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A Millennial’s Commitment to the Body of Christ

5 Lessons from a Youth Pastor on Racism and Sexism

An Unlikely Duo: Ruth and Naomi

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Editor’s note: This article is part of CBE’s radio series, Women in Scripture and Mission. Explore all available audio resources on CBE’s Resources Page!

We first come to know Naomi as an immigrant who, like many desperate people around the world, left her famine-stricken land seeking a way to survive in the neighboring nation of Moab.¹ But Moab was the land of Israel’s enemies, and it was not a place that was life-giving. Her husband died there. Unable to marry her sons according to their own custom, Naomi’s sons married two Moabite girls—Orpah and Ruth.² But before any grandchildren were born, both her sons died as well.

Bitter and empty, Naomi decided to return home where she heard that God had ended the famine. Now she had two daughters-in-law from the hated Moabite people³ who were dependent on her for survival. With nothing to offer them, she encouraged both Orpah and Ruth to each return to their mother’s home where new and honorable marriages could be arranged, giving them a second chance at family, honor, and fulfillment (Ruth 1:8).⁴ For them to return with her to Bethlehem would only be a journey of pain—as a widowed, childless woman, Naomi would remain on the margins of society despite being in her own hometown.⁵ As a woman, she could not farm her husband’s land thereby making her dependent on the generosity of others to survive.⁶ At least Naomi would qualify for assistance, as Israel had laws and safeguards for people like her—internally displaced Israelites, widows, and orphans qualified under the gleaning laws to take and have the leftovers of the rich (Deut. 24:19–21; Lev. 19:9; 23:22).⁷

When the Pluck of Youth Brings Hope and Life to the Old

Unlike Naomi, Ruth did not fit these categories. Rather than internally displaced, Ruth would be an outright foreigner coming from an enemy people.⁸ She could expect no handouts.

Still, Ruth would not be dissuaded. With the optimism of a youth, she bound herself to Naomi, committing to live for and on Naomi’s behalf, worship Naomi’s God, and die and be buried with Naomi:

Ruth said, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Wherever you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!” (Ruth 1:16–17 NRSV).

Faced with this determination, Naomi quietly allowed Ruth to accompany her back to Bethlehem.

Hardship and heartache change people. When Naomi and Ruth finally arrived back in the small town of Bethlehem, the locals did not recognize Naomi, asking one another if it was really her (1:19). Naomi confirmed that she was indeed a different person. She was now bitter, having left as a young woman with a husband and two sons, she now returned to her people not only “empty,” but accompanied by a woman from the hated Moabites.⁹ As such, she told them to call her Mara—often translated as “bitter” from Hebrew (1:20–21).

Ruth, on the other hand, would not allow herself to be defeated. Desperate to keep both Naomi and herself alive, she went to work. In the rough and tumble world of a desperate immigrant, where sexual abuse and assault are very real threats, she went to the fields and harvested all day (2:3, 7).¹⁰ Ruth hoped she might be included in the gleaning laws despite her distinct racial and color differences that revealed her status as a despised foreigner.¹¹

Her strangeness alerted Boaz when he came to oversee his fields (2:5). Boaz’s own mother, Rahab, had been a foreigner, a prostitute, and yet understood God’s plans. Rahab both informed Joshua’s spies about God’s plans for Jericho and saved her whole clan (Josh. 2:9–14, 6:22–23).¹² Boaz knew from first-hand experience that powerful, godly women from different racial and ethnic backgrounds often do not “fit in” because they are outsiders. So, Boaz asked his foreman who this strange woman was.

His foreman told Boaz about the Moabite woman who had been “on her feet from early this morning until now, without resting even for a moment” (Ruth 2:7). Word spreads fast in a small community. Boaz had heard of this strange young woman who accompanied his relative’s widow Naomi (2:11). He informed his workers to allow her to glean extra so she could feed both herself and Naomi (2:16). He also acknowledged the dangers faced by women desperate to survive, telling her to stay close to the women who worked for him and warning the men to leave her alone (2:9).¹³ Finally, he blessed her with words that Ruth would remember at a later day: “[M]ay you have a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge!” (2:15).

When A Desperate Plan Is Turned to Life

While Ruth and Naomi experienced temporary relief with Boaz’s generosity, the gleaning season is short. It wasn’t long until both Ruth and Naomi were again desperate.¹⁴ This time Naomi suggested that Ruth clean herself, put on her best clothes, and, after Boaz was drunk and asleep, lay down with him…¹⁵ For women on the margins of society, this was not a new idea. As Havilah Dharamraj explains, “With neither husband nor sons to care for her, a widow’s options in the ancient world would have been to sell herself into slavery, to eke out a living through prostitution, or to die of neglect.”¹⁶ Ruth understood this reality and she did as Naomi instructed.

