40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Ruth 1:19-2:13 (Episode 221)

Episode Date: June 22, 2020

Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem at the time of the harvest where Ruth begins to glean in the fields of a man named Boaz. Why does Naomi change her name? How is she viewing God in all of this? And how far does Boaz go to care for Ruth?  Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. the new Outlaw God with Stephen Paulson is living over there now. Two episodes into that podcast, and I've listened to both of them, enjoyed both of them. Stephen Paulson's one of those guys I could sort of just listen to riff for a while, and all of a sudden, you know, two hours has gone by, and I didn't realize it. Not that the podcast is that long. It's only about 30 minutes,

but it goes by quick when someone's just dropping interesting things on you. This is true about paulson uh chab he is one of those guys i don't know if i've ever heard stephen paulson speak and not taken something away from it and i don't mean the way that you know you listen to like any you know good preacher preach and you take the gospel away from it i mean take something away from what you're like huh never thought about that before didn't think i haven't thought about that like i'm gonna i'm gonna have to like hey i'm gonna have to mull that one over a little bit right uh which you know is is fun so now there's a podcast where every week paulson's dropping something that i'm at least rolling around in my hand a little bit looking at it from different

ways and uh so that's that's kind of a fun thing so i i recommend people give that podcast a shot if you're interested in experiencing that yeah he's one of those guys like uh you'll you'll receive whatever he gives and then the next thing you know you're writing something you're speaking somewhere else and you're you're using it right yeah yeah yeah i remember listening to him talk one time about uh election and the only passage was joseph being thrown in the you know the cistern joseph didn't feel very elect at that moment after having all these dreams and i'm like this guy is a genius this is not like who chooses this passage right right there's a man who knows how to use the old testament there you go that's man of

your own heart huh no yes but if you hear it see then if chad hears him do that chad knows next time i speak about election i'm at least gonna have to bring up the fact that joseph didn't feel very elect after all these dreams that god had given him when he's sitting in the bottom of a cistern yeah well i have a theory that i never say anything original you know that uh somewhere along the way somebody else said it and maybe i heard him and i forgot i'm just using it as my own now you know what's really frustrating is you'll write something or you'll you know interpret some verse uh you'll say something you'll think man that is so original i bet nobody's ever said that and like the next week you read it in a book you know i don't have any time that's happened to

me you know i think i come up with some some original idea nobody's ever thought of this or said this before and then uh blown out of the water by somebody else yeah dude i've gone to like speak at conferences and stuff before and i'll have some you know usually usually conferences are themed out and stuff and uh and uh someone that go i'll have something i think is great and and someone before me will like make my point like don't just make my point and i'll have to and i'm editing on the fly like well can't say that now whoops yeah let's put quotation marks around that now somebody else said it yeah yeah but uh yeah check out uh outlaw god it's over there uh wherever you listen to podcasts it's available there so check that out uh chad we're

we're still in the first chapter towards the end of the first chapter of the book of Ruth. We left with Ruth's words to Naomi about not leaving, about her God being her God and that she's determined to, to stay with her. Yeah. Yeah. It was a, it was a good beginning to, to the book last time. Talked about a little, some introductory stuff and kind of got the characters we got,

we have more characters to come of course, but we met everybody when and we got the the journey begun back to Bethlehem so we'll see what happens now so we'll pick up with verse 19 finish out these last four verses of the first chapter so I'll just go and read those uh to kind of get it in everybody's head so they it's talking about Naomi and Ruth so they both went until they came to Bethlehem and it came about when they had come to Bethlehem that all the city was stirred because of them uh that Hebrew verbs translated here is stirred could be like you know everything was sort of a buzz something like that anyway it was uh the whole city was sitting up and taking notice because of them you know they've been gone

