What Boaz Said

Ruth 2:5-6

Boy meets girl.. Or in this case.. Local leader meets young refugee widow.. Was it love or practicality? Kindness or a sexy spark or both?

The saviour/romantic focus of the Scroll of Ruth is Boaz - a local Judean landowner, relative of Naomi’s family and a man who seems kind and generous enough to help Ruth the heroine - a young widow in distress.

But beyond the tropes of a word that shows up often in this scroll -Hesed - love - and how to walk the talk of charitable living, what’s hiding here is the debate that still splits Jewish homes and communities apart. How do we welcome people who are not born Jewish into our homes and families and what are the options for relationships and marriage between people of different ethnic, racial or religious differences? The Scroll of Ruth is seen by most modern scholars to have been written precisely to address this issue and to present a case for integration of foreigners into the tribe -- in stark contrast to other biblical texts and positions.

Boaz is a member of the tribe of Judah - one of the twelve tribes that with time will gain a great prominent position in the Jewish lineage - thanks in part to him. From his union with Ruth who is forever known for her tribe of origin - she is a Moabite - King David will be born, and at some point in the mythic future - the messiah. It’s precisely because of her lineage that Ruth is known as ‘The Mother of Monarchy’ and it’s because of Boaz that such unions and the act of conversion to Judaism became an important - and hotly debated - aspect of Jewish life.

It all begins with a glance, and with an act of kindness to a hungry refugee.

On their first day back in Bethlehem, at the time of the harvest of barley, Ruth heads out to the fields to find some leftovers on the edges of the fields, as is the custom.

As she gleans in the corners, Boaz, the field owner, sees her and inquires about her identity:

וַיֹּאמֶר בֹּעַז לְנַעֲרוֹ הַנִּצָּב עַל־הַקּוֹצְרִים לְמִי הַנַּעֲרָה הַזֹּאת׃ וַיַּעַן הַנַּעַר הַנִּצָּב עַל־הַקּוֹצְרִים וַיֹּאמַר נַעֲרָה מוֹאֲבִיָּה הִיא הַשָּׁבָה עִם־נׇעֳמִי מִשְּׂדֵי מוֹאָב׃

Boaz said to the young man who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose girl is that?”

The servant in charge of the reapers replied, “She is a Moabite who came back with Naomi from the country of Moab.

Ruth 2:5-6

Ruth’s foreign status is repeated here - twice. But that does not deter Boaz’s gracious hospitality. He goes to her directly and invites her to stay on, and to glean all she needs. When she tries to thank him, he explains why he’s doing this:

וַיַּעַן בֹּעַז וַיֹּאמֶר לָהּ הֻגֵּד הֻגַּד לִי כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־עָשִׂית אֶת־חֲמוֹתֵךְ אַחֲרֵי מוֹת אִישֵׁךְ וַתַּעַזְבִי אָבִיךְ וְאִמֵּךְ וְאֶרֶץ מוֹלַדְתֵּךְ וַתֵּלְכִי אֶל־עַם אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָדַעַתְּ תְּמוֹל שִׁלְשׁוֹם׃

Boaz replied, “I have been told of all that you did for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband, how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth and came to a people you had not known before.

Ruth 2:11

Robert Alter highlights the meaning of what Boaz said:

“These words are the most significant literary allusion in the book. They explicitly echo God’s first words to Abraham in Genesis 12:1, “Go forth from your land and your birthplace and your father’s house.” Now it is a woman, and a Moabite, who reenacts Abraham’s long trek from the east to Canaan. She will become a founding mother of the nation as he was the founding father. Ruth’s paradoxical journey outward from home that proves to be a “going back” to home has been aptly summarized by Herbert Marks: these “brief chapters outline the two principal archetypes of Western narrative, the Abrahamic myth of definitive rupture and the Odysseian myth of ultimate return, the journey home.”

With just a few words, despite of and perhaps because of her exotic foreignness, Boaz bids Ruth welcome not only to his field but also to the Jewish pantheon. He invites her to eat with the workers, to dip bread in vinegar, and to feel as one of them. Through this simple act of breaking bread together - they begin to talk, and that’s perhaps where the romance begins. Ruth, for her part, eats very little and makes sure to pack as much as she can to bring back to Naomi, who’s waiting back home.

In “Bread, Vinegar, and Destiny” in Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth” Simi Peters comments:

“Unbeknownst to him, when Boaz invites Ruth to eat with his servants, he is actually calling their shared descendants to a transformative destiny, irrevocably changing the entire world with a simple act. This alone is not sufficient to create a redemptive dynasty, however. That can only be accomplished by the courage and loving-kindness of Ruth who "ate, and was satisfied, and left over." She alone could take something so small and make it so great.”

So is Boaz the posterboy not just for kind men but also for Jewish men who prefer women of other cultures to their own? It’s important to remember that at least on some level, Ruth already joined the Jewish people when she clung to Naomi in the first chapter. Conversion was not yet a societal reality in those ‘early days of the judges’ and so technically Boaz will marry a woman who is now part of his tribe and tradition.

That is perhaps the agenda of the authors.

Most scholars agree that the Scroll of Ruth was likely written in the late Persian period, as Judeans are back on their land following the Babylonian exile. Ruth was therefore written during or after the authorship of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah that describe the return to Zion in vivid detail (we’ll get there in a few weeks.)

One of the definitive features of Ezra-Nehemiah is their defense of tribal ties and their negation of any attempts at inter-marriage. They will in fact codify what many consider the biological-ethnic boundaries of Judaism, and will eventually lead the way to the possibility of conversion to Judaism.

The authors of Ruth and the authors of Ezra-Nehemiah, even if contemporaries, saw the world through very different lenses. So it’s possible that the inclusion of Ruth in the bible is precisely in response to the harsh attitudes of Ezra and his peers - and in defense of Boaz as the prototype of Judeans who do say yes to life and love with people of other national origins. There is much more here to uncover and decipher, and this will be part of our exploration in the coming months.

Prof.Jacob L. Wright,Prof. RabbiTamara Cohn Eskenazi write a lot about that, and in this article suggest:

“By comparing the aggressive approach of Nehemiah towards the foreign wives of the Judahites with the positive role of Ruth as a Moabite woman who married into an Israelite family, we can attempt to uncover the core messages about Jewish identity that the two texts have in common…

…In Ruth, Judah is an already established society for which the marriage of someone who wishes to integrate herself fully into this society does not pose a problem. In order to underscore the very different social situations, the authors of Ruth, likely writing after Ezra-Nehemiah, at a time when Judah was more firmly established, set their story in an epoch of Israel’s early history (“during the days of the Judges” Ruth 1:1).

The authors of Ruth presuppose the achievements of Ezra and Nehemiah, and take their project a step forward. In the portrait of their protagonist, they present a model for including the Other in the newly reconsolidated community of Judah. Later the rabbis would, appropriately, point to Ruth as a paradigm for their new model of integrating outsiders (giyyur or “conversion”).”

Boaz, according to this and many other studies, becomes the role model for inclusion, with a generous gesture that may have been motivated by attraction but nevertheless provided for the wellbeing of people in need and would continue to be the driving force of this story and the generations to come.

Coming next - the harvest season is about to be over. What happens now?

Image: Boaz; Rembrandt van Rijn, 1643

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