2. One day Ruth, the Moabite foreigner, said to Naomi, “I’m going to work; I’m going out to glean among the sheaves, following after some harvester who will treat me kindly.”Naomi said, “Go ahead, dear daughter.”
5. Boaz asked his young servant who was foreman over the farm hands, “Who is this young woman? Where did she come from?”
17-18. Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. When she threshed out what she had gathered, she ended up with nearly a full sack of barley! She gathered up her gleanings, went back to town, and showed her mother-in-law the results of her day’s work; she also gave her the leftovers from her lunch.
19. Naomi asked her, “So where did you glean today? Whose field? God bless whoever it was who took such good care of you!”Ruth told her mother-in-law, “The man with whom I worked today? His name is Boaz.”
20. Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “Why, God bless that man! God hasn’t quite walked out on us after all! He still loves us, in bad times as well as good!”Naomi went on, “That man, Ruth, is one of our circle of covenant redeemers, a close relative of ours!”
21. Ruth the Moabitess said, “Well, listen to this: He also told me, ‘Stick with my workers until my harvesting is finished.’”
22. Naomi said to Ruth, “That’s wonderful, dear daughter! Do that! You’ll be safe in the company of his young women; no danger now of being raped in some stranger’s field.”
23. So Ruth did it—she stuck close to Boaz’s young women, gleaning in the fields daily until both the barley and wheat harvesting were finished. And she continued living with her mother-in-law.