Day 1138: The safest refuge - Ruth 2 vs 10 - 23

11-12 But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before. The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge!” 13 Then she said, “I have found favour in your eyes, my lord, for you have comforted me and spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not one of your servants.”

14 And at mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come here and eat some bread and dip your morsel in the wine.” So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed to her roasted grain. And she ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. 15-17 When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.”So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. And she took it up and went into the city.

18-19 Her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied. And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you glean today? And where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” 20 And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.” 21-23 And Ruth the Moabite said, “Besides, he said to me, ‘You shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’” And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.” So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvests. And she lived with her mother-in-law. Ruth 2:10-23 English Standard Version.

“Why have I found favour in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” That was Ruth's question to Boaz. In response he gives her a beautiful reply. He tells her that all she had done for her mother-in-law had been told to him, how she had left her own country and kinsfolk to take refuge under the wings of the God of Israel. How blessed are those who find such a refuge! Psalm 91:1&4 declares that “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. He will cover you with His feathers; under His wings you will find refuge.”

She begins to taste the goodness of the God she had come to as Boaz invites her to sit with the reapers and instructs his servants to allow her to glean freely, and even to pull some out from the sheaves they had harvested. And so Ruth returned to her mother with the fruit of her labour. Naomi was greatly surprised and asks where she had gleaned. She tells her mother of the kindness of a man named Boaz. Of all the people in the land, her 'hap' had caused her to glean in the fields of a kinsman redeemer!

What Naomi said of Boaz is just as true of God. “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” She realized that God had not forgotten her. Boaz was reflecting the God he believed in, and God's mercy was still providing for her needs.

But what do you make of Boaz and Naomi's advice in vs 21-23?

This was still the time of the Judges of Israel, a time when we're told that “in those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25) Not all men would be as good and kind as Boaz was. How true that is for the days we are living in.