The Near Kinsman

17So she gleaned in the field until evening; and she beat out that which she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. 18She took it up, and went into the city. Then her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned; and she brought out and gave to her that which she had left after she had enough. 19Her mother-in-law said to her, “Where have you gleaned today? Where have you worked? Blessed be he who noticed you.” She told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” 20Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by Yahweh, who has not abandoned his kindness to the living and to the dead.” Naomi said to her, “The man is a close relative to us, one of our near kinsmen.” 21Ruth the Moabitess said, “Yes, he said to me, ‘You shall stay close to my young men, until they have finished all my harvest.’” 22Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his maidens, and that they not meet you in any other field.” 23So she stayed close to the maidens of Boaz, to glean to the end of barley harvest and of wheat harvest; and she lived with her mother-in-law.

People can be sorted into introverts and extroverts. Some are optimistic about everything, while others expect the worst. Some are satisfied only when they settle every matter themselves; others are passive and simply go along with whatever everyone else decides. There are those who insist on having their own way in all things, and there are those who keep to a neutral position, weighing everyone’s opinions and working them all into a compromise.

Part of a person’s character may be inborn, but we can see that upbringing plays the larger role in forming it. If the parents are tidy by nature and in the habit of putting everything back in its place, the child naturally comes to find clutter unbearable. If, on the other hand, the parents never tidy up, the child hardly notices a fair amount of mess and grows up without ever learning how to keep things in order.

Because children absorb even the smallest details of their parents without realizing it, warm and kind parents tend to raise affectionate children who notice how others feel and know how to comfort them. But if the parents are sharp and aggressive, the children have to find ways of escaping those moments, and they grow up with rough edges that are likely to keep their relationships from going smoothly. Character, in other words, is not formed overnight.

We see how remarkably closely children come to resemble their parents. Unless a child learns to judge well on their own while growing up, the kind of people their parents are and the home they grow up in matter enormously. Of course, we also see people raised in perfectly ordinary homes who go on to cause scandal in society. All the more reason, then, for parents to set sound standards by which their children can judge rightly.

Ruth had been born and raised in Moab, so she worshiped the Moabite god her parents believed in and took it for granted that this was how life was lived. But when she came to know her mother-in-law, she learned that the god of Moab she had trusted was no true god but a god made by human hands. She discovered that God is not like the idols, which exist to bring people good fortune, but is the Creator who made heaven and earth and all that is in them. By leaving the parents who bore and raised her and coming to know her mother-in-law Naomi, Ruth had her eyes opened to a new spiritual world and took hold of the hope of heaven.

As Naomi loved Ruth like her own daughter and shaped her deeply in the things of God, Ruth came to a faith that obeyed her mother-in-law’s word without reserve. When we see Ruth, raised in Moab, born again into the family of God, we can tell how hard Naomi had worked to make God known to her daughters-in-law.

Little by little, Ruth began to take on her mother-in-law’s character and faith. Her respect for the faith of the woman who had gone before her in believing led her to trust God’s will just as Naomi taught it, and that faith made Ruth an ancestor in the faith.

Meeting a person of faith like this is a gift. The people and the surroundings closest to you shape you without your knowing it, just as parents do, so you must always look to see whether there are people of faith beside you. However firmly you resolve to live by faith, it is simply true that if you keep company with people who live for pleasure, your thoughts and actions will lean toward the world far more than if you spent your days among those who walk by faith. So those who complain will find others who complain, and those who deceive will meet people even better at deceiving. Hopeful, cheerful, and wise people, for their part, recognize those who are more so than themselves, and that is how they will find their way to the wise.

You cannot live cut off from the world. That is precisely why you must hold sound standards if you are to judge rightly what goes on around you. You need them because only then, instead of flaring up in anger, can you think a little more positively and look a few steps further before you weigh a matter. The word of God may look as if it has no strength or power at all, but if you look closely at your own life, you will find, remarkably, that the word has been leading your life and working for the sake of your faith.

Ruth 2:17

17So she gleaned in the field until evening; and she beat out that which she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley.

The grain Ruth gathered in Boaz’s field that day came to about an ephah — a great deal for a woman gleaning in someone else’s field. An ephah is roughly twelve Korean doe.

Because Boaz had ordered the men binding the sheaves not to tie up everything but to let some fall here and there for Ruth, she brought home more than enough for herself and Naomi to eat. To give a sense of it: the weight of a doe of barley differs from region to region, but in Seoul it is 0.7 kilograms. The barley Ruth gathered that day, then, came to 8.4 kilograms — a considerable amount of food for a woman to gather in a single day.

Just as God helped Ruth so that she would not suffer for want of daily bread, he is always preparing people and circumstances to help those who strive for the salvation of souls. But suppose God had prepared Boaz, and Ruth had been too lazy to go out for food, or too afraid of the world to go. Then, for all that had been prepared, she would have come home with nothing. Ruth went out into the world to find food with fear and trembling, but God, knowing her faith and her resolve, became her protector and a shield that kept the wicked from touching her.

