Human Flourishing and the Book of Ruth

Human flourishing is a significant theme in the Scriptures. The Apostle John tells us why God became man and came to earth in Jesus’s own words in John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”^[1] This is not the only nor the ultimate reason why Jesus came. The Apostle John also records Jesus’s reason for coming so that humans might have life to its fullest in John 17:1–2, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.”

Though holding a penultimate position, human flourishing is still a significant theme in the Scriptures. The Apostle John also shows us something of what this flourishing will look like in the eschaton, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev 21:4). In Revelation 22:1–3a, John gives another description of this eschatological flourishing drawn from the Old Testament,

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse.

The NIV rightly provides the subtitle for this section, “Eden Restored.” If protology anticipates eschatology, we should go back to the beginning in our discussion of human flourishing in the book of Ruth. First, we will look at the origin of human flourishing in creation. Second, we will look at human flourishing as the focus of the book of Genesis. Third, we will see how Naomi lost this flourishing. Fourth, we will see how this flourishing was restored to Naomi. Fifth, we will briefly look at the Davidic covenant that flows from the events in the book of Ruth, a covenant like the covenant of creation and the covenant with Abrahman that has human flourishing at its heart.

Human Flourishing: Origin in Creation

Genesis 5:1b–2 provides a summary of the creation account in Genesis 1:1–2:3. It is significant that this summary ignores all of the details in the original creation account except the creation of human beings. Two things are said of these human beings: 1) they were created in God’s image and 2) God blessed them, both taken from Genesis 1:26–28. For the purpose of this paper, our interest is in the latter. What does it mean that God “blessed” humanity?

The verb translated “blessed” is a Piel from the root ברך/brk. We are not interested in the entire semantic range of this verb but only in what it means when deity is the subject and humanity is the object, as is the case in Genesis 5 and 1, a collocation that occurs sixty-five times in the Hebrew Bible. In Genesis 1:28, this verb is followed by the verb “said.” This second verb is a waw consecutive imperfect, functioning epexegetically or as an explanation of the previous verb.^[2] So, we could translate the beginning of Genesis 1:28 with “God blessed them by saying to them….”

God’s blessing is his formative, empowering word (often, with overtones of appointing destiny). It is not an empty pronouncement or simply an expression of wish or goodwill, nor is it a bare command, although the formula of blessing in 1:28 is couched in the imperative (“Be fruitful … increase in number … fill the earth … subdue it.… Rule …”). Rather, the blessing of God has content; it actualizes and enables.^[3]

When God blesses, he “actualizes and enables.” The English verb “bless” can be rather vacuous. The word “empower” has more communicative power in our culture and well captures the sense of the Piel of ברך/brk when God is the subject and people are the object.^[4] When God blessed humanity in the beginning, God empowered humanity to be fruitful, to increase in number, to fill and subdue and rule the earth. Or to put it more succinctly, to flourish.

Human Flourishing: Focus in the Book of Genesis

While it is important to distinguish a word from a concept, it is also important to note one of the hallmarks of Hebrew literary style: the repetition of words.^[5] Some would say that the focus of the book of Genesis is on the kingdom of God, but that is odd given that the word kingdom occurs only two times in the book (Gen 10:10; 20:9) and neither refers to the kingdom of God. Others would say that the focus is on covenant, which does occur twenty-seven times, but this pales in comparison to the repetition of “bless/blessing” in the book. Words from the root ברך/brk occur eighty-eight times in the book, which is hard to ignore when considering the focus of Genesis.

But it is not simply the number of occurrences that is of interest. As seen above, when Moses summarized the creation account in Genesis 5:1–2, one of the two things that he said about the creation of humanity was that God “blessed” them. In addition, it can be argued that Genesis 12:1–3, the call of Abraham, is the thematic text of the book:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”^[6]

Words from the root ברך/brk occur five times in these three thematic verses, so it is hard to miss the main point. Of course, in Genesis 15 God is going to make a covenant with Abraham, but the making of the covenant has to be read in the context of the call of Abraham. One of the goals of the covenant is the blessing of the nations or human flourishing.^[7]

It was noted above that when God blesses humans, he empowers them to flourish. There are numerous specific ways in which God empowers people in the book of Genesis. Still, two outnumber the others by far: God empowers to produce children, and he empowers to produce wealth. This is evident in the original creation story when God blessed humanity by saying to them, “Be fruitful and have dominion over the earth.” Here are two other illustrative texts:

I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her. (Gen 17:16)

The Lord has blessed my master abundantly, and he has become wealthy. He has given him sheep and cattle, silver and gold, male and female servants, and camels and donkeys. (Gen 24:35)

Simply put, the focus of the book of Genesis is the empowering of the line of Abraham to flourish so that eventually “all the families of the earth” will flourish.