However, Ruth did not quite follow Naomi’s exact instructions. As a foreign woman whose faith in Israel’s God was new, she understood God in a new way.^[17] When Boaz woke up, he was startled to find Ruth beside him. Ruth took the opportunity to challenge Boaz to take care of her as God cares for Israel and to cover her with his protection.^[18] Using his own words when he blessed her in the field, she challenged him to, “Spread the wings of your cloak over your servant, for you are next of kin” (3:9).¹⁹

Rather than taking advantage of Ruth’s desperate and vulnerable situation, Boaz honored her request and was flattered that she would consider him, an old man, as a possible husband.²⁰ So, Boaz rose to Ruth’s challenge. Like God who covers his chicks with a wing, Boaz found a way to care for both Ruth and Naomi.²¹

Woman of Power: Eschet Chayil

The Bible calls both Ruth and Boaz powerful people, using the Hebrew word chayil (Boaz in Ruth 2:1; Ruth in Ruth 3:11). Truly, together they were a power couple demonstrating the transformative power of love for God and people. Jewish tradition honors all women who use their wit, optimism, love, and strength as women of power, calling them powerful women of valor or, in Hebrew, eschet chayil.²²

Ruth represented the many foreigners that composed the fabric of Israel.²³ Her unique perspective on God not only restored family to Naomi through the birth of a son, but also inspired Naomi’s faith to recognize God’s goodness. As a foreign woman, Ruth revealed her power (chayil) through courage, faithfulness, and love (the Hebrew word hesed) toward Naomi: qualities that characterize the God of creation.²⁴ The village women of Bethlehem memorialized Ruth as better than seven sons to Naomi:

Blessed be the Lord . . . He shall be to you a restorer of life and nourisher of your old age; for your daughter-in-law who loves you, is more to you than seven sons (Ruth 4:14–15).

The Gospels later remember Ruth by tracing Jesus’s lineage to this plucky, foreign woman that kept changing the script to honor and sacrificially love those around her like the God of Israel (Matt. 1:5; Luke 3:32).

