40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Ruth 2:14-3:9 (Episode 222)

Episode Date: June 27, 2020

Boaz breaks out the bread and wine and serves Ruth. He instructs his workers to leave grain behind for Ruth to gather. Naomi instructs Ruth to make a move in perusing Boaz that involves uncovering his "feet" and calling him a redeemer. 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. Also go over to the YouTube channel. We got a new series that is dropping every week about postmodernism. It's actually called Questions on Culture and Belief. And that is with Scott Keith, Bruce Hillman, and myself. And we're asking interesting questions like, are all beliefs equal? Or what is certainty? That sort of stuff. We drop one of those videos every week they're usually about 40 minutes long or so i know that you can handle 40 minutes of

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might not know that chad's dropping videos because you're not on social media and you're just listening to this podcast so you know if you're just a podcast listener but you don't want to you don't want to do the social media thing at least you could do youtube and uh and get some more content but if you are a social media user i don't think i've ever done this chad you could follow chad or i uh on social media because we are on there in case you were wondering yeah so you can look us up on twitter and facebook and instagram all that all those things we're doing we're doing all the talk i'm not i'm not on tiktok i'm not on tiktok either yeah you could probably follow my wife on tiktok i think she's on there uh nope no i'm not doing the i'm not doing the tiktok i'm

i'm not on the snapchat i'm not on those the big three facebook instagram twitter you can follow chad and i over there or crystal fast or 1517 all right chad uh we're like smack dab in the middle of the second chapter of ruth uh ruth and boaz have met and uh boaz has given her some good news told her that she doesn't need to go glean anywhere else she should just stay right there yeah they've uh they started off uh on the right foot that's for sure yeah i mean you gotta wonder is boaz just like the nicest guy ever or is he also a little interested right from the jump yeah i have a feeling that uh there's a little bit of mixed motivations here yeah i'm sure he is a very nice guy i mean nothing in this book that's what's so weird about this when you think

about this actually set in the period of the judges because you know you're going through judges you're like are there any decent people left i mean just i'm talking about like super righteous people i'm just like decent decent nice people because you you finish judges you're like i don't know man maybe there's not and you get to ruth and it's like wow you know like you leave this this uh deep dark cave full of these vampire bats and then you walk out into this bright sunlight it's like wow this is this is nice that's kind of what i oh that's the impression you get of uh of naomi and of ruth and of and of boaz you should just you know he's got a people you wouldn't mind being your neighbor yeah they're right next to you yeah boaz help you out with some

yard work help you fix your car like do whatever whatever you need that's a it's a boaz boaz kind of person but yeah when they you know when they met he right away he noticed her and uh he made sure nobody was going to bother her and not only that but i mean he's just he's going to go on as we'll see now and he's going to make sure that she never goes hungry so some pretty cool stuff coming up here i think we'll we'll probably have uh two this one and another one or this one in two more episodes and we'll uh we'll get our way all the way through ruth so got some got some good stuff coming up so yeah we uh we left off uh in chapter two around verse 13 i believe something like that. And verse 13 is when Ruth responds to all this good stuff, all this basically this

chesed, this love, this mercy that Boaz has shown her. And she says, I have found favor in your sight, my Lord, for you have comforted me and indeed have spoken kindly to your maidservant, though I am not like one of your maidservants. It's interesting there because I bring it up now because it's become significant later on as you go through the book there's a gradual progression of the names and titles which are either applied to Ruth or which she applies to herself so when we meet her she's a wife and then she's a widow and now she identifies herself as a shifcha, which in Hebrew is basically the lowest rank of servant. So there's, you know, there's different kinds of servants in the ancient world. And at this point, Ruth identifies herself

as the lowest of servants. And as we'll see, when we get into chapter three, she's going to raise herself up a little bit more in the way she designates herself. And there's a gradual progression as we go along. Anyway, here's what happens next. Verse 14 of chapter two, at mealtime boaz said to her come here that you may eat of the bread and dip your piece of bread dip your morsel in the well something uh you can translate that wine uh you can translate it vinegar you can translate it wine vinegar there's various ways to translate that we'll come back to that in a second so what'd she do well she sat beside the reapers and he served her boaz served her roasted grain and she ate and was satisfied and had some left let's pause there for a second

