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Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side named Boaz. He was a man of standing from the family of Elimelech. 2 Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Let me go out to the fields and gather fallen grain, behind someone in whose sight I may find favour.”
Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” 3 So Ruth left, and she went out began gathering fallen grain left behind by the reapers in the fields. Now it happened that she chanced to come to the portion of a field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech.
4 Just then Boaz arrived from Bethlehem, and he said to the reapers, “The Lord be with you.”
“The Lord bless you,” they replied.
5 Boaz asked his foreman, who was in charge of the reapers, “Whose young woman is that?”
6 His foreman answered, “She is the young Moabite woman who returned with Naomi from the land of Moab. 7 She asked me, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the reapers’. So she came and worked steadily from the morning until now, except for a short rest in the shelter.”
8 Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Listen to me, my daughter. Don’t go to glean in another field, or move on from here, but stay here close to my young women. 9 Watch for the fields they are reaping, and follow after them. I have ordered the young men not to touch you. And when you are thirsty, get a drink from the water jars the young men have filled.”
10 At this, she bowed with her face to the ground and said to him, “Why have I found such favour in your eyes so that you take notice of me, though I am a foreigner?”
11 Boaz answered her, “I have been told of everything that you have done for your mother-in-law since your husband’s death. For you have left your father and mother and the land of your birth, and have come to a people that you did not know before. 12 May the Lord reward you for all you have done! May you receive a full reward from the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.”
13 “You are being very kind to me, my lord,” Ruth answered, “for you have comforted and encouraged your servant—even though I do not have the status of one of your own maidservants.”
14 At mealtime Boaz said to her, “Come over here. Eat some bread, and dip your piece of bread in the vinegar.”
So she sat beside the reapers, and he served her roasted grain. She ate her fill and had some left over. 15 When she had got up to glean, Boaz ordered his young men, “Even if she gleans among the heads of grain, don’t embarrass her. 16 Instead, pull out some of the stalks from the bundles for her, and leave them for her to gather, and don’t rebuke her.”
17 So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. 18 She picked up the grain and carried it back to the town, and she showed her mother-in-law how much she had gleaned. Then she brought out what she had left over after she had eaten enough, and gave it to her.
19 Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who took notice of you!” Then Ruth told her mother-in-law about one of the people she had worked with. “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said to Naomi.
20 Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed of the Lord, who has not forsaken His kindness to the living and to the dead!” And Naomi said to her, “The man is a close relative, one of our kinsman-redeemer.”
21 Then Ruth the Moabitess said, “He even said to me, ‘You should stay close to my young men until they have finished all of my harvest’.”
22 Naomi said to Ruth her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, so that you are not harmed in someone else’s field.”
23 So Ruth stayed close to the servant girls of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvests. And she lived with her mother-in-law.