Читать книгу The Struggle to Define God - Robert A. Butterfield - Страница 6

Preliminary Remarks

The book of Ruth is relevant to this study, not only because it operates unhesitatingly on the assumption that God is indeed gracious, but also because it dramatically demonstrates God’s desire to embrace all humankind. In both these ways, the book of Ruth reveals a God far different from the one pictured by the Jerusalem hardliners.

Ruth: Chapter 1

The story begins by claiming to be set in the period before the monarchy, the period of the so-called judges. Scholars agree, however, that it dates from postexilic Judah, most likely from the fourth century BCE. Biblical texts often pretend to be older than they really are because, in matters of religion, the Jews thought that older texts were more authoritative.

The action begins in Bethlehem, which is undergoing a famine. For this reason, an Israelite man, his wife, and two sons leave the country and go to Moab. To appreciate the significance of this choice of destinations, it is important to know that historically the Israelites had suffered much at the hands of several foreign countries, including the Edomites and the Egyptians, but that the Israelites had generally overcome their hatred of these two countries, as evidenced by Deuteronomy 23:8–9, which reads: “You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your kinsman. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land. Children born to them may be admitted into the congregation of the Lord in the third generation.” Thus, descendants of the Edomites and the Egyptians are permitted to marry into Israel. But such is not at all the case with Moab or Ammon, which are the object of undying hatred among the Israelites, as evidenced by Deuteronomy 23:4–5, which reads: “No Ammonite or Moabite shall be admitted to the congregation of the Lord, because they did not meet you with food and water on your journey after you left Egypt, and because they hired Balaam son of Beor, from Pethor of Aram-naharaim, to curse you.”

Thus, in the book of Ruth, an Israelite family goes to settle in a country that occupies a special place in the annals of Jewish xenophobia. Moab is the most enduringly and intensely despised of Israel’s neighbors. Moab even hired a prophet to put a curse on the Israelites. Of course, the author of the book of Ruth chose Moab as the place where this Israelite family settles. The point is to make what follows all the more extraordinary. If something good can come out of Moab, the xenophobia of the hardliners in Jerusalem will be put to shame, and that is exactly the aim of this narrative.

The father of the Israelite family that settles in Moab is Elimelech; his wife is Naomi, and his two sons are Mahlon and Chilion. After they have settled in Moab, Elimelech dies and leaves Naomi with their two sons. The sons marry Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. Ten years later, both sons die, so that Naomi is now without husband or sons or grandchildren. Thus, Naomi is in a precarious situation. She has no means of support, no property in Moab, and no family at all in Moab except for these two daughters-in-law, who are themselves widowed and thus also living precariously. Importantly, these women have no man to protect them, and for that reason all three have suffered a significant loss in social status. They are déclassées and defenseless.

Seeing no reason to remain in Moab, Naomi decides to return to Israel, because she has heard that God has put an end to the famine there. So, then, she sets out on the road to Bethlehem, accompanied by both Orpah and Ruth. But it soon occurs to Naomi that it would be unwise for Orpah and Ruth to leave their native country. Out of loving concern for her daughters-in-law, Naomi tells them to go back to their families of origin, and she asks God to deal kindly with them, just as they have dealt kindly with her and her two sons. The point is that, in the same way that it was wildly impractical for Israelites to settle in Moab, so it would be fruitless or even dangerous for Moabites to seek refuge in Israel. Thus, Naomi encourages Orpah and Ruth to stay in Moab and marry there. As she kisses them farewell, the daughters-in-law break into tears, saying: “No, we will return with you to your people.” Note the possessive pronoun “your,” which subtly reminds the reader of the awkward differences between Moabites and Israelites. Naomi is mindful of potential problems and thus urges Orpah and Ruth to go back home. Naomi employs the argument that she is too old to give them Israelite husbands again even if she married. Thus, these two young women need to think about marrying in Moab. More importantly, she says, it is not to their advantage to remain with her; her lot is worse than theirs, because the Lord has made it so. This last remark lends credence to the important suggestion that the God of Israel is at work orchestrating events.

Again, Orpah and Ruth break into tears. Then Orpah prudently decides to take Naomi’s advice and bids her farewell, never to appear again in the narrative. But Ruth clings to Naomi, who, in response, affirms the wisdom of Orpah’s decision and reiterates the estrangement that exists between Moabites and Israelites by saying that Orpah has returned to her people and to her gods and that Ruth should do likewise.

