Love Story, part 1

For background on this series see Ghosts Around the Manger.

The young woman caught his eye even before he slid off his mount and stepped onto the soft earth of the wheat field. She was gleaning with the poor who followed along behind the paid workers, scrounging what they could to feed their families.

“The Lord be with you,” he called, meaning it. They stopped their work and looked up at his greeting. Boaz of Bethlehem took the old laws seriously, especially the ones about leaving the edges and corners of the fields unharvested so that Israel’s poor could find food. In the fields of Boaz they always found more than food. They found dignity and respect.

They called back almost in unison, “And the Lord bless you.” They meant it, too.

The poor turned again to their work, all except the young woman. For a moment, she just stood there looking at Boaz, holding the grain-filled folds of her robe with both hands, worrying he was about to ask her why she was in his field picking over his harvest.

Boaz just stood there, too, looking at her, wondering who she was, feeling a little embarrassed at taking such obvious notice. The look between the two was broken when his foreman approached.

The foreman had been with Boaz so long that neither man needed many words to communicate with the other. His knowing smile told Boaz that there was no use pretending he hadn’t noticed the new face among the gleaners.

“So — whose young woman is that?” Boaz asked.

“She’s the one who came back from Moab with Naomi. She came here this morning and asked permission to go along behind the harvesters. I told her she was welcome and she’s worked hard all morning. Took only one break.”

Namoi. Boaz hadn’t heard that name in a long time. He remembered her story. Fifteen, maybe twenty years earlier, a relative of his, Elimelech, with his wife Naomi and their two sons had gone to Moab to escape a famine in Judah. He’d heard that shortly after moving to Moab, Elimelech had died. The sons, Mahlon and Kilion, had grown up in a foreign land full of false gods and had married Moabite women. Then tragedy tripled; both sons died. Naomi returned to Bethlehem a bitter, angry woman. But she had not returned alone. One of her daughters-in-law had returned with her.

Boaz harbored a strong distrust of foreigners, especially Moabites. Pagans, worshipers of strange gods, they were no more fit to live in an Israelite home than a common dog. The laws of Moses, though, were clear; treat the foreign among you as your brothers. They may not be Israelites, but Israelite memory still burned with recollections of what it was to be strangers in a cruel land. Besides, there was something special about this Moabite.

She sustained none of his prejudices. According to the story he’d heard, she had displayed uncommon loyalty to a bitter, old widow to whom she owed nothing. He’d been told what the young woman, Ruth, had said to Naomi when she had urged her to return to her father’s house.

“Where you go, I will go, and where you live, I will live. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried.” It sounded like something an Israelite prophet might have said.

Kindness of that sort, amazing in a Moabite, should be remembered, even honored. At mealtime, Boaz called the girl over and invited her to eat with the paid harvesters. She hesitated, perhaps suspicious of his offer, but he would not be denied. And she was hungry. The smell of the roasting grain was hard to resist. For the first time in many weeks, she ate all she wanted and still had food left over.

By the end of the first day, Ruth had gleaned twenty-two liters of grain. The sack was heavy on her shoulder as she climbed up and down rolling hills back to the small cottage she shared with Naomi. Despite the long day of hard work, her step was light, as if she was the bearer not of a heavy burden, but of hope. Ruth was anxious to share her good news.

Naomi was sitting alone in the dark, one-room cottage, chilled by the bitterness in her heart. The only warmth she felt was her anger with God; anger for all that she’d once had and all that she had lost. When she saw the sack of grain that Ruth dropped onto the floor, however, Naomi felt the first thaw in what had seemed like an ice age of despair.

Look for Part 2 tomorrow.