a long time years and years and so I'm figuring most people thought eh you know never gonna see Naomi again. And the women said, is this Naomi? And she said to them, do not call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has witnessed against me and the almighty has afflicted me. So Naomi returned, and with her Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, who returned from the land of Moab, and they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. So there's, to begin with, there's some stuff here in the Hebrew that I think is worthy of notice, and you can see this even in most English translations, because

the obvious wordplay that is used is going to be footnoted in most of your most of your versions so the the 20th verse when the people say oh is this naomi she she replies don't call me don't call me naomi call me mara and mara is the word for bitter and then she goes on basically to explain that for the almighty has dealt very bitterly with me interestingly i think this is the only well first of all i don't think that she meant this like literally like don't call me naomi anymore you know she's just making a point but this is the only case in the old testament where someone basically changes their own name you know so we have a lot of name changes in the old testament uh but this is the only case where someone says something similar to this either in

a positive or or in a negative sense so don't call me naomi which means uh pleasant or beautiful or something like that, because my whole life has now changed. And as most people know from reading the Old Testament, names are not just kind of a word that you stick on someone. It is instead indicative of the whole person. So a name is identical to the person. Same with God. That's why you don't misuse the name of the Lord your God. It's not just a series of vocables, but it is a representation of God himself. We get this. I think I've made this one before that we get this because when someone starts maybe spreading lies in using our name for it,

not misusing our name, you know, Chad said this and I never said it, or Dan said this and you never said it. Well, we get angry of course, because they're, they're misusing our name. Fortunately, that's never happened to me. yeah yeah just speaking theoretically yeah yeah never never happened on social media or in any other context i'm always i'm always quoted and everything i say is is always you know read with the uh put the best construction no no one's ever attributed words to me that don't taste like mine that's never yeah i don't know it's true not sure what that would feel like but anyway we you

Everybody, I'm sure, has experienced that to some extent. And anyway, that's what Naomi is communicating here, that not just her name, but all of who she is has changed. Because, now this is significant. She doesn't say, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, because I fell on hard times. Or because I just experienced this whole string of bad luck. Or because literally I lost my husband

and my two sons. She attributes everything to Shaddai. That's the Hebrew word that's used here, which is more of a title than a name. Usually El Shaddai, the most high God, but sometimes it's just abbreviated as Shaddai, because Shaddai, the Almighty, has dealt variably for me. So as is typical throughout the Old Testament, this is attributed directly to God and not to just than whatever else. I mean, we do have instances in the Old Testament, and we'll see this when we get to Chronicles, where you kind of have a juxtaposition. Sometimes it's attributed to God, sometimes it's attributed to Satan. So what's kind of going on there? Well, we'll deal with that. We'll deal with that later on. But most of the time in the Old Testament, when people describe

not just good things, but bad things, they attribute that directly to God. Now, what do we do most of the time we say god allowed something to happen or permitted something to happen but you won't find that that kind of description in the old testament there's no speaking of god let this happen or allow this to happen instead they understand that in some way he was involved in this and in this particular case she actually goes right to the source and says god did this to me he embittered my life and she's not done she says i went out full but the lord has brought me back empty there's kind of it's kind of hard to describe in in just speaking about it but i'll see see if i can describe what's happening here with the hebrews so if we were to translate this more

literally be something like i let me find myself in the hebrew here okay i full went out but empty i returned or empty brought me back the lord the point i want to make is that the i and the lord are at the beginning and the end of the sentence so it's it's structured that way so as to kind of give the impression, just rhetorically speaking, as if there's the greatest separation between Naomi and the Lord. So the very way that it's written is odd in Hebrew. Jews don't write Hebrew in this way, which makes me think it was quite purposeful that she places herself at the beginning of the sentence

and the Lord at the end of the sentence. So as to indicate that there's this chasm, there's this break that exists between them. but what she's doing is basically once more attributing everything to to his actions i went out full the lord brought me back empty why do you call me naomi because two things going on here the lord yahweh has witnessed against me the the hebrew that's used there the verb is on ah which usually just means to answer but when it's joined to that preposition it means it kind of takes a it takes a legal connotation like if there's a a court and you have witnesses and one of the

