Biblion Bible Commentary
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One of Our Near Kinsmen
Ruth 2:17-20
17 So she gleaned in the field until evening; and she beat out that which she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. · WEB
Ruth carries home an impossible quantity of barley, and Naomi blesses God for the first time since the funeral.
She gleaned until evening, beat out what she had gathered, and it was about an ephah of barley. The figure is startling — roughly a bushel, something like a fortnight's food from a single day's gleaning. Boaz's instructions in the previous verses are the explanation, and Ruth does not know it.
Naomi sees the pile before she hears the story, and her question is immediate: where have you gleaned today? Blessed be he who noticed you. She blesses the man before she knows who he is.
Then the name lands, and Naomi's reaction is the turn of the chapter. May he be blessed by Yahweh, who has not abandoned his hesed H2617 to the living and to the dead. It is the second of the book's three uses, and it is Naomi's first good word about God since she told the town he had dealt bitterly with her Ruth 1:20. The kindness she credits is God's; the hands were Boaz's, and she does not distinguish them.
And she supplies the fact Ruth could not have known: the man is a close relative, one of our near kinsmen — goel H1350, the redeemer who can buy back what the family has lost.
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