Dual PanelRuth and Boaz
1NAOMI had a relative on her husband's side, a prominent and well-to-do member of Elimelech's family; his name was Boaz.
2One day Ruth the Moabite asked Naomi, “May I go to the harvest fields and glean behind anyone who will allow me?” “Yes, go, my daughter,” she replied.
3So Ruth went gleaning in the fields behind the reapers. As it happened, she was in that strip of the fields which belonged to Boaz of Elimelech's family,
4and there was Boaz himself coming out from Bethlehem. He greeted the reapers, “The LORD be with you!” and they responded, “The LORD bless you!”
5“Whose girl is this?” he asked the servant in charge of the reapers. The servant answered,
6“She is a Moabite girl who has come back with Naomi from Moab.
7She asked if she might glean, gathering among the sheaves behind the reapers. She came and has been on her feet from morning till now; she has hardly had a moment's rest in the shelter.”
8Boaz said to Ruth, “Listen, my daughter: do not go to glean in any other field. Do not look any farther, but stay close to my servant-girls.
9Watch where the men reap, and follow the gleaners; I have told the men not to molest you. Any time you are thirsty, go and drink from the jars they have filled.”
10She bowed to the ground and said, “Why are you so kind as to take notice of me, when I am just a foreigner?”
11Boaz answered, “I have been told the whole story of what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, how you left father and mother and homeland and came among a people you did not know before.
12The LORD reward you for what you have done; may you be richly repaid by the LORD the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.”
13She said: “I hope you will continue to be pleased with me, sir, for you have eased my mind by speaking kindly to me, though I am not one of your slave-girls.”
14When mealtime came round, Boaz said to Ruth, “Come over here and have something to eat. Dip your piece of bread in the vinegar.” She sat down beside the reapers, and he passed her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and still had some left.
15When she got up to glean, Boaz instructed the men to allow her to glean right among the sheaves. “Do not find fault with her,” he added;
16“you may even pull out some ears of grain from the handfuls as you cut, and leave them for her to glean; do not check her.”
17Ruth gleaned in the field until sunset, and when she beat out what she had gathered it came to about a bushel of barley.
18She carried it into the town and showed her mother-in-law how much she had got; she also brought out and handed her what she had left over from the meal.
19Her mother-in-law asked, “Where did you glean today? Which way did you go? Blessings on the man who took notice of you!” She told her mother-in-law in whose field she had been working. “The owner of the field where I worked today”, she said, “is a man called Boaz.”
20Naomi exclaimed, “Blessings on him from the LORD, who has kept faith with the living and the dead! This man”, she explained, “is related to us; he is one of our very near kinsmen.”
21“And what is more,” Ruth said, “he told me to stay close to his workers until they had finished all his harvest.”
22Naomi said, “My daughter, it would be as well for you to go with his girls; in another field you might come to harm.”
23So Ruth kept close to them, gleaning with them till the end of both barley and wheat harvests; but she lived with her mother-in-law.