Human Flourishing: Loss in the Book of Ruth

The Primary History,^[8] Genesis through Kings (minus the book of Ruth), provides the canonical context in which every other book in the Old Testament must be read. In the Hebrew canon, the Primary History is the foundational story in the Hebrew canon, with the book of Ruth occurring in the third and final section of the canon.^[9] The book of Ruth must be read in the context of the Primary History and the book of Genesis with its focus on human flourishing, specifically in terms of wealth and children.

The book begins on an ominous note: “In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.”^[10] And in just a few verses we read, “both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons…” (Ruth 1:5). So, the story of Naomi starts with a lack of flourishing. She has no grain and no sons, or no wealth and no childen.

The hope of wealth is recorded in the very next verse, “When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them…” (1:6). The word translated “food” is לֶחֶם/lechem. This word means “grain,” and since bread is made out of grain, it is at times translated “bread.” And since bread was a major food, it can be translated as “food.”^[11] As farmers, ancient Israelites had three primary crops: grain, grapes, and olives. This triad frequently occurs as “grain, new wine, and olive oil” (Deut 7:13). Typically, the Hebrew used for this triad is דָּגָן/dagann, תִּירֹשׁ/tirosh, and, שֶׁמֶן/shemen, the first two being synonyms of לֶחֶם/lechem and יַיִן/yayin. The reason for the order of this triad in the literature is owing to the order of the harvest season: first the grain, then the grapes, and finally the olives. Psalm 104:14–15 uses לֶחֶם/lechem, יַיִן/yayin, and שֶׁמֶן/shemen to provide a beautiful summary of God’s provision for humanity:

He makes grass grow for the cattle,

and plants for people to cultivate—

bringing forth grain from the earth,

wine that gladdens human hearts,

oil to make their faces shine—

food (לֶחֶם/lechem) that sustains their hearts. (Author’s translation)

As the lead term, לֶחֶם/lechem can be used as synecdoche for the entirety of agricultural produce, as it is here in the final colon: “food (לֶחֶם/lechem) that sustains their hearts.” So, Naomi has the hope of the restoration of the farmer’s wealth, “grain,” and along with it, wine and oil. At this early stage, however, she has no hope of progeny:

But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? (Ruth 1:12)

Naomi’s story starts with the lack of flourishing.

Human Flourishing: Restoration in the Book of Ruth

Though the story is about Naomi’s loss and restoration, it is titled Ruth because Ruth is the heroine through whom Naomi experiences restoration.^[12] Naomi and Ruth return from Moab just “as the barley harvest was beginning” (Ruth 1:22b). The reference to the barley harvest was promising since it was the first of the grains to be harvested and so indicative of good things to come.

Naomi’s restoration begins when Ruth requests permission to join the gleaners wherever she might find an opportunity and when Naomi grants her request (2:2–3). “As chance would have it,”^[13] Ruth ends up in the field of Boaz, a family member of Naomi’s deceased husband. In the field of Boaz, Ruth experiences extraordinary favor. At mealtime, “She ate all she wanted and had some leftover” (2:14). And then Boaz instructs his field hands to pull out extra stocks from the bundles for her (2:16). The result was that she netted “about an ephah” (Ruth 2:17), somewhere between twenty-five and thirty pounds of barley. Whatever the exact number, “this was an abundant result for the day’s work.”^[14] When Ruth brought Naomi the grain plus what Ruth had left over from mealtime, Naomi was amazed and grateful. The firstfruits of the grain that Naomi had lost in the famine have now been restored.

We will jump from the restoration of grain, over the romance and intrigue of Ruth’s relationship with Boaz, to Ruth 4:13, “So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When he made love to her, the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son” (emphasis added). The author picks up the pace to lightning speed covering over nine months in one brief verse, and with five waw-consecutive verbs^[15] he gets to the point: “she gave birth to a son.”

After the heroine has given birth to the son, she is not mentioned again in the story because the story is Naomi’s as is clear from the fact that the son is Naomi’s. “The women living there said, “Naomi has a son!” (4:17). They had previously said to Naomi,

Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a guardian-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. (Ruth 4:14–15)

The “guardian-redeemer” refers not to Boaz but to the newborn son whose name was Obed (4:17) meaning “one who serves.”^[16] Of Obed it is said, “He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age (4:15). The verb translated “sustain” is used frequently enough with the sense of “to provide food,” as in 1 Kings 17:4 where God commands ravens “to supply you (Elijah) with food there.” Thus, in Obed, Naomi’s restoration of both progeny and grain is complete. Through Ruth and Boaz and Obed, Naomi will once again flourish.

The genealogy at the end of the book picks up on the need for a king from the end of the book of Judges—a king who will empower people to flourish—and pushes the reader forward to the coming of David, who is himself a pointer to the one who will come so that people might flourish (John 10:10). So, we would do well to consider briefly human flourishing and the heart of the covenant with David.

