Suggestive Readings of Ruth, Part II
This is a really fun one.
Boaz: Shrewd Trickster or Hapless Fool?
Here’s Boaz’s best line, delivered in the final scene (4:5): “On the day you acquire the field from the hand of Naomi and from Ruth the Moabite, I shall acquire the wife of the dead man in order to establish the name of the dead man over his inheritance.”
Scholars note the ambiguity of the moniker, “wife of the dead man.” Grammatically, this could be taken to refer to Naomi or Ruth. We, having read Ch. 3, know it’s Ruth. The “close relative” and the “ten elders” (4:1-2) don’t.
The common reading takes Boaz to be the Shrewd Trickster: a nearly frustrated romantic who (suavely) “redeems” this valiant (probably beautiful?) young woman named Ruth by tricking the man who had the ‘first dibs’ into thinking he meant Naomi.
Like a more forthright Laban or something.
Jeff Hayes takes Boaz to be a “hapless fool”:
Rather than announcing triumphantly to the assembled men that Ruth had chosen him as her mate, Boaz bungles the announcement, so that everyone thinks he plans to father a child with No'omi.
That changes the common reading of the “close relative.”
Rather than seeing the nearer redeemer as a nameless foil for Boaz's shrewdness, we may begin to see him, in contrast with Boaz, as a reasonable voice in the scene. In short, if the author intends for Boaz to be unaware of his ambiguity, we are invited to see Boaz as a foolish character in this, his most public scene.
That requires us to re-read all of Boaz’s lines and scenes. Here’s how that might look:
In Ch. 2, Boaz allows Ruth, a foreigner, to glean two weeks worth of grain in one day. He wouldn’t be the first man to make a foolish economic decision at the appearance of a (hot and) exotic woman.
In Ch. 3, a “drunk” (v. 6) and sleeping Boaz is surprised by Ruth, who shoots straight: “I am Ruth, your maid. Spread your covering” (v. 9). Boaz’s words, per Hebraist Tod Linafelt, devolve from “florid” to “sputtering” over the course of his response, which he ends by begging her to spend the rest of the night with him.
When Boaz tells Ruth to sneak out the next morning (v. 14), he loads up the front of her cloak with grain, rather binding it and placing it on her back or neck like a normal person (v. 15). The visual impression this leaves—of Ruth with a big bulge on her belly—makes the reader shake their head at silly Boaz, who couldn’t even sneak Ruth out without making her look super pregnant.
It culminates in Ch. 4. In the mundane setting of a circle of hungover men, the “mighty man” (2:1) Boaz “stammers” (Linafelt, 2010) out a proposition, to which the “close relative” (CR) responds succinctly: “I will redeem it” (v. 4).
Boaz stammers on about taking “the wife of the dead man” in order to do so. These men knew Elimilech—at least two of them were his relatives (e.g. 2:1; 4:1-2)—and Ruth had already brought up his name. The aforementioned ambiguity at 4:5 suggests that the “dead man” is Elimelech. The humor is that it sounds like Boaz is talking about sleeping with Naomi to raise up Elimelech’s name through her.
CR responds, mockingly in 4:6: No, “because I would spill (shachat) my inheritance.” You do it. He isn’t expressing a financial concern; he’s telling a sex joke.
To shachat your inheritance is to do what Judah had Onan had done with his seed when he was in a similar situation with Tamar: “When [Onan] went into his brother’s wife, he shachat his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother” (Gen. 38:9). That’s the joke: Sleeping with bitter, old Naomi is no different than shachat-ing your seed on the ground. Plus, word has already gotten around that Boaz has been carelessly liberal with his literal seed (Ch. 2).
Rather than laugh, Boaz doubles down on his manly redemption plot, and finally distinguishes between the women, calling the guys “witnesses” that he has bought Naomi’s land and taken Ruth as his wife (4:9-10).
Reading Boaz as a “hapless fool” de-heroizes Boaz, relieves the tension of the contract Boaz negotiates in Ch. 4, and shifts the climactic center of the story back to Ruth’s initiative in Ch. 3.