Holiness and Redemption - Ruth Series

This devotion is an excerpt from the book, The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules and was written by Carolyn Custis James. We hope you will be encouraged.

THE MYSTERY SURROUNDING BOAZ

Boaz may be stunned by Ruth’s presence and the words he has just heard her speak, but he is anything but speechless. Suddenly the script belongs to Boaz. Instead of taking offense or shaming and driving Ruth away into the night, as one might expect, his words are just as surprising as hers. He praises her actions, calls on Yahweh to bless her for what she has done, and links what she is doing to her earlier acts of hesed. “The LORD bless you, my daughter. … This kindness [hesed] is greater than that which you showed earlier: You have not run after the younger men, whether rich or poor” (Ruth 3:10).

He exonerates her behavior. She was not a man-chaser then, nor is she now. Far from being forward or inappropriate, her bold actions reflect a quality of righteousness that inspires an outpouring of praise from this highly esteemed man. And Boaz isn’t a victim of underhanded schemes, manipulation, or entrapment either. According to his interpretation of what is happening here, Ruth hasn’t made a blunder, but knows exactly what she is doing. He sees (and is in awe) that once again, hesed is at work, and in this, he is always a willing accomplice.

Students of the book of Ruth often draw attention to the fact that both Naomi and Boaz repeatedly address Ruth as “my daughter.”16 This has led many to conclude that Boaz is an older man and of the same generation as Naomi and Elimelech. For years I thought of Boaz (and heard teaching that portrayed him) as unmarried and perhaps a bit like Jane Austen’s Mr. Knightly, who was well-off and highly respected, but an older bachelor who for some unknown reason just hadn’t gotten around to marriage. But the more I’ve learned about patriarchal cultures such as you find in today’s Middle East, the more aware I am that my conclusions have been largely shaped by my Western views of relationships between men and women and are wide of the mark.

In the ancient Israelite society, it simply wasn’t possible to combine the levels of honor and stature that Boaz clearly possessed with the postponement of marriage or the absence of sons. It’s hard for those of us in the West to comprehend just how much hinges on producing sons in other societies, but in fact the very foundations and survival of many cultures depend on each generation’s success in producing a whole new crop of sons. A central thesis of the book of Ruth is the utter necessity of sons. Israelite parents would be a disgrace and grief to his family if he had no sons. And instead of admiration, the whole community would show pity toward him. In her insightful book on contemporary Middle Eastern culture, journalist Geraldine Brooks reveals the intense shame borne by a Palestinian man whose wife failed to produce a son. Utterly humiliated and frantic for a second wife, the man conceded bitterly, “I am nothing in this village without a son.”

When it comes to personal demographics, Boaz is something of a mystery man, and the narrator doesn’t fill in the blanks. We don’t know if Boaz had a living wife, or two or three, or if he was a widower. But to the early readers of this story, it really didn’t matter, for in ancient Israelite society polygamy was both common and accepted. Abraham, Jacob, and David are but a few significant examples of notable polygamists. In the eyes of that culture, a man with multiple wives was following an appropriate strategy (even a necessary one) for producing many sons, regardless of the negative repercussions in individual lives. It was also, oddly enough, something of a mercy for women, for it shielded them from the kinds of adversities Naomi and Ruth were suffering. We cannot know for sure whether Ruth’s proposal involved polygamy, but given the culture and Boaz’s age, it is almost certain he had sons of his own and their inheritance to consider when contemplating Ruth’s petition. This fact alone raises the stakes for the decision facing Boaz.