witnesses is is speaking against someone is is testifying against them that is the particular language you choose here so the lord is represented as if he is on the witness stand somehow testifying against naomi and not only that she goes on to say that the almighty has afflicted me now not this afflicted me but keep in mind who she is she's a widow and if anyone is supposed to be taken care of in the old testament and if and if anyone is supposed to look over these people the widows the orphans it's god so what naomi is doing is setting herself up here as one who has been attacked by god afflicted by god embittered by god testified against by god this is her this is her form of lament as which we talked about last time this is her as doing

what the psalms very frequently do except the only thing that i wish she would have done differently this is just me i wish she would have actually addressed this in prayer to god which is usually what a lament is you know rather than talking about god you talk to god so when you are feeling attacked embittered testified against abandoned by god well then what the old testament would have you do is to translate all of that into the words of lament in which you actually speak directly to god you don't talk about him to others but you talk directly to him so if if i were nahomi's pastor and i was sitting there kind of listening to her go through this i would say uh you know what we need to do we need to we need to pray some psalms together

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can, you know, you know, cuss it out with God a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's interesting. You can you can understand maybe why somebody would think, don't call me pleasant. The Lord has testified against me. He has taken the stand against me. So this is not someone I probably want to go speak with. He seems to be interested in my takedown. yeah uh and then you know in the esv you have uh the almighty has brought calamity upon me yeah so she's attributed any entire he he brought this calamity on me and so this is this is his doing right which it would maybe be another reason why you'd be like probably not going to go to that person with my concern so this is sort of the the way the understanding she's operating with

is literally that the Lord is against her, right? I mean, because if somebody's going to testify against you, like they're not on your side. Right, yeah. Yeah, there's a book I read years ago. It was on the Lament Psalms. I can't remember the author's name, but I've always remembered the title,

When God Becomes Your Enemy. Or when God becomes my, I think it's When God Becomes Your Enemy, not my enemy. But anyway, it was capturing the essence of these psalms that are like this where and many of the psalms are i mean they use this same kind of language where god has either abandoned or is actually actively attacking israel so it's one of the it's one of the strange things about uh about the psalms is they actually give us words like that like god gives us words to say to him when we're angry at him yeah i mean from a human perspective

was really strange to be like you know me telling my wife you know next time you're angry at me here's what you can say yeah and it's not i'm sorry no no it's not no it's not at all i was reading uh i don't know if i can find it when we're uh we're sitting here i was reading uh oh yeah here it is i was reading a commentary this morning where uh a guy was talking about these verses and he was just taking naomi to task and he did not like at all what uh what she had said so he uh describes her as dealing with god as if he has sovereignty without grace power without compassion judicial will without mercy he describes naomi's uh viewed side by side there's no doubt that the foreign young foreign woman cuts a more impressively noble

figure than naomi does then this is really what got me in the end the reader is repulsed repulsed by naomi but drawn to her moabite daughter-in-law i don't know i don't know man i'm sympathetic uh i have to i love naomi i love her honesty well dude this is what you have to have to know so it sounds like god is sovereign but but not gracious yeah well we don't exactly have a christ yet um so i mean uh it is i mean this is in the time of the judges i mean go back to what we just read uh god it doesn't yeah they did obviously there's moments of grace and stuff and the judges and god delivers them and this kind of thing but yeah you're it's an easy thing to back read it back philip be like yeah but what about jesus becoming you know what about god

becoming flesh and taking on the sins of the world and dying for you and giving you his free gift of salvation this isn't exactly in the hermeneutic uh that that naomi's working with here right like all she knows it's there is a there is a certain uh there's a certain amount of hubris attached to the claim you could go off into a country have your spouse die and all your kids die come back and just be like totally convinced of the grace of god with no knowledge of christ okay all right man like if that's what you think if you i mean if you think that that's how you'd respond in that situation then you're a better man than me i guess yeah well it's so easy to sit in judgment on uh like like he's did like he did with his comments there but you know at the

