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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 257. In the Harvest Field
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In the Harvest Field
1. Ruth is a beautiful character-as beautiful from home as at home, in Bethlehem as in Moab. No sooner do we find her in Bethlehem than we see her in the field of Boaz, gleaning after the reapers. We have not only romance here, but romance wedded to reality, a combination of Mary and Martha. It is Ruth herself who suggests going out to the field to glean, a very lowly task indeed; not the honourable task of reaper, but that of following the reaper and gathering up the fragments, the humble place of the widow and the orphan and the very poor. Under the Jewish law the poor were permitted to glean in any field. It was against the law that the owner of the field should gather all the wheat and barley from the harvest; but the poor were suffered to gather the gleanings. That was their right.
We assign new honour to Ruth for entering these harvest fields. She took her place among the old and the sad and the poor. She was evidently too proud to beg; she was proud enough not even to grumble; but she was not too proud to do the bit of honest work which the great Taskmaster seemed to assign her in His wide household, wherein He bids every one work, with heart or brain or brow of sweat. She was meek and lowly in heart, and accepted the position of one of God's poor, and her eyes waited upon the Lord her God until He had mercy on her.
The fact of Ruth in these fields where the reapers reaped has a place like a fixture on the walls of human memory. The world's vision of her among the corn is so pleasing that it is not allowed to pass away. Men of noble gifts as well as simple children have given their thought of her there some fine riveting; and, near their heart, she is with them to stay. Children unconsciously judge well both in literature and art; they remember best what is best worth remembering; they remember things by the heart; and the child has a picture of Ruth gleaning, in that elect recess of memory where are hung in elfin framing scenes from fairyland and from the enraptured balladry which the universal heart has sanctioned, and around which child-fancy plays with its gentlest wizardry.1 [Note: Armstrong Black, The Book of Ruth, 90.]
2. So Ruth started out one morning to glean; and it happened, says the sacred narrative, that she lighted on the field of Boaz. Perhaps a pious writer would have said that Providence directed her footsteps there; but this writer is not too pious to use the language of common life: “her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz.” She began her work; at noon this rich kinsman came down to the field, and was attracted by the young woman. The fame of Ruth's virtue and piety, of her kindness to Naomi and her devotion to Naomi's God, had preceded her; and Boaz no sooner learned who she was than he treated her with the utmost courtesy and respect, and sent her home laden with corn which she had gleaned.
Ruth's modesty captured the heart of the God-fearing and prosperous farmer Boaz-a modesty that was the outcome of a genuine humility of heart. “I pray you, let me glean, and gather after the reapers among the sheaves”-not claiming it as a right, but looking upon it as a favour. Her grateful and graceful acknowledgment also of the kindness of Boaz when he took notice of the stranger and alien has a fine old-world flavour about it: “Then she fell on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto him, Why have I found grace in thine eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am a stranger?”
Her love, her willing sacrifice, her sublime, beautiful, womanly courage and daring; her cleaving to an aged woman who was bereaved, despoiled, homeless, and who felt herself put away by God-this it was that drew out the fire and the strength of the soul of Boaz, and caused him to name upon Ruth the name of his God: “The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.” So he sets her devotion, the devotion of her pure human heart, in the soft, rosy radiance of his religion, and it burns and shines with the light and colours of all manner of precious stones.
The blessing of Boaz fell on the heart of Ruth like showers on the mown grass. Hitherto she had known only sorrow and shame. No Israelite had recognized her, or helped her, or shown either any appreciation of her noble love for her mother-in-law or any wish to welcome her to the faith and privilege of Israel. To all but Boaz she was simply “the Moabitess”-a stranger to the Covenant, an alien from the Commonwealth. But now the valiant soldier whom all Bethlehem praised, who sat as judge and teacher among his people, blesses her for her goodness, and assures her of the protection and goodwill of the God of Israel.
A man feels in himself the love of praise. Every man does who is not a brute. It is a universal human faculty; Carlyle nicknames it the sixth sense. Who made it? God or the devil? Is it flesh or spirit? A difficult question; because tamed animals grow to possess it in a high degree; and our metaphysic does not yet allow them spirit. But, whichever it be, it cannot be for bad: only bad when misdirected, and not controlled by reason, the faculty which judges between good and evil. Else why has God put His love of praise into the heart of every child which is born into the world, and entwined it into the holiest, filial, and family affections, as the earliest mainspring of good actions? Has God appointed that every child shall be fed first with a necessary lie, and afterwards come to the knowledge of your supposed truth, that the praise of God alone is to be sought? Or are we to believe that the child is intended to be taught as delicately and gradually as possible the painful fact, that the praise of all men is not equally worth having, and to use his critical faculty to discern the praise of good men from the praise of bad, to seek the former and despise the latter? I should say that the last was the more reasonable. And this I will say, that if you bring up any child to care nothing for the praise of its parents, its elders, its pastors, and masters, you may make a fanatic of it, or a shameless cynic: but you will neither make it a man, an Englishman, nor a Christian.1 [Note: Charles Kingsley: His Letters and Memories of his Life, i. 354.]