i mean he's he's already done a lot and now he's like doing even more he's like this is kind of getting back to what you said earlier makes you just wonder i mean is is he just like a one of these guys who is just a super nice neighborly sort of man who's willing to to help out the disenfranchised the hungry or is he doing something else going on here is he doing this all day every day with everybody yeah anybody shows up in his field gleaning come on now man i don't feel like he's doing this with just every person yeah yeah well this is all he does all the time yeah so i mean he's uh he's going above and beyond here you know he's inviting her yeah come come sit with us be part of the group you know he basically invites her to have a seat at

the table and to eat of the this roasted grain which i suppose was a pretty typical meal that they would be that would they would be eating and uh to dip her bread in the the helmets is the hebrew there and i did a little little research on that it's uh it's kind of hard to pin down exactly what it is so it probably is possibly alcoholic in some way because if you go back and you read the rules about nazarites you know there's lots of things they can't consume they can't consume any alcoholic beverages and this is listed among some of the things that they can't consume but then elsewhere it's uh it's used in reference to uh something that's sort of a sour like a sour wine a sour drink something like that something kind of make you i don't know

puck of your lips or something like that now this is this is another kind of fascinating i don't want to get too far down this rabbit hole but so if you look in psalm 69 verse 21 i'm just quoting this from memory i think this is right they gave me gall for my food and for my thirst they gave me vinegar or sour wine to drink i believe that's where that verse goes now that's So that's the Hebrew word, right? That's sour wine or wine vinegar. Now, here's the fascinating part. I looked at that in the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation.

And the Greek translates that Hebrew word as oxos, which is the exact word that's used to describe the liquid that the soldiers gave Jesus to drink on the cross in Matthew 27, 48. so it's kind of a when you start kind of putting these together it's a pretty fascinating trail to follow so what is this i mean some people suggest it's like a condiment like you go to i don't know you go to uh some restaurant and they bring out a loaf of bread and you know you can dip it in olive oil or something some people say it's that some people you know it's alcoholic drink whatever it is anyway when you when you kind of trace its orbit through the rest of the scriptures

it ends up at the lips of Jesus on the cross it's a pretty cool connection there it makes sense that contrary to what a lot of people would like you to believe loads of things were a little bit alcoholic back in the day

because it served as a way to preserve them and to keep them from spoiling because it wouldn't be surprising if you took like some some wine and then you mix vinegar with it and you were kind of making this whatever even if it was a condiment kind of thing degrees of alcohol served serves for a purpose and there's

no refrigeration man so yeah yeah no alcohol was not just not simply a a way to to go make merry but it was also a way to have things not go bad on you yeah alcohol was uh was used just all over the world back then you know you had we i think we've mentioned this before when you look back at some of these old uh old lists that are in cuneiform that describe like what workers were paid a lot of times in those lists it will it will not only describe the food they're given but also the alcohol they're given you know so you know this brick layers well they get you know they get a pint of beer a day and a couple pounds of grain or whatever whatever it might be so the drinking of wine and beer and other kinds of alcoholic beverages was just widespread in the

ancient world and like you say you know it's not like you can put stuff in the fridge right it didn't it didn't work that way that's why uh that's why i always kind of chuckle when people describe uh jesus possibly using grape juice at uh at passover i'd be pretty hard to do because there would be no grapes to get juice from that time of year and uh you can't make grape juice without it you can't get the juice of grapes without it beginning to ferment without refrigeration or pasteurization you gotta have one of the you gotta have something like you gotta have you have to have a modern process to keep it yes from from from becoming alcohol things things become alcohol if you don't uh you don't have a way to prevent it like that's

It's a natural way of juices. Yeah, yeah. Anything with sugar in it, man. That's right. It's pretty cool when you look at what he's doing here. This is what's going through my mind here. So he's reaching out to someone who has no protector. Someone who is not just like an Israelite widow,

but she is she's a widow that is from you know a foreign country she's she's she doesn't belong she's not part of this community and so he's reaching out to her he's taking care of her he's inviting her to the table and he's serving her it's kind of the the word that she's there for for serve is only used in this one particular place in the old testament which is probably like highlight highlighting his action that he the field owner is he's not just serving like one of his workers he's serving someone who's poor and defenseless and is out there just gleaning the field so he's really going all out to take care of her and when you look at where ruth fits into the the broader message of the scriptures where he is a redeemer