same time even just everybody just put everybody to sit there like job and be like blessed be the name of the lord right yeah well i just about to bring up job yeah and people often you know refer to that particular incident i'm like keep reading yeah read the next chapter once you get past the opening prose section to the rest of the book the first thing out of job's mouth is cursed be the day of my birth yeah there's no more oh thank you lord you've given and you've taken away. I'll praise be to you. No, he's like damning his birthday. He's like, I wish I would have been, I wish I'd have died in the womb. And of course he goes on throughout the rest of the book to, to use kind of same, this, the same language as Naomi, like, you know, he can't,

but in this case, he can't get a day in court yet. Like he wants to face his accuser. He wants to talk to God face to face, but he can't. if you think that job is just sort of this guy that has this uh great understanding that he's a sinner and that god is just you're not you're not reading it right because what what job job is definitely he definitely understands the sovereignty of god uh he doesn't he understands that like god hasn't somehow lost control and this is why this stuff is happening to him he knows that but he's also like i want to go to court and i want to go to court now because this is unjust because i am a pretty righteous dude yeah yeah that is the that's the theme that

reverberates through all those chapters and then you get to the end and uh god says job has spoken of me rightly and his friends have not so i think of i think of that when i come across comments like i was reading earlier where someone is repulsed when a character speaks of god this way well you're gonna be repulsed by a whole lot of the old testament a whole lot of the psalms and i think just naomi's acting human like again i mean i don't know how you think you'd act in this situation but uh i mean what if you remove the the full knowledge i mean obviously not saying Naomi doesn't have any promises or anything like that obviously the gospel is present in the Old Testament

it's in shadows that window is a little dirty you know, it's not, you don't have she doesn't have what we have where you're like this all looks horrible but I know that Christ is coming again

and the resurrection of the dead and the new heavens and the new, you don't have all this man, so like if you subtract a sort of clear picture of all of those things and just sort of say I know that God is good but this is what's going on

I mean if you think you would do so much better I don't know if I'm buying it yeah well I mean yeah it's one thing to know God is gracious and merciful in the Old Testament but it's quite another thing to look at the crucified Christ and to truly

see grace and mercy there that changes everything Especially at the time of the judges, when you're like, well, let's see, how does God operate? You do the bad thing long enough, and he, like, knocks your head off. This is sort of how this has been going. And Naomi feels like her head has been knocked clean off her shoulders at this point. So she's obviously, and this is why I think she even uses this testify language. She's like, obviously, obviously we did something that he really didn't like.

Because we are being, I mean, this all seems like she believes that she's being punished for something. um and i know we don't know what it is and i think that the best thing we've got is kind of what we said last week is that she might think that god is not exactly happy that they ever left in the first place and went and hung out with the with the pagans and intermarried and she is the only thing that i can at least pull from the text to be like i wonder i you have to at least wonder is she thinking this was a really this journey was and it was a really bad idea yeah and now she's coming back to bethlehem with this moabite daughter-in-law right right yeah she's bringing a foreigner back with her and we kind of fit i mean you if you read through the uh

curses of covenant that are talked about in deuteronomy leviticus a lot of what is talked about there a lot of what happened in naomi fits with those covenantal curses so i mean we we do this all the time right we kind of slip into this kind of view of of tit for tat you know if i do this wrong and then something bad happens to me i'm like oh yeah yeah you know the two might not be in any way related but yeah i know i know i messed up doing this and then all of a sudden something bad happens i'm like yeah this god coming out to get me right we we do these kind of things in our minds all the time so it makes sense that that she would be she'd be thinking the same thing yeah okay well it's chapter one chapter two so we're gonna meet uh somebody new

now at the opening of the chapter and we're going to have the the first interaction between him that is boaz and ruth so we're going to spend quite of this quite a bit of this chapter out in the field see what happens now naomi had a kinsman of her husband a man of great wealth the family of a limilect whose name was boaz and ruth and moabita said to naomi please let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after one in whose sight I may find favor. And she said to her, go, my daughter. So she departed and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And she happened to come to the portion of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech. Now Boaz came from Bethlehem and said to the reapers, may the Lord be with you.

