Ruth 3:1-5, 4:13-17

 

1) I picked the All Saints reading for last Sunday. The regular reading was the introduction to the story in chapter 1.

2) I've always like the Trible essay in God and the rhetoric of Sexuality

3) Death stalks the characters in chapter 1. Naomi, a female Job (see Janzen's thoughts in his new book on Job) loses to Death,2 sons and a husband. Orpah and Ruth lose husbands and a chance for children by them

4) Where we start off, one could talk about the phases of grief where one starts to reconstruct a new future in the absence of the loved one.

5) One could also choose to emphasize the end, how family issues can ramify into important social considerations down the road.

6) One could speak of the connection of Jesus to Ruth.

7) One could use it to speak about inclusion/exclusion as Ruth was a foreigner. I suppose one could talk about conversion to the faith as well.

8) One could use this to introduce inner-Biblical dialogue, as the story stands against the divorce decree against non-Israelites in Ezra.

9) Ch. 3 Ruth needs security, a safge secure place (manoah)

10) The plan is bold. It is laden with sexual tension, if not power, The bit about sleep, uncovering feet could well be a sexual allusion (Gen. 19, Lev. 18, Ezek. 16, Dt. 28:25) Spread your wing/ cloak kanap goes without saying

11) Nice word play in unocver gala and redeem ga al.

12) Boaz is generous and he works through the system to defeat possible obstacles to marriage to this foreigner.

13) Notice Naomi is herself again and even young again, the oppositie of what she told her duaghters in law in ch. 1

14) Ruth is a eset hayil, a worhty woman, the companion to Boaz a gibbor hayil, often translated as mighty man of valor. Note Boaz was a temple column.

15 So many ways to go with the emptiness, economic, social now being filled.;