He's one who cares for those who can't care for themselves. And you see him as a Christ figure. My mind cannot help but make the leap to exactly what Christ does for us. I mean, he reaches out to us. He welcomes us to his table. He feeds us. He serves us. And I think that's the, we don't really usually like talk about this explicitly, but as far

as like biblical interpretation goes, I think that's the way you do it. I mean, am I saying, oh, well, this verse is about the Lord's Supper? Well, no. But when you look at this in the big perspective of the total message of Scripture, it fits within this pattern of God himself or God through others inviting people to the table and serving them and providing for their needs. So is it about the Lord's Supper? No. but yes when you look at the the complete message of the of the scriptures this is exemplary of how god deals with us as his people yeah i mean this is this verse might not be about the lord's supper

but the lord's supper is a little bit about this verse yeah there you go you know and then it's it's a it's included right uh this is a good picture of of what christ is doing at the lord's among other things of course forgiving sins and all this other stuff but sure sure but there is this the greater serving the lesser the verse itself might not be about the lord's supper but the what what the lord's supper gives us is certainly pictured in this in this passage yeah yeah absolutely all right we'll recover one verse i guess i guess we better get get to move it yeah all right so what happens well uh she ate she had eight minutes i had some leftover and when she rose to glean so she kind of leaves she's going back to what she came out there to do

boaz passes on this message to his servants he says let her glean even among the sheaves do not insult her so he's going to reiterate the fact that they're supposed to not in any way say or do do something to her which might you know might drive her away and he adds this i love this he says also you shall purposely pull out for her some grain from the bundles and leave it that she may glean and do not rebuke her telling them to get a little sloppy with their their gathering yeah like pull out pull out bunches of the of the grain that you're gathering and just drop it there for her to for her to pick up so and we evidently they they certainly followed his instructions because the next verse tells us that she gleaned in the field until evening and then uh she beat

out what she had gleaned so she found a little place uh maybe she went to the threshing floor wherever she went she beat it out and it came out to a measurement called uh an ephah or an ephah of barley now that that that's kind of easy to just kind of go over your head because that's not the kind of measurement that we use you know we're like oh okay so she got a f of barley well well it turns out when you when you look at the way uh that this measurement was used in other biblical places and we know from some archaeological sites uh approximately how much this was there's there's some uh some differences of opinion we know from ezekiel for instance that an effa which is the unit for dry measurement things like you know grain uh and that that it's equal to a bath

or a bot which is a liquid measurement so ezekiel tells us that and archaeology archaeologists have found um some uh some pottery and they can tell from the size of the pottery how much it was and it has like one bath on there or two baths or however however much it is so we have a pretty good guess in other words how much an fo was and it was probably anywhere from get this 30 to 50 pounds can you imagine you're you're gleaning i mean you're you're probably doing good to get a pound to two pounds of grain on a typical day and we also know speaking of that from other from other lists that that was a typical payment for workers like you would get one to two pounds of grain a day she comes she comes home and she's got like this huge sack full of 30 to 50 pounds of

of grain just yesterday i bought a 30 pound bag of dog food it was huge yeah yeah it's massive yeah that's a that is a lot that's a lot of grain uh so anyway you know like i said we don't for sure but 30 pounds is a lot and she so she took it and she she goes into the city and uh her her mother-in-law so naomi saw what she had gleaned and she took it out she gave naomi what what she had what she had left and naomi says to her where did you glean today and where did you work may he who took notice of you be blessed because of course Naomi is shocked by all this too I mean that's that's the last thing she would have expected for her to come home with that much food so she she responds she says the man of the net the name of the man with whom I work today

is Boaz and Naomi says back to her may he be blessed of the Lord who has not withdrawn his kindness to the living and to the dead. And Naomi said to her, the man is our relative. He is one of our, well, my translation has closest relative. But the word that we're looking at here is the word that is most often associated with the book of Ruth. He's a goel. A goel is someone who engages in gaal, and gaal is a word for redeem. So he is one of our goelim. He's one of our redeemers. Now, I think we probably talked about this maybe back in Exodus or somewhere in the Torah, but there's a couple of different verbs for redeem in Hebrew. One is pada. For instance, when I think it's Exodus 13, when they're talking about redeeming the firstborn, that whole context of the 10th plague and the firstborn.

