naomi chooses the only course of action available to her, to return to her kin in Bethlehem with the hope that a family member will take her in. So she instructs her daughters-in-law to return to their households of origin, hoping that they will find charity there and the opportunity to marry again, bear children, and secure their own futures. Through her tears, Naomi reviews the situation:
Return my daughters. Why should you go with me? Do I still have sons in my womb, that they might become your husbands? Return, my daughters! Go! For I am too old to have a husband. Even if I said I have hope, if I should even have a husband tonight, and even have sons, would you wait until they were grown? Would you wait to marry? No my daughters … go home. (1:11-13)
By reminding her daughters-in-law that she has no more sons to give, and is too old to bear more, Naomi is referring to the levirate law of Deut 25:5-10. Whereas Israelite law and custom would require the remaining adult male of the household to marry these young widows, there are no remaining adult males. Naomi is also cataloguing the cold hard facts of their scenario—their family has become an un-family and there is no hope of any other outcome. So Orpah does as she is told and departs. But Ruth instead “clings” to her mother-in-law (1:13-14).
Knowing the semantic range of “cling” (dābaq), we know that the action Ruth takes is kinship allegiance—this in spite her legal (and logical) opportunity to walk away. Ruth’s courageous choice of tribal solidarity is artfully recited in the first climax of the book:
Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people and your god, my god. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. (1:16-17)
Indeed, it is Ruth’s right to walk away, and it would surely be wise for her to do so, but she doesn't. And so the audience gets their first introduction to Ruth’s exceptional character. Naomi cannot provide any of the securities of a patriarchal household, but Ruth refuses to allow her aged mother-in-law to walk into the future alone.
Next we meet Boaz, whom our narrator describes as a “man of ḥayil.” This word may be translated as "power, wealth, or class” (all appropriate for this wealthy man), but it may also be translated as “character.” Upon meeting Ruth, who is gleaning in the fields trying to support impoverished Naomi, we find that in this case, hayil does indeed mean “character.” Boaz blesses Ruth: "May Yahweh reward your work, and your wages be full from Yahweh, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have sought refuge" (2:12). He instructs the young men not to harass this foreign girl, he invites her into the shelter for lunch, he ensures that she is fed. And very interesting, Naomi informs us that Boaz is also kin (2:20). And so we the reader begin to hope that this wealthy relative might see his way clear to embrace the legal role of “redeemer,” embrace this un-family as his own, and turn his kindness Naomi’s way.
And then we reach the climax—Naomi’s daring plan to entreat Boaz's aid. After weeks of harvest, and the revelry of the threshing, under the cover of darkness, far from town, after Boaz had enjoyed his fill of wine, a dressed and perfumed Ruth stealthily makes her way onto the threshing floor, and places herself at the sleeping man’s “feet.” What is going on here?! The audience is well aware that this is the ideal setting for seduction and sin. Will this impoverished woman leverage and seduce the compromised Boaz? Will Boaz force himself upon this vulnerable woman?
The question on everyone’s mind is if Ruth and Boaz are indeed the people of ḥayil that we have been told they are … or is this just another chapter from a well-worn tale of human compromise, seduction and exploitation?
The narrator, wise in the arts of dramatic tension, plays off of all sorts of sexual vocabulary, keeping us at the edge of our seats. Will she indeed “lay down”? What sort of “feet” is she uncovering? A quick look at the lexicon raises the stakes. To our dismay we learn that the Hebrew régel ("foot") can serve as a euphemism for “private parts”! An unhappy surprise indeed! As a result, many have read this story with Ruth in the role of seductress, who propositions a man of character and stature at his most vulnerable moment, exposing him in the night, and snuggling her perfumed body up against his nakedness.
But this is where Hebrew language comes to the rescue! Pull out your grammars and see if you can follow along!
It is true that régel when used in the dual (raglayîm) means the pubic region as it does in Gen 49:10. But in our passage, the term "feet" is not in the dual form. Rather, our word (Ruth 3:4, 7, 8) is margelôt—a very rare form of the noun régel that is prefixed by a Hebrew mem and is feminine plural instead of dual. In fact, this form appears only here in the book of Ruth and Daniel's description of an angelic messenger in Daniel 10:6. Here the angels’ “arms and legs (margelôt) gleam like polished bronze.” As "arms and legs" are a compound subject, it would be more than odd to read margelôt as "genitals." Rather, this word is best taken in Daniel and in Ruth as "lower legs.” Whew.
So what is going on here? A careful read shows us that Ruth actually tells us what is going on. When Boaz awakens, stunned to find this young woman sleeping at his feet (his actual feet), having tucked the lower part of his cloak over herself, hear what she says: “Spread the wing (i.e. hem) of your garment over me, as you are a redeemer” (3:9). In other words, our daring (and integrous) heroine has just proposed in word and in deed! As we know from ANY divorce documents (and the allusion in Ezek 16:9-12), to cover someone with the “wing of the garment” is to marry. To strip a woman of the same is to divorce. Ruth is forthrightly (and audaciously!) asking Boaz to marry her. And as we page back to Boaz and Ruth’s first introduction, we hear another allusion. In 2:12 Boaz greeted Ruth in the field and wished her the protection of Yahweh’s “wings” in reward for her courage and loyalty in coming to Israel with Naomi. On the threshing floor, Ruth asks Boaz to put his money where his mouth is—let your “wing (i.e. the hem of your cloak)” be Yahweh’s “wing,” and you offer me refuge. And Boaz says, “yes.” Moreover, recognizing the extreme risks that Ruth has taken by coming to him at night, as a foreigner and a woman with no means, he tells her "don't be afraid … all the people in the city know that you are a woman of ḥayil" (3:11). This is another rare phrase. We only find two women of ḥayil in the Bible. One is here, our Moabite Ruth, and the other is the “wife of noble character” in Prov 12:4 and 31:10. Well, how about that. Thus, as an outgrowth of her excellent character, Ruth helps to usher in a new day where broken dreams evaporate and a new hope dawns. And we the reader are confronted with the raw truth that it was the welcome of the outsider that saved a nation of insiders. It doesn’t get much better.
So, yes, our storyteller has kept us on the edge of our seats, artfully adding all sorts of sexual tension to the tale, taking us right to the brink. But we are never pushed over the brink. That is exactly the point. Ruth and Boaz are indeed people of ḥayil. This is not a story of exploitation. Rather, the integrity of these two paradigmatic characters serves as the ultimate foil to the excesses and injustices of the times in which they live—the era of the Judges where “every man did what was right in his own eyes.” May we the Church, find the strength to be and do the same—living as people of ḥayil in a world that desperately needs to see it done.
For more on Ruth & Boaz and their tale of integrity, see Sandy’s video curriculum and study guide at Seedbed. https://my.seedbed.com/product/the-epic-of-eden-ruth/
This article has been adapted from one originally published in Bible Study Magazine in March/April 2016
I have a question- where did Naomi and Ruth live when they returned to Bethlehem? Was it in Naomi’s house she had with her husband or was it in a cave?