and they said to him may the lord bless you then boaz said to his servant who was in charge of the reapers whose young woman is this and the servant in charge of the reapers answered and said she is the young moabite woman who returned with naomi from the land of moab and she said please let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves thus she came and has remained from morning until now and there's a few words after this nobody really knows what they mean my translate my new american standard has she has been sitting in the house for a little while which makes no sense they're out in the field and the english standard version has so she's continued here from early morning until now except for a short rest

so there's four words in hebrew and nobody really knows how to translate those it's just kind of a mystery so literally it'd be this her sitting the house a little which makes just as much sense in hebrew as it as it does in english so whatever that means we'll kind of leave that to the side for now all right so we got the scene set up and uh we meet boaz this is kind of a literary device where we're introduced to someone in the opening verse and then he kind of fades away for a few verses and he comes back into the scene so we're told that naomi had this relative relative of her husband a man of well get translated different ways so he's a man maybe of great wealth he's described as someone who is gibor chayil. Gibor can be someone who's a warrior, someone who is

maybe a powerful person in the community. So sometimes it's translated as a man of great worth or a man of great standing or a man of substance. Whatever it is, it basically is indicating that he's not just your typical guy, so he has some clout. He's a member of the community that has some influence, maybe some wealth, has servants under him, so he's not just your typical guy in the street, and his name is Boaz. Then Ruth says to Naomi, this is probably March or April, so the spring of the year, it's when the harvest is beginning, that she's going to go out and she's going to glean among the ears of grain we probably all know what gleaning is it's when someone who is who doesn't have their own property doesn't have

their own fields is basically living on the the mercy and compassion of others when they go out and glean those going out and basically scavenging so they're they're able to maybe pick up heads of grain that had fallen down, that the reapers dropped. It was part of Israelite law that the corners of the field were not supposed to be reaped. Instead, that portion was to be left for people such as Ruth so that she could go out there and gather enough grain basically just to exist on a hand-to-mouth lifestyle. So I've compared it in the past too. It's kind of like someone in our society living off of basically picking up trash or maybe recycling aluminum cans. So what do they do? You know, that was just what they do. When I was, when I was driving a

truck, I'd see these guys all the time who would pull up in this old pickup truck next to a dumpster and they would go through the dumpster and, you know, maybe they'd be getting out some rolls of carpet that they could go sell somewhere, or maybe they're collecting pallets that they go sell somewhere that's that's kind of this existence you're just basically living off of things that other people have thrown away or left out for you to pick up so that you'll have a little bit of something to live off of so she's gleaning and she is a great there's a great expression here literally what my translation says she happened to come to the portion of the field belonging to boaz in hebrew it is that her chance chanced upon that portion of the field and it's like a

we might even translate it as luck would have it something like that but it's it's a big old wink you know like it's one of those exaggerated winks that somebody might give you and like not subtle but it's like when they're and i want to make sure that you see it like big old wink like yeah she gets that so her chance she just you know happened out of sheer luck to come to this portion of the field that belonged to boaz i think this is a significant verse in the whole book actually because this is the this is the author's way of making sure just in the way that he phrases it we don't miss the fact that the irony is it wasn't chance is what what the author's yeah this is this it's all set up this is like if uh you have a crush on some on some girl uh you find out that

