The Book That God Wrote, Ruth

Hello, it's been a while, sorry for the hiatus, vacation and work called, I'm still dealing with two weeks of no sleep but hey, welcome to the Book of Ruth. This is a short one, the entire book is around two pages. Honestly it's a story I might've completely skipped over if it showed up in something like Judges or Exodus, but since the story is its own book, well it's ensured that I cover it for you guys. Though I might not have actually skipped over it, but that's only because I was given some extra Bible knowledge about ole Ruth (thanks Mom) which I'll talk about when the time comes. See depending on how you interpret a certain word in this story it can turn from a strange little tale into a ... well more noteworthy one. How does one word change so much? Well read on to find out.

Clingy Clingy Lady:

There's this Israelite woman named Naomi and she has two sons, I'd give you the names of her husband and sons but they die in a paragraph so I don't see the point. Oh whoops, spoiler alert: her husband and both her sons die. Anyway, for whatever unintelligible reason, Naomi and her whole family decide to move out to Moab. Remember Moab? I know it's been a long ass time, but they're one of the many groups of people the Israelites have fucked up and been fucked up by throughout the generations. Hey, here's a great idea, why don't we go live in our sworn enemy's land? Oh yeah, great fucking idea, there's no way we'll all get murdered, right? Oh ... whoops, yeah they all die. But hey, Naomi's sons live long enough to marry Moabite women, that's pretty good right? One of these Moabite women (which the Bible affectionately refer to as Moabitesses) is Ruth.

After all the males in her family die, Naomi decides to move back home, but these Moabitesses want to go back with her. Who loves their mother-in-law that much? Ladies, you just got a free pass to tell the old hag to get the fuck on and then remarry some Leviticus breaking Moabite men of your very own (if you know what I mean *growl*). But no, apparently Noami's a pretty cool cat, and they want to go with her, though Naomi doesn't seem to think it's a good idea and tries her best to convince these ladies to stay home with their own people. Well one of these chicks is easy to convince, "Wait, they don't have bacon in Israel? Fuck that, I'm out," but Ruth, Ruth can't be convinced. In fact, Ruth goes so far as to say,

Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me (1:16-18).

Jesus Ruth you're clingy, you know that whole "till death do us part" thing only applies to your husband right? You don't have to give a shit about his mother as far as the rules go. If this is how clingy she is with her mother-in-law, can you imagine how she was with her husband? Fuck my life, that dude probably killed himself, or was smothered by his overbearingly clingy wife. Actually, no, I take it back, now that I think about it, I expect my future wife to act exactly like this. You hear that future wife? When I die you better follow my mother around like a hapless puppy dog love slave, someone's gotta take care of her right? Every man wants that from their wife after they die right? Right?

Anyway, Naomi allows Ruth to follow her around, and carry her stuff, and cook for her and such, I mean hell, you can't argue with crazy right? So back Naomi goes to Israel with Ruth to live out the rest of her life. So, after a little while Ruth decides it'll be a good idea to go out and pick up left over grain in the fields, I think she does this to attract some suitors, which makes sense I guess. What better way to attract dudes than repeatedly bending over to pick things up (well Naomi comes up with a better one later, but we'll get to that). Naomi thinks this is a great idea, provided Ruth stays within certain fields, basically so she wont get raped. They never explicitly say that, but it is so very implied, besides, she'll be repeatedly bending over in dangerous times, best to play it safe. So, Ruth goes and picks up grain in a field owned by a man named Boaz, and lo and behold actually catches the eye of this Boaz when he rides by, man Ruth, your plan worked, like woah.

Well apparently this Boaz fellow is somehow related to Naomi, and with her being a widow there's some kindof crazy way that her husband's line can continue, or his inheritance can be returned if Ruth marries him, I don't really remember, I tend to zone out whenever the Bible starts blabbing about inheritance laws, but somehow if Ruth marries Boaz then it'll be good for both of them, other than the fact that he owns a field, which is good in it's own right. Anywho, Naomi cooks up this crazy plan to ensure that this marriage will happen. She tells Ruth to doll herself up and go down to the threshing floor where Boaz and company are working, then "Don't let him know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, note the place where he is lying. Then go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do (3:3-4)." That's a bizarre plan, does this guy have a foot fetish? Or is this some kind of "haha now you have to marry me" ritual? In any case that's exactly what Ruth does, she goes out to the threshing floor and "Approached quietly, uncovered his feet and lay down (3:7)."

In the middle of the night something wakes Boaz up and he notices a woman sleeping at his feet. "Um who are you?" To which Ruth replies, "I am your servant Ruth ... spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are a kinsman redeemer (3:9)." I'm not quite sure what a kinsman redeemer is but the corner of his garment thing sounds pretty intimate to me, oh right, and so does the sneaking into his bed in the middle of the night, right. Anyway, Boaz is pretty pleased by all this and says that he'll marry her, and "So she lay at his feet until morning, but got up before anyone could be recognized; and he said, 'Don't let it be known that a woman came to the threshing floor.' (3:14)." And then they get married after Boaz does some wheeling and dealing law stuff. Man, so what in the what is going on here? She sneaks into his bed, uncovers his feet, and suddenly he's moving mountains so they can get married. Boaz must have a serious foot fetish yes?

No, well maybe not, you see the word "feet" in the Bible is very often a euphemism for male genitalia. Yeah ... let that one sink in for a second ... Aha there it is, she uncovered his "feet" right, is it starting to make sense now? You might even want to go back and reread some of the previous stuff with that in mind, it really changes everything. Naomi basically told her to sneak into his bed and go to town on his junk, no wonder he was so ecstatic about waking up with Ruth asleep at his "feet." Even then, is being woken up with a blowjob ground for marrying a girl, I mean waking up to a blowjob is great and everything, but seriously? Well, today I would say no, but in those days, if your blowjob girl turned crazy on you, or stopped her morning ritual, then you could just marry some other woman who'd wake you up with with some other friendly sex act. Different times, very different times. Now, I'm not saying that you're supposed to read "feet" here as "man parts" but it's certainly something to think about isn't it? If anything it makes the story a thousand times better, and that's mainly what I care about.

So why do we even care about Ruth? What's the point of this story? In my opinion I think it's that Ruth was a Moabite and she was exposed to the Israelite ways, and decided through her own free will to change to that lifestyle, and in doing so is blessed (Some would argue that she didn't have much of a choice, which there's certainly a case there as well). Seems to me that Naomi was cursed when she moved to enemy territory and was blessed when she returned, but had to use her own ingenuity to get it. To me that's the star of the show here (aside from the crazy Bible sex, which I'm always a fan of), Naomi is a resourceful woman, she knows legally what needs to happen to get what she wants and she devises a plan to get it. Women had so little going for them back then (that is unless you like having lots of babies all the time) and widows even less, so it's nice to see Naomi find a way to get what she deserves, even if the execution is a bit on the demeaning side, although Ruth seemed to want to jump Boaz's bones anyway, so hey, kill two birds with one stone right?

Oh yeah, Ruth also turns out to be the great great grandmother of David, seems that when she switched sides that God decided to bless her line. You remember David right? He was the king of Israel for a while, he wrote all those Psalms you've heard about, he killed this guy

with like zero trouble. Any of this ringing a bell? No? Well you'll get to hear all about him in the next few entries. The very first book of the Bible that was so good they asked for a sequel: 1 Samuel. Where we learn all about David and his struggles with sheep, giants, and Saul; and trust me, it's badass. Until next time dear reader, it's great to be back.