Ruth: Overturned expectations

  I'm doing some studies in the books of Judges and Ruth, and I am currently reading a commentary written by a Jewish scholar on Ruth, Yehoshua Bachrach; it's called Mother of Royalty. It's got a variety of helpful insights, but two that I found particularly interesting come from Ruth chapter 2.

  This chapter starts out by introducing Boaz, the wealthy, "mighty man of valor" and relative of Naomi's dead husband, whom one might naturally expect to take up the slack and fill the needs of Naomi and Ruth which were known to the town and which Boaz can intuit from what he has been 'fully told' (2:21). Yet, he does nothing apparently. Then 'by chance', Ruth ends up gleaning in his field, and when he speaks to her, he allows her to continue as one of the poor who glean in the corners of the field and offers her water. Her response to him contains a rebuke: "I am a foreigner. Why do you even care about me?" (2:10) He should have already cared and shown it:

Ruth’s remarks contained an unintentional reproach – a rebuke to the kinsman, the redeemer, who had ignored his own relatives and had allowed Naomi to sit at home, alone and hungry. Here was Naomi’s daughter-in-law. She had come to gather food for her aged mother-in-law. […] Was she not instead crying out in protest at all the humiliation inflicted on the entire house of Elimelech, so cruelly treated in Beth-lehem? (pg 85, emphasis mine)

  Whether or not the reproach is intentional, Ruth is suddenly rebuking the 'mighty man of valor' who has not taken responsibility for his aged relative's poverty and has instead allowed a foreigner to do so! Indeed, Ruth's being a Moabite almost certainly told against her being socially accepted in Bethlehem according to the understanding of the Mosaic Law, but did it require others' inaction to care for her poor mother-in-law? Here was a 'foreign woman' who had acted upon YHWH's Law better than YHWH's people.

 A bit later (2:19-20), we find another reversal of our expectations regarding this 'man of valor'. Instead of the wealthy man blessing the two widows, it is the two widows who have here blessed him, and one of them is a Moabite! Citing Yalkut Shim’oni, Ruth Rabba 5.9, Bachrach quotes:

More than the householder does for the poor man, the poor man does for the householder, for so Ruth said to Naomi: “The man’s name for whom I wrought.” She did not say “who wrought for me” but “for whom I wrought.” I wrought him many benefits in return for the one morsel of food which he gave me. (94, emphasis mine)

 Even if Ruth is not quite as bold as the above comment suggests, this is still a remarkable set of verses as the order of blessing is unexpectedly overturned. Over and over in the LORD's system, we see that the weak, the poor, the unworthy, or the unknown are only so labeled in the eyes of those who don't see clearly. May we grow in seeing and being properly, as the One does!