Ruth 3

Ru 3:1-13.

BY

NAOMI'S

INSTRUCTIONS,

RUTH

LIES AT

BOAZ'S

FEET,

WHO

ACKNOWLEDGES THE

DUTY OF A

KINSMAN.

2. he winnoweth barley to-night in the threshing-floor--The winnowing

process is performed by throwing up the grain, after being trodden

down, against the wind with a shovel. The threshing-floor, which was

commonly on the harvest-field, was carefully leveled with a large

cylindric roller and consolidated with chalk, that weeds might not

spring up, and that it might not chop with drought. The farmer usually

remained all night in harvest-time on the threshing-floor, not only for

the protection of his valuable grain, but for the winnowing. That

operation was performed in the evening to catch the breezes which blow

after the close of a hot day, and which continue for the most part of

the night. This duty at so important a season the master undertakes

himself; and, accordingly, in the simplicity of ancient manners, Boaz,

a person of considerable wealth and high rank, laid himself down to

sleep on the barn floor, at the end of the heap of barley he had been

winnowing.

4. go in, and uncover his feet and lay thee down--Singular as these

directions may appear to us, there was no impropriety in them,

according to the simplicity of rural manners in Beth-lehem. In ordinary

circumstances these would have seemed indecorous to the world; but in

the case of Ruth, it was a method, doubtless conformable to prevailing

usage, of reminding Boaz of the duty which devolved on him as the

kinsman of her deceased husband. Boaz probably slept upon a mat or

skin; Ruth lay crosswise at his feet--a position in which Eastern

servants frequently sleep in the same chamber or tent with their

master; and if they want a covering, custom allows them that benefit

from part of the covering on their master's bed. Resting, as the

Orientals do at night, in the same clothes they wear during the day,

there was no indelicacy in a stranger, or even a woman, putting the

extremity of this cover over her.

9. I am Ruth thine handmaid: spread therefore thy skirt over thine

handmaid; for thou art a near kinsman--She had already drawn part of

the mantle over her; and she asked him now to do it, that the act might

become his own. To spread a skirt over one is, in the East, a symbolical

action denoting protection. To this day in many parts of the East, to

say of anyone that he put his skirt over a woman, is synonymous with

saying that he married her; and at all the marriages of the modern Jews

and Hindus, one part of the ceremony is for the bridegroom to put a

silken or cotton cloak around his bride.

15. Bring the veil that thou hast upon thee, and hold it--Eastern

veils are large sheets--those of ladies being of red silk; but the

poorer or common class of women wear them of blue, or blue and white

striped linen or cotton. They are wrapped round the head, so as to

conceal the whole face except one eye.

17. six measures of barley--Hebrew, "six seahs," a seah contained about two gallons and a half, six of which must have been

rather a heavy load for a woman.