As Matthews says, “This type of ‘migration in search of economic survival’ is simply a fact of life in marginal environments.” Victor H. Matthews, Judges & Ruth, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 218. Also see Katharine Sakenfield, “The Story of Ruth: Economic Survival,” Realia Dei: Essays in Archeology and Biblical Interpretation in Honor of Edward F. Campbell, Jr. at His Retirement,” Edited by Prescott H. Williams and Theodore Hiebert (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 217.
The groom’s family usually offered financial gifts to the bride’s family. Evidence that Naomi’s family was too poor for her sons to engage in a traditional marriage and instead likely “abducted” Ruth and Orpah can be seen in the Hebrew word used for their marriage in Ruth 1:4, “they took/lifted/abducted” (wayyiśʾû with the root נשׂאּ). This is also the word used in Judges 21:23 when the Benjamites “took” the girls worshipping in the vineyards. Katharine Southwood demonstrates that this type of marriage, the abduction of girls, was often a last resort for people who did not have the social or financial clout to obtain wives through the proper channels. Furthermore, though a fringe marriage custom that was accepted, it did bring friction between the families. Katharine Southwood, Mariage by Capture in the Book of Judges: An Anthropological Approach (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 79, 84–85. In this case, it likely added to Naomi and her family being ostracized in Moab.
Yee compiles the biblical references of Moab as a despised land and people which include: the explanation of its beginning as the product of Lot’s daughters inebriating and then raping him in order to have offspring (Gen. 19:37), the Israelites being tempted towards idolatry with the daughters of Moab (Num 25:1-3), the king of Moab hiring Balaam to curse Israel (Num 22–24), and Moab refusing Israel sustenance as they passed through the desert (Deut. 23:3–4). Gale A. Yee, “She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn”: Ruth, The Perpetual Foreigner and Model Minority,” They were All Together in One Place? Toward Minority Biblical Criticism, Edited by Randall C. Baily, Tut-Sing Benny Liew, Fernando F. Segovia (Atlanta: SBL, 2009), 128.
Chapman demonstrates that daughters’ marriage proposals were negotiated in the “Mother’s House.” Considering the footnote above, encouraging the girls to return to their mothers’ house gives the girls an opportunity to be married through a traditional route. They could then be incorporated back into their own people, bearing children who will bring them honor. Cynthia R. Chapman, The House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in Biblical Hebrew Narrative and Poetry (New Have: Yale University Press, 2016), 60-61. See also the honor brought to women through childbirth in Janice Pearl Ewurama De-Whyte, Wom(b)an: A Cultural Narrative Reading the Hebrew Bible Barrenness Narratives (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 49.
See Dharamraj’s powerful explanation of a widow’s status who has legal rights but no power to enforce them. Havilah Dharamraj, Ruth: A Pastoral and Contextual Commentary, Asia Bible Commentary Series (Carlisle: Langham Creative Projects, 2019), 47–49. Additionally, “return” is a theme in the book of Ruth, with the word repeated many times and causing a great deal of scholarly thought. What does it mean for Naomi and Ruth to return?
Both Ewurama De-Whyte and Sakenfield write of patriarchal, and specifically Israelite, societies limiting a widow’s access to her husband’s property. Ewurama De-Whyte, Wom(b)an: A Cultural Narrative Reading, 50. Sakenfield, “The Story of Ruth: Economic Survival,” 223–226.
Dharamraj points out how fickle such support could be, saying: “Often the sojourner would be at the mercy of the local inhabitants, with legal rights granted or withdrawn.” Dharamraj, Ruth, 18.
Deuteronomy 10:17–19 explains that the people of Israel are meant to care for the orphan, widow, and a Hebrew word that is often translated as foreigner or immigrant. The Hebrew word is ger, which, within its context means something like internally displaced person. Historically, we see that when Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, the Israelites fled to the southern region of Judah (Bethlehem is a town/village inside Judah). These people were considered ger, they were of their own Israelite tribes from the north, internally displaced. And archeological evidence demonstrates that Judah took care of their ger, the Northern Tribes. Though Jerusalem increased by 53 percent there is no evidence of starvation or deprivation but instead work projects that allowed people to eat and thrive. See Burke for a detailed explanation. Aaron A Burke, “An Anthropological Model for the Investigation of the Archaeology of Refugees in Iron Age Judah and its Environs,” in Interpreting Exile: Displacement and Deportation in Biblical and Modern Contexts, edited by Brad E. Kelle, Frank Ritchel Ames, and Jacob L. Wright (Atlanta: SBL, 2011), 41–56. A different word, nokri, is used for a true foreigner – a different people. Ruth uses this term when she asks Boaz why he has taken notice of her, a foreigner (nokriya) in Ruth 2:10. Gale Yee accurately notes the negative connotation that comes with the term nokriya as someone different and foreign, but like other OT scholars, her explanation of ger is less clear and misses the distinction in comparison to nokriya. Yee, “She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn,” 127–128. Fleur S. Houston, You Shall Love the Stranger as Yourself: The Bible, Refugees, and Asylum (London: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2015), 69-72. Dharamraj notes that Ruth may be gleaning only “behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor” (Ruth 2:2) because the law does not include foreigners like herself. Dharamraj, Ruth, 56–57. Very early in the book of Isaiah the prophet evidences concern for the nokri, foreigner. And it specifically singles out the daughters of Moab, “Like fluttering birds, like scattered nestlings, so are the daughters of Moab at the fords of the Arnon. ‘Give counsel, grant justice; make your shade like night at the height of noon; hide the outcasts, do not betray the fugitive; let the outcasts of Moab settle among you, be a refuge to them from the destroyer’” (Is. 16:2–4). In narrative form, Ruth provides evidence that God’s intention is to include not only the internally displaced but also all those who worship the true God and display faithful, sacrificial love as Ruth displayed.