Well, you redeem your firstborn. So, you know, if I have a son and of course, I'm not going to offer him as a sacrifice. So I redeem him. I give something in exchange for him. So that is pada. That's that kind of redemption. There's another kind of redemption that is ga'al, and that is to redeem in the sense of buying back someone's property if for some reason they've had to sell it because of impoverishment. we also encountered this particular verb when uh it talked about like a manslayer you know somebody kills my brother and i go to i'm the i'm the redeemer of blood so i go after that person there's all kinds of responsibilities that are connected with with redemption and naomi highlights

then boaz as one of one of the redeemers he's the goel who is hopefully as as the story progresses hopefully he's gonna be the one who engages in this in this redemption and then just kind of finish out the chapter ruth goes on to say oh i forgot one thing uh furthermore he said that you should that i should stay close to his servants until they finish the harvest so very good news Not only does she bring home all of this food, not only do they find out that Boaz is one of the redeemers, but she's going to get to continue to go into his field and continue to glean. And Naomi says to her, that's great. That is good, my daughter, that you go out with his maids, lest others fall upon you in another field. So lest others paga you, that is, you know,

hurt you assault you come after you something like that it's a pagas often used for some kind of active violence so she doesn't under the words she knows that ruth will be safe with uh the maidservants of of uh boas yes i mean it's a double good thing i mean so one you come home with all this food and then you say yeah he told me to keep coming back and not go somewhere else so then you have good reason to think that you have a source of food that's not going to dry up real soon. So this is not going to be a one-time event that this sort of good harvest of gleaning is going to continue. And then you have the safety aspect that this is not going to be something that's dangerous for you to do. And in this way, with Boaz as the redeemer,

I mean, if you're on the brink of starvation and someone has given you a way to have continual food uh the process of redeeming you from this impoverished state has has already begun right yeah yeah you know i don't it's probably hard for us to imagine what it's like to be in a situation at least most of me for sure and you and i mean a lot of a lot of our listeners uh i've never been like wondering am i gonna be able to eat tomorrow yeah you know but i know i know that uh well you told me about it the show alone and uh Stacey and I've been watching uh I think we're on well we we're caught up with the current season and there was one season we hadn't watched so we're going back to watch it when you watch a show like that man you realize just what it's like at least as

much as you can as an outsider what it's like to go without food and to you you've seen this over and over and it's not just like one person but how like emotional they will get when they are able to actually get catch a fish or or find some food i mean like the the emotion just overwhelms them they're either rejoicing or they're crying uh because they might not have eaten for a day or a week or if they did they didn't eat very much and they catch a fish and it's like that is the most awesome thing that has ever happened to them so just watching that happen in real life is uh drives home just how significant this is to be able to not just have food at one time but to to know basically they got a grocery store they can go out to the field every day

and they'll be be taken care of yeah i mean part of this too i mean do you think about it um i mean if they're going to be coming home with anywhere near this much grain even for a short amount of time then using 50 pounds of grain every day i mean so i mean at this point you have enough food uh you have you have something you can sell i mean i mean obviously you can sell grain so i mean you have you have more than you need uh and so you're able to presumably take care of other needs by this vehicle yeah yeah so i mean boas in other words is doing them, not just the favor of watching out for them and giving them enough to eat, but he's basically providing a livelihood for both of them. Okay. Well, that's the end of,

well, almost the end of chapter two. We have the last verse. So what happens? Well, obviously Ruth is going to stay close. She's going to stick to that field. So she stays with the maids of Boaz in order to glean into the end of the barley harvest and the wheat harvest. and she lived with her with her mother-in-law and that's the way the chapter chapter ends so chapter three chapter three is in my opinion the most uh fascinating of fascinating of the chapters uh just because of there's all sorts of ambiguities here if you've ever studied ruth uh you probably spent quite a bit of time in this chapter trying to figure out okay you know what's happening here you know there's all sorts of subtleties and some of the words that are used

here can go a couple of different directions and and i think personally that it's designed that way but there are gaps uh in the narrative as it were that you kind of have to fill in so we'll uh we'll have some fun with that when we when we go through this story because this is this is when when ruth makes her move if you will this is when you know nothing has really happened of course she's been around boaz uh we're not told whether he continued to talk to her we're not told really anything else about the rest of the harvest. All we know is she continued to stay in the field of Boaz, and we're going to find out right away what Naomi wants to happen, and no doubt what Ruth wants to happen as well, but Boaz has not done anything to make this happen, and so the women are going to take

the initiative, and we'll see the result. So beginning with chapter three, verse one, then Naomi, her mother-in-law, said to her, my daughter, shall I not seek security, or that could also be translated rest for you that it may be well with you this is actually related to the same word that we saw in chapter one when Naomi's talking this is when they're about to leave Moab to come back to Bethlehem and Naomi's trying to get both of her daughters-in-law to return back to their mother's house and she says may the Lord grant that you may find rest each in the house of her husband so that's the idea so back to chapter three she says shall i so naomi's kind of in the role of not mother-in-law but mother here in fact she calls her my daughter shall i