she's uh you know going bowling on thursday night and then you know and then and then you just so happen to be going bowling on thursday night and then you know and as she arrives you're like what are the chances i'd oh yeah you like you like bowling too that's exactly what's going on here yeah except the one who's setting this all up of course is is god and his providence he's directing all of this it just you know so you happen to happen to be there and uh and it's not even done yet because verse four begins now behold now i think we're so used to seeing this word in english translation that we sometimes forget its significance this is anytime you have behold it's wanting to get your attention it's like hey watch this hey pay

attention, or hey, notice this. That's the purpose of behold. So now behold, hine, Boaz came from Bethlehem about the same time. So not only does she end up in his field, Boaz is showing up at exactly the same time. And he says to the reapers, this must have been some sort of customary greeting. I mean, we still have this in church today. A lot of churches will say, you know, the pastor will say may the lord be with you and they'll respond and also with you or and with your spirit so he says may the lord be with you and they respond may the lord may the lord bless you so kind of a ancient religious greeting i suppose something like that then boaz said to his servants you know who who is this who whose young woman is this like to whom does she belong in the sense of

like, what family is she from? Or, you know, is she connected with a man or a woman in some way? Is she a servant of someone? Because, of course, he recognized that she's not one of his own. And the guy who's in charge informs him that this is the young Moabite woman who returned with Naomi from the land of Moab, and she requested that she be able to glean among the workers who we're out the field. So picking up from there, verse eight, we'll see what happens. Boaz has a few things to say now. So he goes over to her, Boaz says to Ruth and says, listen carefully, my daughter, do not glean in another field. And furthermore, do not go from this one, but stay here with my maids. Stay here with my female servants. The verb for stay

here is davach it's the same word that we saw in chapter one where it says that that ruth ruth was cleaving to naomi and i pointed out in the last episode that this is the same verb that's used in genesis chapter 2 for a man to leave his father and mother and davach to his wife cleave to his wife so stick close we might say don't move stay here with with my mates let your eyes be on the the field which they reap and go after them indeed i have commanded my servants not to touch you so this is like you know boaz's sexual harassment policy i suppose leave her alone you know don't mess with her uh and he so he's commanded them this and then he says he just keeps adding more and more that's going to do for you know if you're thirsty he says go to the water jars

and drink from what the servants have drawn so he's going overboard i mean he's wanting to make sure that she's taken care of don't go anywhere else stay here and stay by the female servants and i've you know i've given some instructions to the guys to leave you alone don't mess with you and what's her response she falls on her face and bows to the ground this is the this is the verb that's used in hebrew for for worship as well we've talked about this many times in the past that when you worship in hebrew style your whole body is involved you don't just sit there and worship in your heart your body is included in the worship because literally it means to worship in hebrew means to bow down it's very similar to the greek the greek translates this this hebrew

verb into proskuneo, which literally means to take a knee. So to worship is to bow down or to kneel down. So she's bowing to the ground. I don't mean by all that that she's worshiping him. It's just this was what you did when you were inferior in the presence of superior, or you were in front of someone who was like a king, where you would bow down. That's what they did. she so she fell on her face she bowed down and she said why have i found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me since i am a foreigner it's a really cool word play that's going on here in verse 10 so the word the verb for take notice and the word the noun for foreigner are both formed from the same three-letter root, N-K-R, nakar.

So one commentator has suggested the wordplay here would be something like, why have you noticed the unnoticeable? Something like that. So why should you nakar me? Why should you take notice of me since I am a nokriya? Why nakar me when I'm a nokriya? Why take notice of me when I'm really someone you shouldn't take notice of? since I'm a foreigner.

