Waiting for Instruction
Some will call Naomi a match-maker, but I think her
intentions were a bit nobler than that. She
realized the sacrifice that her widowed daughter-in-law Ruth had made. Ruth had left her homeland of Moab to travel
to Judah where she would be a foreigner, and might not ever be remarried. Her mother-in-law Naomi recognized this, and
she wanted a husband for her widowed daughter-in-law. In Ruth 1:13 as she is trying to leave alone,
she tells them “Would
you restrain yourselves from having husbands? No, my daughters; for it grieves
me very much for your sakes that the hand of the Lord has gone
out against me!”
Naomi herself was now old, widowed, and
without heirs. The Israelites valued
children and having their lineage live on.
But Naomi, being old and her sons being dead, would have no heirs. She must have felt the loneliness, and
worried that without grandchildren, who would take care of her if Ruth decided
to leave her?
But God specializes on doing the
impossible. Ruth had met Boaz, the owner
of the field in which she gathered barley after the field had been harvested,
and she had found favor in him. Boaz,
being a Godly man, honored her service to Naomi and her choice to choose God
over her families idols. He gave her
special provisions as she gathered barley in his field, and made sure she was
protected and cared for as she labored.
As God would have it, Boaz was a close
relative to Elimelech, Naomi’s dead husband, which was important in the
Israelite traditions. After a woman
married to an Israelite was widowed, there were “property rights” on her based
on who remained of her dead husband’s family.
A brother was first to have rights to marry her and give her children so
that her dead husband’s lineage would live on, and then the remaining men of
the family had rights to her. No doubt
when Naomi heard that Boaz had taken a liking to Ruth, she was overjoyed, and
started planning a wedding!
The harvest was complete, and the grain had
been hulled on the threshing floor. This
was a time when the people would usually hold banquets and have big
celebrations. It was also a time when
the threshing floor became a place of illicit sexual activity! Hosea 9:1
indicates it was a place of prostitution when it says “You have made love for
hire on every threshing floor.” But
Boaz, being a Godly man, would not have been a part of such things. Yet the innuendo is still there, and for a
woman to meet a man at a threshing floor is much like talking to him in his
bedroom. And on this night Boaz was at
the threshing floor “winnowing” his barley.
Naomi instructs Ruth to take a bath, put on
perfume, dress in her finest clothing, and go to the threshing floor where Boaz
would be. She waited until he had eaten
and had fallen asleep at the bottom of the pile of grain to protect the grain
from thieves and animals. Oh, Ruth was a
brave woman! Young as she was with an
older man alone in the night at a threshing floor. She was risking her reputation!
But what she does next is mysterious until
we know the tradition. Ruth softly and
quietly comes to Boaz, lies down at his feet, as a protector of him, and
uncovers his feet, never waking him. A woman
uncovering “more” of a man would have been propositioning him. But she uncovered only his feet, and did not
wake him. She was becoming intimate, but
not in a sexual way. Then, just as her
mother-in-law had told her, she waited.
Naomi had given Ruth instructions to wait and said “he will tell you what you should do.” This scene foretells of a
later scene in the Bible when Mary would sit at the feet of Jesus, and listen
to His every word.
There are times when we need to be alone
with God, and just listen to hear what he will tell us to do. We need to make ourselves vulnerable to Him,
and be intimate. How many of our worries
and problems would be solved if we just waited patiently, knowing that “he will tell you what to do.”
The Bible tells us in Psalms 27:14 that if
we will wait upon God, and keep our courage that He will renew our strength. We’ve all been there – so troubled and
worried that we feel physically unable to go on. But the prescription for this kind of pain is
simple. It’s faith. Faith gives courage, and courage allows you
to wait for God to instruct you.
What do you need to wait on God for
today? Is there an issue you need to
hand over to Him? He is faithful to take
your burden, and renew your strength.
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