Naomi knew how hard it is for a daughter-in-law to find food in a land not her own, and she worried as anyone would. But God was at work so that Ruth found what they needed.

Ruth 2:19-20

19Her mother-in-law said to her, “Where have you gleaned today? Where have you worked? Blessed be he who noticed you.” She told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” 20Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by Yahweh, who has not abandoned his kindness to the living and to the dead.” Naomi said to her, “The man is a close relative to us, one of our near kinsmen.”

When Ruth came home with the barley, Naomi did not rejoice first; she asked where all that grain had come from. As far as Naomi could see, there was nowhere Ruth could possibly have gotten so much. When Ruth answered that the man who had helped her was Boaz, Naomi asked Yahweh to bless him. Then she said something puzzling: that he was a man to be treasured, one who had not abandoned his kindness to the living and to the dead. Naomi knew what God was doing for her and for Ruth. To two women who had lost family and property alike and come home with no one to lean on, the love of a God who showed them grace was a great comfort.

The world is kinder to those who already have. Since there is nothing to be gained from the poor, people are more generous to the powerful, who can profit them. Jesus did the opposite. He bore the cross and gave himself up for sinners — sinners caught in death, helpless, unable to pay the price of their own lives. It is by that sacrifice that we can now call God “Abba, Father,” and live under his complete protection in Satan’s world, at rest and in peace.

Had Boaz been a worldly man, he would never have allowed Ruth to glean in his field, let alone told his servants to leave grain behind for her. Because Boaz belonged to God and served him rightly, the mere fact that Ruth had come to Bethlehem to join God’s people was reason enough for him to show her grace.

Ruth 2:20

20Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by Yahweh, who has not abandoned his kindness to the living and to the dead.” Naomi said to her, “The man is a close relative to us, one of our near kinsmen.”

When Naomi heard that Boaz had shown kindness to Ruth, she was overjoyed. She said that he had not stopped showing kindness to the living and to the dead, and that he was one of their near kinsmen.

Boaz was Naomi’s relative, a man who had stayed close to the family and treated them with favor back when Elimelech lived in Bethlehem. So when he goes on showing kindness to Naomi and Ruth in their distress, he is showing love to the living, and that same goodwill amounts to grace shown to the dead as well — to Elimelech, Mahlon, and Chilion.

Naomi said Boaz was one of the “near kinsmen.” Israel had an institution called the goel, by which the inheritance God had allotted to each family was kept forever from passing to another clan, so that the family itself would endure. The man who became the kinsman-redeemer for a poor relative had to buy back that relative’s land with his own money, bore the duty of avenging a kinsman who had suffered unjust harm, and was obliged to marry the relative’s widow and keep his name alive. Only someone resolved to give himself completely could take all this on. To serve as goel, a man had to be a blood relative, had to volunteer, and had to have the means to bear all of it; only then was he qualified to be the near kinsman.

Seen this way, no one among the near kinsmen was better suited than Boaz, since he was both their relative and a man with the wealth to recover their land. If Boaz made up his mind to act, he would have to buy back the land Naomi had sold when she left and return it to them, and he would have to marry Ruth and keep the line alive.

Ruth had lost her husband and stood in danger of being cut off from God’s inheritance, yet through Boaz she came into it. Only a man like Boaz, who understood God’s law, obeyed it, and lived humbly, could recognize Ruth for who she was and take her as his wife.

Just as God made a poor widow, doomed to sink forever into the lot of one with no inheritance, an heir of his inheritance, so Christ saved us when we were bound by Satan and headed for hell, and made us heirs of an eternal inheritance. Jesus came to his people as their near kinsman. Sinners caught in death could not climb out by themselves; Jesus gave himself up for them, and like Boaz, he rescued them with an absolute grace and love.

From now on, Naomi and Ruth will live in gratitude for Boaz’s love and what it cost him, because nothing they could offer would ever be thanks enough to the man who showed grace and love to poor widows no better off than the dead, and who made a way for them to receive an inheritance. Boaz poured out his love on them without stint, from wealth he had labored all his life to gather. They must obey him and live by faith with all their strength, so that the love he showed them is never watered down.

Ruth 2:22

22Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his maidens, and that they not meet you in any other field.”

Naomi had a reason for telling Ruth never to go from Boaz’s field to any other. Even if more grain had fallen in some other field, leaving the man who could redeem their inheritance would be a foolish choice. If she left Boaz over a small temptation, she could not receive the everlasting inheritance. Only by staying in Boaz’s field could Ruth have his protection, and then Boaz would become the near kinsman for them both.

We, too, must never leave the church where Christ is at work, because Christ, the head, saves our souls and keeps us from stumbling and falling in the world. We are safest in the church he built by his grace, among those who love the Lord and serve him faithfully. Of course, the world’s fields look far richer than Christ’s, and it may seem that only out in the world can we eat well and live well.

