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.