So Ruth is making a play on words there and, of course, communicating. Why would you even pay any attention to me? I'm from Moab, and you don't really have any connection with me. At least she doesn't know that at this point. So why are you... Basically, why are you going out of your way

to show mercy and compassion to me? I mean, what Boaz has done here would be fairly extreme if she was an Israelite. The law is like you gotta let people glean, but you don't need to make sure that, you know, you don't have to

say, go drink out, go, you don't get thirsty, just go over and get a glass of water. Don't go to other fields, it's a little dangerous out there, so, you know, who knows what's gonna happen. I've told my guys to not mess with you, and, you know, my maid, you know, stay close to the maid servants,

like, they're gonna watch over you. This would have all been this is no this is over the top if you were an israelite really makes no sense in this situation um and it does seem that boaz does have uh he does seem to imply that that this sort of if you're a you know a young woman that maybe this gleaning vocation is a little hazardous yeah yeah yeah i would assume so i mean you're you're not protected and you know anything can anything could happen to you so yeah he's he's yeah he's over the top making sure that she's taken care of and now in verse 11 we we find out a little bit more about what's drawn him to her

and why he is seeing her in this way and taking care of her in this way verse 11 in response to her question why have i found favor in your sight boaz answers her he says all that you have done for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband has been fully reported to me. And how you left your father and your mother and the land of your birth and came to a people that you did not previously know. May the Lord reward your work and your wages be full from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge. Or we could translate that, under whose wings you have come to seek asylum so boaz has heard the whole story hey bethlehem is not a big place and i mean i grew up in a small town you grew up in a relatively small town we know the

way small towns work yeah you know somebody sneezes on one end of the town and everybody else knows about it five minutes later the other end of town so you can imagine what it was like in uh a village basically yeah this was a small place so by the time that naomi showed up i guarantee you within an hour everybody knew everything that had transpired so of course boaz has heard about what's happened with naomi's return he knows all about ruth he knows what she's done she he knows basically the sacrifices that ruth has made in order to be there with with her mother-in-law all that all that she's done to just basically give up everything that she had previously known in order to devote the rest of her life to naomi

and what's interesting about boaz too is that he i mean he says that he desires that god bless ruth that he uh repay ruth but then also uh he's a decent theologian because he understands that if god's gonna bless and repay ruth that he might have something to do with that yeah yeah that's precisely that yeah he's a good theologian yeah he's i love the language he uses too because he really he describes her almost like an abraham figure right she i mean he's uh he says, you've, you left your father and your mother in the land of your birth. Well, that's Genesis 12 language. Yeah. God says to Abraham, I want you to leave your country and your, your father's house and everything that you've known and go to the land that I'm going

to show you. So he's described her as sort of a, this modern day Abraham exile, who's now left her father and mother and now come to live in the land of Israel. And may the Lord reward your work, he says, and your wages be full from the Lord. In other words, may God look upon you in such a way that he sees and recognizes and responds to what you have done in such a way that you find peace and that you find security. And then he uses this image we find elsewhere in the old testament beautiful image under whose wings you have come to seek refuge so god is often pictured and this isn't just in the old testament this is actually a relatively common near eastern image where god is pictured as a bird with outspread wings who's sheltering her young

keeping them safe from anything that might this is this is jesus uses this image uh lamenting over jerusalem yeah yeah how many times have i longed to gather you as a chicken does her little ones a hen gathers her little ones so yeah it gets it gets it from this and it's it's got it throughout the old testament that seeking refuge under the wings of wings of god well as is a little jesus like he is a little jesus we'll get we'll see we'll see that more and more yeah we'll get to the whole uh the redeemer language is at the end of chapter two so we'll get to that next episode yeah well we don't even have to wait till then i mean the next episode we're gonna we're gonna do some uh we're gonna do some bread and wine i mean that's about just a pretty jesus

move yeah there you go there you go yeah all right yeah well we are out of time hey things are looking up man i mean you know the first the first chapter is a little rough uh not as rough as judges but things are starting to take a turn and uh things are gonna get better and better going forward so hopefully you guys will will stay tuned uh if you want to help us out and rate and review the podcast that does help us out you can go to itunes or wherever you listen to podcasts to give it a rating uh say something nice about it helps it show up in searches a little bit more chad i'll see you next week all right see you then We'll see you next time.