Ruth 2:7
And she said, I pray you, let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves: so she came, and hath continued even from the morning until now, that she tarried a little in the house. And she said, I pray you, let me glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves: so she came, and hath continued even from the morning until now, that she tarried a little in the house.
Ruth 2:7 belongs to the brief, beautiful, wonderfully interesting pastoral story of Ruth from the time of the judges, which ends by bringing out the ancestry of the Lord Jesus, into which a Moabite woman is brought. The book containing it was written by Samuel, or in the early days of David, perhaps by Nathan the prophet. It depicts the slow, manual work of ancient agriculture, where Boaz and the gleaners harvest grain with hand tools such as the sickle, cutting the grain down and then binding it into sheaves.
Ruth asked permission to glean and gather after the reapers among the sheaves, gathering grain left behind by them, and continued diligently from morning until now with only a brief rest in the house or shelter. Her humble, small-scale gathering of what others missed illustrates seeking people overlooked by the church and bringing them into its care.
As an image of spiritual labor in the harvest, gleaning shows that even a latecomer can join in and that small, steady efforts are worthwhile. Cutting down the grain is not enough without binding it, which means gathering loose material into Sabbath-schools, prayer-meetings, missionary associations, and churches, bringing out undeveloped followers of Christ and organizing the idle reserve into active companies, regiments, battalions, sharpshooters, artillerymen, infantry, sappers and miners, until every stronghold and castle of sin is taken for King Immanuel. Workers in this gleaning are urged to persist through hardship, trusting that their labor will receive an eternal reward.