1   Now Naomi had a kinsman on her husband's side, a well-to-do man of the family of Elimelech; his name was Boaz. 2   Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, ‘May I go out to the cornfields and glean behind anyone who will grant me that favour?’ ‘Yes, go, my daughter’, she replied. 3   So Ruth went gleaning in the fields behind the reapers. As it happened, she was in that strip of the fields which belonged to Boaz of Elimelech's family, 4   and there was Boaz coming out from Bethlehem. He greeted the reapers, saying, ‘The Lord be with you’; and they replied, ‘The Lord bless you.’ 5   Then he asked his servant in charge of the reapers, ‘Whose girl is this?’ 6   ‘She is a Moabite girl’, the servant answered, ‘who has just come back with Naomi from the Moabite country. 7   She asked if she might glean and gather among the swathes behind the reapers. She came and has been on her feet with hardly a moment's rest ^note from daybreak till now.’ 8   Then Boaz said to Ruth, ‘Listen to me, my daughter: do not go and glean in any other field, and do not look any further, but keep close to my girls. 9   Watch where the men reap, and follow the gleaners; I have given them orders not to molest you. If you are thirsty, go and drink from the jars the men have filled.’ 10   She fell prostrate before him and said, ‘Why are you so kind as to take notice of me when I am only a foreigner?’ 11   Boaz answered, ‘They have told me all that you have done for your mother-in-law since your husband's death, how you left your father and mother and the land of your birth, and came to a people you did not know before. 12   The Lord reward your deed; may the Lord the God of Israel, under

Ruth and Boaz whose wings you have come to take refuge, give you all that you deserve.’ 13   ‘Indeed, sir,’ she said, ‘you have eased my mind and spoken kindly to me; may I ask you as a favour not to treat me only as one of your slave-girls?’ ^note 14   When meal-time came round, Boaz said to her, ‘Come here and have something to eat, and dip your bread into the sour wine.’ So she sat beside the reapers, and he passed her some roasted grain. 15   She ate all she wanted and still had some left over. When she got up to glean, Boaz gave the men orders. ‘She’, he said, ‘may glean even among the sheaves; do not scold her. 16   Or you may even pull out some corn from the bundles and leave it for her to glean, without reproving her.’

17   So Ruth gleaned in the field till evening, and when she beat out what she had gleaned, it came to about a bushel ^note of barley. 18   She took it up and went into the town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gleaned. Then Ruth brought out what she had saved from her meal and gave it to her. 19   Her mother-in-law asked her, ‘Where did you glean today? Which way did you go? Blessings on the man who kindly took notice of you.’ So she told her mother-in-law whom she had been working with. ‘The man with whom I worked today’, she said, ‘is called Boaz.’ 20   ‘Blessings on him from the Lord’, said Naomi. ‘The Lord has kept faith with the living and the dead. For this man is related to us and is our next-of-kin.’ 21   ‘And what is more,’ said Ruth the Moabitess, ‘he told me to stay close to his men until they had finished all his harvest.’ 22   ‘It is best for you, my daughter,’ Naomi answered, ‘to go out with his girls; let no one catch you in another field.’ 23   So she kept close to his girls, gleaning with them till the end of both barley and wheat harvests; but she lived with her mother-in-law.

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