Ruth 3

This chapter contains what I think is the most... whats a good word? Ah, 'unique' marriage proposal I've ever heard of. Apparently laying down next to a man and uncovering some not-well-defined portion of his lower anatomy could be taken to mean that you wanted to marry him. My, how times have changed!

There are some other customs and habits of the time period that are also shown here, though they aren't the focus. Apparently the places where harvests were processed - the threshing floor - doubled as a home away from home. Boaz is described as sleeping 'at the far end of the grain heap' (verse 7, NET). Maybe he had a cot or some blankets to sleep on, but that he would just lay down right there next to his work seems very foreign to me.

On the topic of marriage, it turns out that there was a pecking order of sorts within their culture. Boaz wasn't the closest male relative, so he had to check with the man who was before being able to commit to Ruth in marriage. We also have it implied here that Boaz was not a young man - but just how much older than Ruth he was, or whether he was already married, is not told (multiple marriages seem common at this time - see I Samuel 1).

Ruth 2

I like the glimpse we get in this chapter into life during this era. Ruth heads out to pick what were effectively scraps left behind accidentally while the wheat crop was being harvested. In modern days we would expect someone to just go 'get a job' - but I'm guessing women weren't really allowed to work in shops or other occupations, and doing something in this case was certainly better than begging.

Luckily, or perhaps through God's providence, she ends up working in a field owned by a relative of Naomi's who happens to be present at the field and asks about her. When he finds out who she is he takes measures to ensure she is taken care of without revealing his identity to her - though Naomi fills Ruth in on that point once she returns in the evening.

Boaz, the man in question, allows Ruth to continue working in this fashion throughout the end of the harvest. It sounds like that provides for both women during that season, but I wonder if Naomi also worked in some position in the village. Sometimes I wish the Bible had even more details on things like that.

Ruth 1

The book of Ruth starts off setting the scene. It is during the time of the Judges, and specifically while a famine was afflicting Judah. A man decides to take his family - a wife and two sons - to live in a nearby country... presumably one where there is more opportunity. We don't know how long they are gone in total, but it was a substantial amount of time as they settled, then the husband died and his sons married. We know they were there for about a decade from that point (Ruth 1:4), and since they were married for ten years without having children I want to know what sort of birth-control they had ;)

Anyways, the sons then die too - and Naomi (the wife/mother) decides to return to her own people. The devotion that Ruth shows by insisting to return with her is touching, especially her speech recorded in verses 16 and 17. I know the story already, of course, but even if I didn't I could see from this that Ruth is going to play a special part: her faith and commitment are amazing, especially considering her background.

Another interesting thing is that even after being gone so long (over a decade - maybe a lot longer) the people back in her hometown - Bethlehem - still remember her. They wouldn't have had telephones or the internet to keep in contact with her easily, and I don't think they even had a primitive version of the post office (especially not across country borders)... yet the people, or more specifically the women, still recognized her and remembered her name. I guess that isn't that hard to imagine, and from Naomi's point of view must have been encouraging despite her downtrodden spirit.

I'm back!

I'm afraid I took a rather longer break from reading the Bible than I had intended. My last post was just before a family vacation this past spring, and while I continued to read through much of the trip I didn't end up blogging or even journaling about it - and I completely failed to pick back up when I returned.

Since then my life and relationships have been through pretty rocky places, but I dearly want to get back in tune with God and His Word. I'm picking up in I Samuel with my wife, Rose, and we will be reading a chapter each day (individually) and discussing it in the evening. I am hoping to get back in the habit of also blogging about my thoughts and maybe some insights when we go over the chapters together.

After arranging all of that, though, I realized that I missed Ruth! I read it and the first parts of I Samuel while on vacation, but I never wrote down anything about it. I'll rectify that in the next couple of days, and then dig into the stuff Rose and I are reading together. That will probably mean more than one post a day for a short time till I catch up.

Upcoming Vacation

My family and I are going on a vacation for a couple of weeks, so starting tomorrow I may not be able to post every day. I will still do my daily reading, Lord willing, and I will try to post when I can - but I wanted to let you all know what is going on so that you don't worry at my intermittent silence over the coming days. For anyone interested, we will be posting details and perhaps pictures over at our family blog.

Judges 21

I knew that the results of the last chapter would not be good. Now the Israelites are regretful of their near-total destruction of the Benjamites. Instead of just living with their actions, they make it worse by wiping another whole Israeli city out and taking its virgin girls captive as wives for some of the remaining men. That isn't enough, so they also advise the Benjamites to kidnap the daughters of Shiloh. Frankly I don't understand why either of those groups of girls would be willing to submit to that sort of treatment, nor can I imagine that none of the other Israelites had friends or family in the towns that were wiped out; if you did, why would you allow this to happen? I think there are just a lot of cultural differences between our modern society and theirs, which probably account for many of the seemingly strange behaviors of those times. Women were obviously not treated as equals, and without a central leadership (no human king) we are told that 'each man did what he considered to be right' (verse 25). Anarchy, anyone?

Judges 20

I knew the events of the last chapter would not lead to anything good. The Israelites are rightly appalled at the behavior of those in the town of Gibeah, but their Benjamite brothers protect them rather than handing them over to be punished. Because of that, the whole country goes to war - and tens of thousands of soldiers are killed on both sides. Moreover, not only is Gibeah destroyed (a measure I can understand) but the whole Benjamite tribe is wiped out almost to a man. Even the women and children are erased, with only 600 men who escape the battles surviving. I'm pretty sure descendants of Benjamin still live today, though, so there should be some sort of resolution to this in the next and final chapter of Judges.

What surprises me here is the level of total warfare that is waged over this. In modern times we would call destruction of this degree 'genocide', and it was done by the Israelites against their own people. Why did all of them deserve to die? I understand killing the men responsible, and even the measure of destroying their city - and since the Benjamites sent soldiers to aid that city I understand defeating them too. However, it seems a bit much to go to the effort of them wiping out all the cities, towns, people and animals in that land; after all, what threat were they? Perhaps we should look back and shake our heads, or perhaps there is a lesson to be learned here about how war must sometimes be conducted. I just wish I knew which it was...