But Ruth replies, in words that over the centuries have lost none of their emotional and spiritual power: “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus and more may the Lord do to me if anything but death parts me from you.”

With respect to this amazing statement, it is important that nothing in this story suggests that Ruth has become acculturated or converted to Israelite religion. In fact, both Naomi’s statements and Ruth’s have, up to this point, repeatedly shown an awareness that Israelite religion and culture are foreign to Ruth. Thus, when Ruth makes this surprising pledge to follow Naomi, to make Naomi’s people her people, and Naomi’s God her God, Ruth is acting in a counterintuitive manner that cannot be fully explained even by assuming the most exceptional personal loyalty or self-denial on Ruth’s part. Ruth’s decision is clearly designed to be a match for the totally unimaginable choice of Moab as a place for Israelites to settle. In other words, the only satisfactory explanation for Ruth’s statement is that God has inspired it for God’s own purposes, which presumably include providing for the welfare of these two widows but which may very well go far beyond that immediate objective. The reality is, then, that Ruth has not so much chosen Naomi and Naomi’s God as that Naomi’s God has chosen Ruth as his agent in a plan so far from human imagining that only God could have thought it up. Nevertheless, the existence of such a divine plan takes nothing away from Ruth’s touching loyalty.

As for Ruth’s remarkable pledge, her loyalty stands in sharp contrast to the disloyalty shown by Elimelech when he abandoned his community in a time of crisis. Remember that he left Bethlehem to escape a famine. Thus, in an ironic twist, the Moabite Ruth already reveals herself as more committed to the Israelite community than was the Israelite Elimelech. Only God’s involvement with Ruth can plausibly explain her behavior. In fact, her loyalty to Naomi’s God, whose hidden hand is at work behind the scenes, prefigures and explains everything that occurs later.

When the two widows arrive in Bethlehem, the whole city comes out to greet them. Women cry out, “Can this be Naomi?” But Naomi, whose name means “pleasantness,” responds by telling people to call her Mara (bitterness), and she publicly blames the Lord for the bitterness she has experienced. She left Israel full but came back empty, she says, because the Lord had brought misfortune upon her. In this way, she publicized her need for the community’s help and for God’s.

Fortunately, Naomi returns to Bethlehem with Ruth at a most opportune time: the beginning of the barley harvest, which is the perfect opportunity for the community to help these hungry and defenseless widows. Since God is at work managing such details, there seems to be nothing coincidental about the timing of their arrival in Bethlehem.

Ruth: Chapter 2

In Moab, Naomi has no property and no kinfolk to help her, and so the first thing she does upon returning to Bethlehem is to publicly announce her indigent condition. In response to this appeal, the opening verses of this chapter offer a strong hint of promise. In Bethlehem, Naomi does indeed have kinfolk—specifically Boaz, a man related to her husband, a man of substance. Since Boaz is a kinsman of Elimelech, Boaz is most likely of Elimelech’s generation and thus a mature adult.

Ever the hard-working and loyal companion, Ruth tells Naomi that she would like to glean among the ears of grain, working behind someone who may show her kindness. Notice how far from human imagining it is that Ruth, a just-arrived and still unprotected widow in a very strange land, should take the initiative and offer to go gleaning. Gleaning, interestingly, is not a Moabite practice and not something a Moabite would even know about. It is instead a distinctively Jewish idea enshrined in the Torah. That Ruth, a Moabite, should know about this legal provision and then, immediately and on her own initiative, want to glean, can plausibly be explained only if it is assumed again that Ruth is acting upon divine instruction. Verse 3 says that, “as luck would have it,” the land where Ruth goes to glean belongs to Boaz. But, of course, luck has absolutely nothing to do with it.

One might well ask why this narrative makes it obvious, though never explicit, that God is at work behind the scenes, so that events correspond perfectly to God’s will. This subtle technique speaks authoritatively to the intended audience, which is not only Jews in general but also, and especially, the hardliners in Jerusalem. The purpose of this narrative is to change the hearts and minds of these hardliners, and that can be done only if they feel addressed by God.

In any case, Boaz soon arrives at his fields and greets his workers by saying, “The Lord be with you!” By any standard, this is a pious and loving way for a landowner to speak to his workers. Boaz treats them like family, and they respond in kind. Thus, we learn that Boaz is not only a man of substance but also a religious Jew who is full of community spirit and for whom the active presence of God among them is a given.

