What does Naomi suggest to her daughter-in-law? When Ruth heard her mother-in-law saying, Our neighbor is a true man, she was reminded of his great kindness and thought to want him [to be] married to her in law, so that she might keep up the memory of the dead. Therefore, she [Naomi] suggests to her that she sleep at Boaz’s feet, not that she might sell her body (for the words of the narrative signify the opposite); rather, she trusts the man’s temperance and judgment. Moreover, the actions corroborate the words.

He praised Ruth’s deed and, moreover, he did not betray temperance, but he kept to the law of nuptial congress.^[1] You show by your deed, he said, that this was not done out of voluptuousness. In fact, you might have gone to those who are young and blooming, with only the intent of enjoying voluptuousness, but you went to the man who stands in place of a father to you. Twice indeed, he calls her daughter.

Unless God’s inspiration had been in Ruth, she would not have said what she said or done what she did. What is praised in her first? A love of the tribe of Israel,^[1] or obedience, or faith? She desired to have sons^[2] out of the seed of Israel and become one of the people of God. Simplicity [is praised] also, because she came in under Boaz’s coverlet voluntarily. She feared neither that he would perhaps spurn her, as a just man might spurn a lascivious woman, nor that he might deceive her and, worse, despise a deceived woman, as many men might have done. But, obeying her mother-in-law’s plans, she confidently believed that God would prosper her action, knowing her conscience, because lust did not push her to it but rather religion was her encouragement.

What, however, is praised in Boaz? Humility, chastity and religion. Humility indeed and chastity, because he did not touch her as a lascivious man would [touch] a girl or abhor her as a chaste man would a lascivious girl, but as soon as he had heard her speak of the law, he ascribed her actions to religion. Nor did he despise her as a rich man would a pauper, nor was he in awe of her, as a mature man might be of a young woman; but, more experienced in faith than in body, he proceeded in the morning to the gate, calling the neighborhood together and prevailing not by the law of kinship to her but, rather, by the favor of being the chosen one of God.^[3]