See Sakenfield’s explanation of the enemy territory of Moab as the backdrop for all that was terrible that happened to her, and why she did not want her daughters-in-law to accompany her home. Sakenfield, “The Story of Ruth: Economic Survival,” 218.
This sexual threat remains true of refugees today. As Houston writes, “Women refugees are particularly vulnerable. More often than not, sexual violence is a component of the political, religious or ethnic persecution women have experienced. . .” Houston, You Shall Love the Stranger as Yourself, 27.
The repeated references to her as being from Moab (1:22; 2:2, 6, 21; 4:5, 10) point to her physical differences that they all could see. Yee, “She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn,” 130.
Christian tradition understands Boaz to be the son of Salmon and Rahab. Their genealogies can be found in Ruth 4:20-21, 1 Chronicles 2:10-12, Matthew 1:4–5, and Luke 3:32–34. Nancy S. Dawson, All the Genealogies of the Bible: Visual Charts and Exegetical Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2023), 76.
Yee, “She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn,” 132.
Sakenfield, “The Story of Ruth: Economic Survival,” 219. Lisbeth S. Fried, Ruth: A Commentary, (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2023), 112.
The term “uncover his feet” is a Hebrew language euphemism for a man’s sexual organs. Dharamraj, Ruth, 85. A great number of scholars agree that Naomi was suggesting that Ruth sell her body or seduce Boaz, so that they could survive and eat. Yee, “She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn,” 130; Katharine Doob Sakenfield, “At the threshing floor: Sex, reader response, and a hermeneutic of survival, Old Testament Essays (New Series) 15, no. 1 (December 31, 2002): 166. While this might be shocking to consider in our Bible, our Bible reflects the reality of desperate people. From time immemorial right up to today, girls and women have had to sell their bodies to feed the ones they love best. To learn more about this listen to our podcast Mutuality Matters: Courage Worldwide’s Work Against Sex Trafficking with Stephanie Midthun and read our articles on sex trafficking.
Dharamraj, Ruth, 23.
Others have also seen that Ruth taught the Israelites about God’s faithfulness and love (hesed), when it should have been them teaching her. Yee, “She Stood in Tears Amid the Alien Corn,” 129.
Many note that Ruth doesn’t quite follow Naomi’s instructions, seeking a marriage proposal rather than seduction. Sakenfeld, “At the threshing floor,” 167. Dharamraj, Ruth, 88–89.
Jesus used similar metaphorical language regarding God’s protecting love of Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37 saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under wings, and you were not willing!”
Sakenfeld details the extreme danger and risk to Ruth this midnight encounter describes, pointing out the oppression women suffered that she had to go to such lengths. Sakenfeld, “At the threshing floor,” 167–168; Dharamraj, Ruth, 85, I agree with Sakenfield, Yee, Dharamraj and others who recognize the sexually infused situation but don’t believe it resulted in sex that night on the threshing floor. Dharamraj, Ruth, 94–95.
Pierce and Conway demonstrate that Boaz follows the heart of the law rather than the letter of the law. The letter of the law was to ostracize the Moabites for denying the Israelites sustenance when they were passing through the desert (Deut. 23:3–4). Ruth, on the other hand, committed herself to Naomi’s God and ensured Naomi received the sustenance and care required to renew her body, heart, and mind. Therefore, Boaz enacted the heart of God explained in Deut. 10:17–19 that shows no partiality, accepts no bribes and cares for the orphan, widow and displaced people. Ronald W. Pierce and Mary L. Conway, “The Treatment of Women Under the Mosaic Law,” Discovering Biblical Equality: Biblical Theological, Cultural and Practical Perspectives, Third Edition (Downers Grove, IVP Academic, 2021), 61–62.
Rachel Held Evans explores the meaning and use of eschet chayil in her book A Year of Biblical Womanhood. Rachel Held Evans, A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master,” (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), 87-90. See also Karen Mason, “Who is a Virtuous Woman?” Priscilla Papers 4, no. 1 (December 1990): 5-8. https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/who-virtuous-woman/
If we take a close look at the background of many of the Israelites, we learn that there were many foreigners who became part of Israel and added their own strengths and uniqueness to Israel. Just a few examples begin with Moses’s wife Zipporah. She was a daughter of the Midianite priest Jethro. It was her priestly knowledge that saved Moses and their son’s life in the desert (Ex. 4:24–26). Later, Caleb was one of Moses’s two faithful spies. With Joshue he spied out the land (Numbers 14:6–10). Caleb was a Kenazzite (Joshua 14:6, 14). He and his family were valiant warriors and believers in God. Caleb married his daughter, Acsah, to a warrior within his clan and he gave Acsah a land inheritance in the new nation of Israel. (Joshua 15:16–19; Judges 1:12–16). David’s grandmother was a Moabite—Ruth. And his great-grandmother, Rahab, was from Jericho. Uriah, part of David’s strong fighting man and more faithful than David to the fighting troops and nation, was a Hittite (2 Sam 11:6–11).
Sakenfield sees Ruth’s faithfulness as setting the “standard for divine kindness.” Sakenfield, “The Story of Ruth: Economic Survival,” 226.