Shall I Not Seek Rest for You?
1 Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, shall I not seek rest for you, that it may be well with you? 2 Now isn’t Boaz our kinsman, with whose maidens you were? Behold, he will be winnowing barley tonight on the threshing floor. 3 Therefore wash yourself, anoint yourself, get dressed, and go down to the threshing floor; but don’t make yourself known to the man until he has finished eating and drinking. 4 It shall be, when he lies down, that you shall note the place where he is lying. Then you shall go in, uncover his feet, and lie down. Then he will tell you what to do.” 5 She said to her, “All that you say, I will do.”
Naomi stops waiting and makes a plan, and the word she uses for its goal is the one she prayed over Ruth in Moab.
My daughter, shall I not seek rest for you, that it may be well with you? The word is the same one from her blessing on the road out of Moab, where she prayed each woman would find rest in the house of her husband Ruth 1:9. What she then committed to God she now sets about arranging.
The plan is specific and risky. Wash, anoint yourself, dress, and go down to the threshing floor — the preparations of a woman going to be seen rather than to work. But do not make yourself known until he has finished eating and drinking.
Then the instruction that carries the danger: note where he lies down, uncover his feet, and lie down. Threshing floors at harvest were places where men slept beside the grain to guard it, and where a woman arriving at night could be assumed to be there for one reason. Naomi is sending her daughter-in-law into a situation whose only protection is Boaz's character, and the whole plan rests on her reading of it.
Ruth's answer is five words: all that you say, I will do. She had refused Naomi's instruction once, in chapter 1, when obeying would have meant leaving.
settled What this mark means