But this is what we must understand: Satan, the master of this world, will never be a Christ or a Boaz to us. He lures us into his field as though he will give us plenty to eat, but the moment we abandon Christ and go to him, he makes slaves of us. If we stay in Christ’s field, though, then just as Ruth became Boaz’s wife and enjoyed all he had as her own, we can live safe and at peace in bright light, in the love Jesus has given us.

Deuteronomy 8:2-3

2You shall remember all the way which Yahweh your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, to prove you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not. 3He humbled you, and allowed you to be hungry, and fed you with manna, which you didn’t know, neither did your fathers know; that he might teach you that man does not live by bread only, but man lives by every word that proceeds out of Yahweh’s mouth.

Scripture tells us that God led Israel along the wilderness road for forty years in order to test them. He humbled and tested them to see whether they would keep his commandments even in hard affliction, and for that reason he told them never to forget those forty years of suffering. The manna Israel ate in their affliction was a blessing and a grace from heaven, beyond human knowing. God gave them this bread from heaven to teach them that they were a people who live not by bread alone, the food of this world, but by the word that comes out of Yahweh’s mouth.

Naomi’s suffering up to now was chiefly the result of her own wrong choice — the sin of leaving Bethlehem. Even so, God had been waiting for her to choose the Kingdom of God by faith. When Naomi and Ruth held fast to the word of God in spite of their hard circumstances, God once again sheltered them within the fence of the Holy Spirit and gave them heaven’s blessing so that they could live in safety. He caused them to meet Boaz, a man no human plan could ever have brought them to; he made it possible for them to recover their inheritance; and he caused their name to live on. Such favor does not come about simply because people make plans and intend them. God’s blessing, after all, is grace given to those who do their utmost to live by the word and who long for his Kingdom with all their hearts.

If Israel, suffering in the wilderness without even their daily bread, had realized what a precious gift the manna from heaven was and thanked God from the heart, God would have seen that faith, ended their testing in the wilderness, and led them into Canaan sooner. But Israel complained without end; they were proud and ungrateful. We who belong to God, however, can enjoy peace and rest only when we have a faith that gives thanks in all things.

To our eyes, Naomi chose Bethlehem only because she had no other way to survive. Yet God saw the small faith of Naomi and Ruth and was at work to save their souls.

As more years went by and Naomi looked back over her life, she would have confessed that all of it had been God’s leading, his grace, and his love. It may have seemed that she chose Moab and then chose Bethlehem again, but in the end she must have come to confess that she had returned to a place of blessing because God had not forsaken her.

Those who belong to God are people who have met Christ, the near kinsman, and received the blessing of heaven. God has always, without changing and without stint, given his people the gift of Christ. Now those who have received this gift from heaven will either enjoy that blessing or have it taken from them, depending on their faith — and the choice is theirs. Naomi made a foolish choice at first, but through hard times she heard God’s voice and returned to her true home. She came back empty-handed, having lost to the world every good thing God had entrusted to her; yet God saw her faith, her eyes turned toward him, and through Ruth he restored everything that had been taken from her.

God’s blessing was like a miracle, beyond anything people could imagine. Naomi had lost her husband, but God became her husband; she had lost her sons, but he made Boaz a son to her; with husband and sons gone, her line had been cut off, but through Boaz and Ruth he caused it to continue. And the blessing was not only spiritual. Boaz’s becoming the near kinsman and recovering all the property meant that Naomi could spend her old age in peace, and Ruth, as Boaz’s wife, lived in comfort and cared for her mother-in-law.

The blessing God gives may not be the blessing we have in mind. Naomi’s story shows why: she wanted a happy life with her husband, her sons, and her daughters-in-law, but God cut away every branch that loved the world and gave her fruit through a branch that grew from the root called Christ.

What blessing are you seeking? Are you hoping that your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter, and plenty of possessions will make you happy? Families must live in faith and love one another. But if God has a far greater plan than the one you have made, he may lead you in a direction completely different from what you had in mind. It may be suffering; it may be success. You must not leave your true home as Naomi did and squander your life on what is empty. For that reason, I hope you will learn the word well, grow in the ability to discern God’s will rightly, and live with sound resolve.

May you hold dear this place where you now hear the word of God, and treasure this time of living in dependence on him. May you have the wisdom to entrust to God the many problems you could never solve on your own, and the fullness that comes from living by his word.

A small matter settled in faith can change your life, and a small faith that strives to endure can bring you marvelous blessings from heaven. Only when a faith matured by the word of God stands firm at the center of your life can you take hold of every blessing God gives without letting any slip away. And only then can you overthrow the schemes of Satan, who is always watching for a chance to make you fall.

Let us be sons and daughters who strive and persevere to live by the word of God. Even if the world’s fields look rich, may you never turn aside to them, but stand firm in faith in Christ’s field alone.