not seek rest for you that it may be well with you so what she's talking about there is not just kind of a generic rest she's talking about resting in the home of your husband shall i not find the kind of peace and security and rest that you that you need that it may be well with you and then she goes on to then lay out her her plan as to how this is gonna this is gonna work and now is not boaz our kinsman with whose maids you were behold tonight he winnows barley at the threshing floor So here's what I want you to do. Wash yourself and anoint yourself. That could also be translated as perfume yourself.

So wash yourself and then anoint or perfume yourself and then put on your clothes. My translation has best clothes. I think that's an interpretive addition to the text. I don't know what ESV has there, but the word that's used there in Hebrew does not refer to your best clothes. it just refers to your outer garment so when when translations i think maybe the niv does that as

well some translations will add like best clothes but i mean it maybe it was but we can't really get that from the hebrew it's just a reference to your outer garment so she's not telling her in other words like you know look through your closet and get the you know your best dress and put it on she's just like put on your put on your garment now one commentator the esv just says uh just says to put on your cloak um yeah which could just mean it was cool outside yeah yeah one commentator i was reading this morning had a actually a a pretty convincing argument that it what what might be communicated here is that up to this point ruth had been wearing the garb of a widow which i thought was pretty fascinating uh and he bases that on the fact that after

after the death of of david's son that he had with with bathsheba you know before then david of course when the child was sick before he died david was uh you know was weeping was was fasting was was praying and then after the child dies what does he do he he gets up he washes himself he anoints himself, and he puts on his cloak, and he goes to the temple. So it's as if his mourning has ended. And so by paralleling that account of David with this, he makes the argument that maybe what was happening here was that up until this point, Ruth was wearing the garment of a widow. And maybe, possibly, that's why Boaz was not really making any moves, was just kind of, you know, taking care of her, but not suggesting marriage at that point. Whatever it is anyway,

that's what happens she she gets cleaned up and know it's herself perfumes herself puts on her her cloak and now my name is says not only that but but go go down to the threshing floor but don't make yourself known to the man until he's finished eating and drinking and when he lies down pay attention to where where he lies so no literally just know but pay attention to where he lies. And you shall go and uncover his feet and lie down. And then he will tell you what you shall do. Now, rather than pausing there, let me go ahead and just read what Ruth does. And she said to her, that is Ruth said to Naomi, all that you say I will do. So I'm going to follow your instructions to the T. So verse six, she went down to the threshing

floor like she was told and she did all according to all that her mother-in-law had commanded her when boaz had eaten and drunk and his heart was merry his heart was good literally then he went to lie down at the end of the heap of grain and she came secretly and uncovered his feet and lay down and it happened in the middle of the night that the man was startled and bent forward and behold, a woman was lying at his feet. And he said, who are you? And she answered, I am Ruth, your maid. So spread your covering over your maid, for you are a redeemer. So just an amazing account here. Now, you put yourself back in the situation. this was this was a pretty dangerous it was a bold we can certainly say it was a bold move

on the part not not only of of naomi but ruth i mean both of them together this was a very bold move not bold because now there are some people who i'm going to get to the sexual innuendos in just a minute but there are some people who reject those they don't think there's any sexual innuendos here whatsoever in some in some of the language okay we'll just we'll grant that all Right. Just for the sake of argument, we'll grant that even if there are no sexual innuendos in the language, the very fact that a woman in this culture, a woman at night is sneaking down to a threshing floor and then partially uncovering a man and lying next to him, that has all sorts of sexual innuendos apart from the language question. So you got it. You got to grant that this is a very, very bold, dangerous, risque kind of move for Ruth to make. If you are a guy who's not married and some somebody came into wherever you sleep and lays down next to you, the idea that there's nothing sexual about that is a little absurd. yeah it's extremely naive

in the middle of the night yeah secretly he had something to drink that doesn't mean he was like blitz drunk or anything but it means that he was feeling alright he was feeling good which is why

David says that God gave wine to make merry the hearts of men there's a line there where you can certainly cross but there's also it's it's be feeling glad or happy or merry is that's right that's like the sweet spot according to the scriptures anyway that's where that's where you you want to be

yeah and it it fits really the context the scriptures more than once will use the uh the joy of of harvest or of threshing the grain as as a symbol of of happiness right so this was a this was joyful time because they, they had a harvest that there wasn't, you know, there had been a famine in Bethlehem. Well, now there's a harvest. And so there's plenty of rejoicing. It's kind of a party atmosphere. They've been working hard. And so they have something to drink and then they, uh, they lie down right where they worked.

