Under Whose Wings
11 Boaz answered her, “I have been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father, your mother, and the land of your birth, and have come to a people that you didn’t know before. 12 May Yahweh repay your work, and a full reward be given to you from Yahweh, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” 13 Then she said, “Let me find favor in your sight, my lord, because you have comforted me, and because you have spoken kindly to your servant, though I am not as one of your servants.”
Boaz answers her question with her own history, and then prays a prayer that chapter 3 will hand back to him.
I have been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law. Her reputation had preceded her, which is the answer to why a stranger took notice — Bethlehem is small, and what she did was worth repeating.
His summary is precise: you left your father, your mother, and the land of your birth, and came to a people you did not know. The phrasing is close to what was said to Abram, told to leave country, kindred and father's house for a land he would be shown Genesis 12:1. A Moabite widow is described in the vocabulary of the patriarch's own call.
Then the prayer. May Yahweh repay your work, and a full reward be given to you from Yahweh, the God of Israel, under whose wings — kanaph H3671 — you have come to take refuge. The image is a bird sheltering its young, used in the psalms of God's protection Psalms 91:4.
That word occurs exactly twice in this book. Boaz prays it here over a woman he has just met. In Ruth 3:9 Ruth will use the same word to ask Boaz to spread his own over her — asking him, in his own vocabulary, to become the answer to his own prayer.
settled What this mark means