Because Boaz shows loving concern for his workers, he seems likely to show similar concern for this new girl working in his fields. “Whose girl is that?” he asks, and his men report that she is a Moabite girl who came back with Naomi from Moab and who asked to glean among the reapers. They then add a telling detail, namely, that this Moabite girl has been on her feet and working hard since early morning. This detail is designed to have an impact on Boaz, a community-minded Jew; he cannot be unmoved by this detail, which not only reveals Ruth’s loyalty and energetic devotion to her mother-in-law—all the more wonderful because Ruth is a Moabite—but also reminds Boaz of his sacred obligation to defend the widow and the resident alien, Ruth being both widow and resident alien.

Boaz then speaks to Ruth in a fatherly and protective manner, as if she were his own daughter. Thus, we learn that Boaz takes his religious obligations quite seriously. He tells her not to glean in any other field, to stay close to his female workers, and to follow them. In a gesture of additional protection and hospitality, he orders his men not to molest her, and he invites Ruth to drink from his water supply whenever she is thirsty.

This scene shows how the divinely inspired behavior of Ruth, the impoverished Moabite widow and resident alien, is met with the divinely inspired response of Boaz, the religious Jew. Out of concern for the welfare of her mother-in-law, Ruth reaches out to the community for any help that the practice and legal principle of gleaning might offer her—and, in her gleaning, she spares no effort. Boaz, for his part, recognizes that it is his religious obligation to help her. He is not in the least deterred by the fact that she is a Moabite. In fact, her nationality only underscores the marvelous nature of her behavior and makes it all the more captivating. In this way, both Ruth and Boaz are counterintuitive characters. Who among the hardliners in Jerusalem would ever expect a Moabite to behave in a way so pleasing to the God of Israel? And who would expect a Jewish landowner living in this period marked by intense xenophobia to treat a Moabite with such loving kindness? This is only the first of several scenes designed to demonstrate that God calls us to exercise a radical hospitality in which there is no hint of xenophobia.

In fact, even Ruth recognizes how far from human imagining her situation is and so asks Boaz why he is being so kind as to single her out even though she is a foreigner. Boaz, who in this narrative is modeling the way the author wishes all Jews to behave, replies that he has been told about everything Ruth did for her mother-in-law—how Ruth left her mother and father and the land of her birth and came to a people she had not known before. In other words, Boaz both admires her loyalty to Naomi and appreciates the totally unexpected character of her decision and her behavior, which to him clearly indicate that this is God’s handiwork and that Ruth is acting as God’s agent. Thus, he responds by saying, “May the Lord reward your deeds. May you have full recompense from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have sought refuge!”

Ruth’s response to this blessing is ingenious: “You are most kind, my lord, to comfort me and to speak gently to your maidservant . . . ” This show of respect for the stellar quality of Boaz as a religious Jew might have been enough to win his eternal loyalty. But she adds something even more suggestive and charming: “ . . . even though I am not so much as one of your maidservants.” This is an expression of the most sincere and abject humility, and no character trait is more valued among religious Jews—or by God—than humility. Boaz must have been mightily impressed. At the same time, Ruth’s mention of the fact that she is not one of Boaz’s kinfolk/family implies that Ruth could or should become a member of Boaz’s family. Clearly, Ruth’s hint does not fall on deaf ears either, because Boaz invites Ruth to join him and his kinfolk for lunch. Apparently, Ruth is given the honor of sitting near Boaz, because she is able to dip her bread in the same vinegar bowl that Boaz is using. Ruth eats her fill and, after the meal, has lots of leftovers to take home to Naomi.

As already pointed out, Boaz is playing the role of the exemplary religious Jew, but this status does not obviate the need for him to be prompted from time to time. Ruth’s statement that she is not even one of his official maidservants is one such divinely inspired prompt.

When Ruth gets up from lunch in order to continue gleaning, Boaz takes his protective generosity to the next level by telling his workers to give her even more grain than she could possibly gather by gleaning. And, so, Ruth works until evening and ends up with a large amount of grain, which she then carries back to town. The sheer quantity of that grain, in addition to what was left over from Ruth’s lunch with Boaz, impresses Naomi, who asks Ruth where she worked that day and, before even hearing Ruth’s reply, offers a blessing on the person who was so generous to her.

