Ruth 2:23, commentary and pictures

Ruth 2:23 belongs to the beautiful, brief, wonderfully interesting story of Ruth, a little pastoral tale from the time of the judges. That story closes by tracing the ancestry of the Lord Jesus, and into that line a Moabite woman is brought. The verse places Ruth's gleaning fast by the maidens of Boaz through to the end of the barley harvest and the wheat harvest. Those harvests were worked by reapers cutting grain with sickles, as was done in the day of Boaz.

Its wording for the close of those harvests shows that the word rendered ended can mean that a season or period of time has run its course. In that sense it does not imply that a final part of the work itself was performed.

The harvest field of Boaz from Ruth 2:1-23 teaches that it is not enough for some to cut down the grain, but others must bind it into sheaves. Binding the sheaves means gathering loose material and combining it in Sabbath-schools, prayer-meetings, missionary associations, and churches. It means bringing out followers of Christ who have never been brought out. It means organizing the people of God into active companies, regiments, battalions, sharpshooters, artillerymen, infantry, and sappers and miners, instead of leaving them idle in the reserve corps. When all the troops of God are thus in action, the castles and strongholds of sin can be taken for King Immanuel.