So you ever, you ever been to a party and, uh, had random girl like lay down next to you in the middle of the night. And you try to tell me that there's nothing going on there. Yeah, it's a stretch. Well, and then to get to what I was alluding to earlier, there's definite, and anyone who reads this, who knows kind of the Hebrew background of some of this will have to acknowledge that there's definite sexual allusions that's built into the language here. So to pick up with, let's see, verse seven. Yeah, there's three verbs there or three words there that can mean a couple of different things. So she goes to the threshing floor. Boaz eats and drinks as hard as Mary.

He goes to sleep by the grain. And it says that Ruth came secretly and she uncovered his feet and lay down. So those three words in Hebrew for uncover and for feet and for lay down, all three of those can go a couple of different directions. And one of those directions is in the direction of either genitalia or sex. So the verb for uncover is galah, and galah is frequently used in contexts that have to do with sex or nakedness. So that's one word to keep in mind. The second is feet. Now, sometimes raglayim, so one foot is regal and then two feet is raglayim. Sometimes, yeah, that just refers to feet, but very frequently in the scriptures, that is a euphemism for your private parts, right?

then the verb for for lay down shakav yeah that can mean like i'm gonna i'm gonna take a nap i'm gonna shakav i'm gonna lay down but also uh just like in english you know sometimes the word lay is used for laying down sometimes it's used in a sexual sort of way same thing with shakav so those three words like heaped right together in verse seven she galas she uncovers she uncovered his that's feet genitalia and then she lays down right beside him she shuck hops that that those words with this very these very strong sexual nakedness private parts connotations combined with the situation that we're in it's pretty it's pretty hard not to come away thinking yeah this is some this is a very very risky activity going on yeah it's hard not to come

away with that and it's easy to understand why because this is what translators do why they'd want to soften this up a little bit like what's the what's what's the the the most uh what's the purest uh and most pious way we can translate this yeah and don't think the translators don't do that because i guarantee you i'm you know i'm writing this uh this book right now for uh for 15 17, Unveiling Mercy. And it's daily devotional based on Hebrew words. So a lot of what I've done is, you know, I've looked at the various ways these Hebrew words are used in various contexts, and I'll look at the way translations will render them. And I have come across multiple times cases where, yeah, there'll be a word that literally means something which is a little bit provocative,

and it will be softened down. I'd say the majority of times it's kind of, it's softened it's kind of puritanized down to where it doesn't have quite that same the same at least connotation that uh that it carries carries in the hebrew it doesn't sound like this to us in english but she's using the hebrew idiom that basically means marry me yeah make make me your wife if uh this same kind of language about uh spreading wings over someone When a man spreads his wings or his covering over a woman, well, that means he's marrying her. Yeah, it almost makes it sound like, cover me with that blanket. Yeah, yeah, cover me up.

So this was, she's basically, that's one of the strangest things about this whole book. So here you have a woman proposing to a man, a servant proposing to, you know, a man of wealth and standing, a foreigner proposing to an Israelite. I mean, this is so startling, the way that Ruth approaches this. So you got to give her credit. She's bold. She's creative. She's willing to risk basically everything in order to get what she wants. And I think most significantly, and we'll have to wrap up here, I think, most significantly is the way she ends. Because she says, because you are a redeemer. She's calling him to make a decision.

She's like, that's who you are, right? So you ask me who I am. Well, I'm Ruth. Now, who are you, Boaz? Who are you going to be? Are you going to do what a redeemer does, or are you not? this redemption sort of got started with you know dropping some extra grain along the way but yeah you're asking uh so we're gonna do this redemption or not yeah right the moment the moment

of truth and i guess you know people just got to wait till till next time yeah his answer is see how boaz responds i mean it's a bold move he could certainly could respond negatively to this this entire uh proposal yeah exactly i mean uh we have the story in front of us but like if you were in that situation he could have said like get out of here right or no or even worse so we'll uh i guess we'll see what's responsible all right go well guys uh if you enjoyed the podcast go over to itunes rate and review we'd appreciate it uh go check out the the youtube channel check out the social media and we will be back next week