Ruth explains that she worked with a man named Boaz. Naomi responds by blessing the Lord for his kindness to the living and the dead, a statement that Naomi immediately clarifies by explaining that Boaz is a relative of hers and thus qualifies as one of their redeeming kinsmen. This is an allusion to Leviticus 25:25, which reads: “If your kinsman is in straits and has to sell part of his holding, his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his kinsman has sold.” It is also a reference to levirate marriage as spelled out in Deuteronomy 25:5—6, which reads: “When brothers dwell together and one of them dies, the wife of the deceased shall not be married to a stranger, outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall unite with her: he shall take her as his wife and perform the levir’s (redeemer’s) duty. The first son that she bears shall be accounted to the dead brother, so that his name may not be blotted out in Israel.” In other words, Boaz, as a kinsman of Elimelech, is one of those close male relatives who have a sacred legal responsibility to rescue Elimelech’s name from oblivion by marrying Elimelech’s widow, keeping ownership of Elimelech’s land in the family, and fathering a son for Elimelech.

Ruth confirms the correctness of Naomi’s impressions about Boaz by saying that he even told her to stay close to his workers throughout the harvest, a fact that both women interpret as a sign of Boaz’s growing interest in and feeling of responsibility toward Ruth, who will take Naomi’s place in this levirate marriage since Naomi is already too old.

Naomi encourages Ruth to follow Boaz’s advice. So, then, Ruth gleans in Boaz’s fields until the end of the barley harvest, after which she stays at home with her mother-in-law. Thus, everything is going according to plan, but the problem is that Boaz has not taken any further steps in Ruth’s direction; he has yet to commit. Even though Boaz is an exemplary religious Jew, he still needs to be urged and prompted if the action of this divine plan is going to proceed.

Ruth: Chapter 3

Naomi now thinks of a way to push Boaz into making a commitment. She tells Ruth to bathe, dress up, and go down that very night to the threshing floor, where Boaz will be winnowing barley. When he has finished eating and drinking and has lain down to sleep, Ruth should uncover his feet and lie at the foot of his bed, at which point Boaz will tell Ruth what to do. Ruth promises to do as she is told.

Everything happens just as Naomi has instructed, so that in the middle of the night Boaz awakens to discover a woman lying at his feet. “Who are you?” he asks. Her response is bold and direct: “I am your handmaid Ruth.” Note that she is no longer “not so much as one” of his maidservants; now she is most definitely his handmaid. Since Boaz has been so slow in taking the initiative, Ruth has had to take it for him and promote herself to handmaid. She then goes on to say, in a tone of voice that one may assume leaves little room for Boaz to hesitate or disagree, “Spread your robe over your handmaid, for you are a redeeming kinsman.” Spreading his robe over her would be the official sign of his agreeing to marry her, and marrying her, she implicitly reminds him, is his sacred responsibility as a redeeming kinsman. Thus, Boaz gets pushed into action.

Because Boaz is a generation older than Ruth, this scene does not have all the sexual tension it would have if Boaz were a vigorous young man. In fact, Boaz exclaims, “Be blessed of the Lord, daughter! Your latest deed of loyalty is greater than the first, in that you have not turned to younger men, whether rich or poor.” What Boaz means, apart from simply thinking of Ruth as his daughter, is that Ruth was loyal to Naomi once by staying with her and gleaning for her and then a second time by seeking—not a young lover such as a young woman like Ruth might prefer—but an older man who could rescue Naomi and redeem Elimelech’s name.

In this story, Boaz has experienced quite a remarkable journey. In his very first encounter with Ruth, he is greatly impressed with her hard work and her devotion to her mother-in-law, and, since both women are defenseless widows, he feels a strong religious obligation to help them, especially Ruth, who is also a resident alien. Ruth, for her part, displays personal qualities that would be striking in any girl but that in a Moabite are preternatural and suggest divine inspiration. Boaz has warm fatherly feelings toward Ruth and is also moved by her genuine humility and loyalty and by her courageous decision to leave Moab and come to a place she did not know. He senses that God is at work through Ruth, but he is not yet sure exactly what his own role is in this divine-human drama. But Boaz finds at least one action to be immediately appropriate: to ask God to bless Ruth. And, so, Boaz does.