A brief reading of Ruth 3, before Sunday School this afternoon. Here’s a summary of my thoughts:
The Naomi-Ruth dynamic has overtly become a David-Uriah dynamic.
The point of this is to show the ethnic Jew, Naomi, not doing faith so hot, and the Jewish convert, Ruth the Moabitess, really nailing faithfulness like Uriah the Hittite.
Happy Pentecost.
Come, Holy Spirit.
Then Naomi, her mother-in-law, said to her,
“My daughter, is it not that I should seek for your rest
which is good for you?
And now, is not Boaz our relative
with whose young women you were?
Funny that the narrator describes Naomi (“mother-in-law”) as describing Ruth as a closer relation to her (“daughter”) than she actually is. That makes me suspect her advice, which begins with two premises, the first one coming with a justification.
Naomi had sought Ruth’s rest in Ch. 1 “in the house of” her hypothetical “husband” (v. 9). 3:1 is Naomi picking up an old conversation, adding, like many nagging well-meaning moms, that it is “good for you.”
She establishes her second premise by way of a rhetorical question, too. Some would call it passive aggressive. Others would call it Midwest nice.
Behold, he his winnowing the threshing floor of barley tonight.
Now wash and anoint and put your clothing upon you
and go down to the threshing floor.
Do not be known to the man
until his finishing to eat and to drink.
It has been pointed out before that this recalls David trying to orchestrate a noctural encounter between Uriah and David, which is also thwarted. (A reader, Colin van Meter, has also pointed out that Laban tries (and succeeds in) getting Jacob drunk in order to sleep with Leah.)
Curiously, there is only one other place in Scripture where a person “washes” (rachats), “anoints” (suk), and “puts on clothes” (sum shimlah), and that’s David at 2 Sam. 12:20. This is the moment that David discerns and confirms that the child—the one whom he’d tried to hide by getting Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba—had died.
I don’t know what to make of these constant linguistic nods to the David-Uriah story, other than to say that Naomi, who is trying to force things, is looking like the bad guys, and Ruth’s faith makes her look the good guys.
And it shall come about when he lies down
that you will know the place where he lies down
and you shall enter
and you shall uncover the-place-of-his-feet
and you shall lie down
and he will declare to you that which you shall do.”And she said to her, “All which you have said I will do.”
The feet-uncovering euphemism has been over-explained, but I think I have a solution:
Yes, “uncover the place of his feet” is a euphemism, as much as “sleeping with someone” is a euphemism. For this reason, plus all the David-Uriah reasons, plus her earlier “even if I was tonight to a husband” (1:12), readers are meant to see Naomi as trying to set up a sexual encounter.
Yes, readers are meant to be troubled by Ruth’s pledge of total obedience. But I have already summarized an argument that this text recalls other texts in the David-Uriah story where someone promises to do “all” that David says, and then they don’t. Heck, it’s the only way to satisfy a bitter, micromanaging power grabber.
Perhaps Ruth literally “uncovers his feet” in the same way that she may have literally “slept with him.” The ambiguity of the euphemism is part of the point.
What if our overconcern to protect Ruth’s reputation is a contemporary version of Naomi’s overconcern to get Ruth rest?