In a previous essay, I argued that the story which begins with Lot and culminates in Ruth’s great-grandson David follows God’s five-fold pattern of creative work as laid out by Jim Jordan: taking something in hand (in this case, the Abrahamic family), restructuring it, distributing the product of labor, evaluation, and rest.
But God’s pattern of work is not just a scheme for probing the structure of biblical narratives: it is the pattern for man’s work, a structure for probing whether our own work is well done. As such, man’s work includes an extra step: after taking hold of that which will be transformed, we give thanks, just as Jesus gave thanks for the bread and wine before dividing and distributing them.
So what of the story of Ruth? To the extent that the Lot-Ruth-David story is a narrative of God’s work, a word of thanks is unneeded. God is no man’s debtor; he need thank no one.
But to the extent that humans are at work in the story, we do find them expressing thanks.
When Boaz shows kindness to Ruth in the barley field (chapter 2), Ruth thanks him, a fact that’s easy to miss in most translations of Ruth 2:13. “Let me find favour in thy sight, my lord” (KJV) is a good literal translation, but the NJPS (Tanakh) captures the fact that this phrase is an idiom for expressing gratitude, not asking for favor: “You are most kind, my lord.”1
Here Ruth’s gratitude comes just where it is expected in the scene narrated in chapter 2: Ruth has taken her work in hand, beginning to gather barley. Then she thanks Boaz, before continuing to gather, which goes on until evening, when she threshes her gleanings, separating the grain from the hull. She takes the barley home and distributes it to Naomi, whose evaluation is one of joy and blessing on the field owner. Naturally, in the final step, the grain will be made into bread and enjoyed, giving strength for another day’s work.
This work cycle informs our reading of the larger narrative: it is, in a way, the book in miniature, a story of work, provision, and gratitude. So then, in the larger narrative, do we find gratitude expressed to God, the greater giver and provider? We do.
In the seventh and final blessing of the book, it is not a human who is blessed, as in the previous blessings, but the Lord Himself for giving Naomi a grandson, a redeemer.2
But why does the thanks come at the end of the story, after everyone has entered their rest? In Jordan’s scheme, thanksgiving is the second stage, not the sixth.
There are two ways to think about this fact. From one perspective, chapter 4 of Ruth really is an appropriate place for thanks: God’s work is complete; Sabbath is a time of thanksgiving.
From another perspective, the birth of Obed is not a final rest, but the start of a new cycle in the re-creation sequence. This son, now in the hands of Ruth and Boaz and Naomi, will become the grandfather of David, the New Man—another son of Abraham and son of Lot—who brings closure to Israel’s time of anarchy. The women of Bethlehem thank God in anticipation of what will come.
The book of Ruth invites us to engage in its narrative at various levels of completion and scale. The fortunes and doings of humans unfold under the providential disposition of God. The story of a local family finds its place in the continuing narrative of redemption. And not only is this chapter a stage in the larger story, but it recapitulates—and pre-capitulates— the biblical history in which it finds its place. The place of gratitude in this story invites reflection at all these levels. If our natural damnable condition is one of ingratitude (Rom. 1:21), a story of work that begins with gratitude, and of a redemption that culminates in gratitude, is a story where we should find our place, too.
Joshua Jensen translates and teaches the Bible in northeast Cambodia, where he lives with his wife, Amy, and their seven children.
- The same expression—“Let us find favour in thy sight, my lord”— is used by the Egyptians to thank Joseph after he has saved their lives in Gen. 47:25, and nearly the same expression is used by Hannah to thank Eli after his assurance of the Lord’s favor in 1 Sam. 1:18. In neither case is the speaker asking for favor (or more favor, as the NIV translates it). Not coincidentally, across languages, we find that expressions of gratitude often incorporate a word for “favor” or “grace,” as of course we find in Greek. The grammar of thanking, of course, varies across languages, and it should be no surprise that in ancient Hebrew a request-like form is used to express gratitude. ↩︎
- Blessing, of course, is the standard form used for thanking God in the Old Testament.
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