She Happened Onto the Field

There is a sentence in Ruth 2 that ought to stop anybody who reads the book carefully.

Ruth is a foreigner. She is a Moabite widow who has attached herself to her mother in law and walked into a town where she has no family, no standing, no husband and no claim. It is the barley harvest in Bethlehem, some time in the days when judges ruled, and she goes out to glean, which means walking behind the reapers picking up what they drop, which was the provision the law made for the poor.

And here is how the narrator describes what happened next.

And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers: and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech.Ruth 2:3, King James Version

Her hap was to light on.

That is the old word for chance. Her luck. It happened to be that field. The narrator of a book that is entirely about the providence of God describes the most important morning of Ruth's life as an accident of which direction she turned at the edge of a field.

I love that, and I think it is deliberate, and I want to spend some time on it.

It looked like chance from inside it

The book does not say God led her to that field. It could easily have said that. It says her hap was to light on it.

And that is exactly how it felt from where she was standing, because that is how it always feels from inside. Nobody has ever walked into a field thinking: this is the providence of God arranging my whole future. You walk into a field because it is the nearest field and you need to eat.

You are not unknown here, and Ruth 2 makes the case without ever removing the word chance. The written account keeps her hap in verse three and the whole rest of the book underneath it, and it is the Holy Spirit who holds both without asking anybody to feel the second one.

Now look at what happens when Boaz arrives, because there is a detail here that reorganizes the chapter.

He comes down from Bethlehem, greets his reapers, and asks his foreman a question: Whose damsel is this? He does not know her. She is one more person in a field.

And then, in verse eleven, he says this to her directly.

And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.Ruth 2:11, King James Version

It hath fully been shewed me.

He already knew about her. Before she walked into his field, before he asked whose she was, the whole town had been talking, and what they had been saying was not gossip about a foreigner. It was an account of what she had done for Naomi.

She thought she was anonymous. She was not, and she had not been for some time.

You have been discussed in rooms you were never in, and Ruth 2:11 says it was the account of your faithfulness that was going round. The written word has Boaz reciting her history back to her, and the same Spirit who preserved that speech is the reason a person who feels unknown in a new place is not a stranger to God's arrangements.

And then verse twelve, which is the sentence I want you to leave with.

The LORD recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.Ruth 2:12, King James Version

Under whose wings thou art come to trust.

The picture is a bird covering its young, and it is used all through the Psalms for the shelter of God. Boaz is not saying may you find shelter one day. He says thou art come, past tense. She is already under it. She did not know that when she left Moab and she did not know it that morning at the edge of the field.

You have already come under something rather than being on your way toward it, and Boaz says it in the past tense to a woman who had no idea. Ruth 2:12 says thou art come, and it is His Spirit who reads that tense over somebody who has been feeling like they are still in transit.

There is one more small thing, and it is the most practical kindness in the chapter. Boaz tells her: stay in this field, keep near my young women, I have charged the young men not to touch you, and when you are thirsty go and drink from what they have drawn.

That is safety, work, water and a place, in one speech. He does not give her a promise about her future. He gives her a Tuesday she can survive.

You were handed the ordinary things first, and the largest chapter of that woman's life is mostly about water and a field to stand in. Ruth 2 spends its verses on practical provision rather than on prophecy, and the same Spirit who kept it that plain is the reason nobody has to despise a small arrangement.