Human Flourishing: Extended in The Covenant with David

I wish to focus on the second half of 2 Samuel 7:19, a half-verse which is challenging as indicated by the wide variety of translations.

• Wooden: “And this is the torah of the man, Lord GOD.”
• KJV: “And is this the manner of man, O Lord God?”
• NASB: “And this is the custom of man, O Lord God.”
• NIV84: “Is this your usual way of dealing with man, O Sovereign Lord?”
• NLT: “Do you deal with everyone this way, O Sovereign Lord?”
• NRSV: “May this be instruction for the people, O Lord God!”
• ESV: “And this is instruction for mankind, O Lord God!”
• TNK: “May that be the law for the people, O Lord God!”
• NIV: “and this decree, Sovereign Lord, is for a mere human!”

Historical context is provided in 2 Samuel 7:1–11a. The Lord had given David rest from all of his enemies, and since David was living in a luxurious palace (בַּיִת/bayit), he thought it only fitting that he should build a luxurious temple (בַּיִת/bayit) for the Lord. The Lord countered this proposal, saying he would build a dynasty (בַּיִת/bayit) for David.

The promise of this covenant indicates that it had both unconditional and conditional elements (2 Sam 7:11b–17). The continuance in perpetuity of the dynasty was unconditionally guaranteed in 2 Sam 7:11b–13 and 2 Sam 7:16. Sandwiched in between is a statement that conditions full participation by given descendants of David on obedience to the stipulations (2 Sam 7:14–15).

2 Samuel 7:18–29 records David’s response to the promise of the covenant. Verse 19b draws out a significant implication of this covenant with these words:

וְזֹאת תּוֹרַת הָאָדָם אֲדֹנָי יהוה

wəzōʾt tôrat hāʾādām ʾădōnāy yhwh

“And this is the torah of the man, Lord GOD.”

My analysis follows that of Walter Kaiser in his Toward an Old Testament Theology.^[17]

While it is possible that this clause is a question, the absence of the interrogative particle at the beginning of the clause makes this dubious and puts the burden of proof on anyone who would argue otherwise. The word “this” in the second half of the verse has the same antecedent as “this” in the first half of the verse, the covenant just established with David and his dynasty in the previous verses. But what is meant by “torah of the man”?

Here תוֹרָה/torah has the sense of “law,” its most frequent sense.^[18] The covenant with David is a law, a divinely constituted ordinance. And “the man” has the generic and collective sense of אָדָם/ʾadam, that is, humanity. But what is the meaning of “of”? In Hebrew grammar, one use of the construct relationship is for “Entity–interested (favored/injured) party,”^[19] what Waltke and O’Connor refer to as the genitive of advantage,^[20] which is equivalent to the dative of interest or advantage in Greek grammar. The sense is that the covenant made with David is for the benefit of not just David, nor his descendants, but all of humanity. Kaiser refers to this as “a charter for humanity.”

Of interest is Psalm 66:5–6, which says, “Come and see what God has done … He turned the sea into dry land ….” For whose benefit did God part the Red Sea? The average Christian who knows something about the Old Testament would say, “for Israel’s benefit.” But the text says that the parting of the waters was among “his awesome deeds for mankind!” (66:5) As God brought Israel through the waters of the Red Sea and into the promised land for the benefit of humanity, so he established a covenant with David as “a charter for humanity.” The covenant with David was a divinely constituted ordinance for the benefit of mankind.

I am not alone in following the argumentation of Kaiser on this half-verse. Consider also comments by Waltke and Dumbrell,

Walt Kaiser plausibly interprets tôrat hāʾādām (2 Sam. 7:19) in David’s response to the covenant by “a charter for humanity” that impacts all nations.^[21]

For while the links are tenuous and need to be pursued more vigorously than is possible in this brief survey, the Davidic covenant as the “charter of humanity” seems to prefigure in political terms the establishment of divine government through a human intermediary, so that the full intentions of the divine purpose for the race, expounded in Gen. 1–2, might be achieved.^[22]

In the beginning, God intended humanity to flourish. And in the covenant made with David, God takes one more step to see the realization of this flourishing.

Conclusion

It is in the context of the theme of human flourishing that human labor finds meaning. This is not to say that human flourishing is the only context for the locus of meaning in human labor but that it is one key context.

In the beginning, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it ….” (Gen 2:15).^[23] “Work is a gift of God, not a punishment for sin. Even before the fall humanity has duties to perform.”^[24] God created humanity to flourish, and from the beginning, work has been a means to that end. In the book of Ruth, we see the work of Boaz, his foreman, his field-hands, and Ruth. The result of this work is not only the flourishing of the workers but also the flourishing of Naomi. And, of course, the flourishing of Naomi results in the birth of David and eventually in the birth of Jesus, who came that humanity might flourish (John 10:10).

Meaning is found in work when we see work as God’s ordained means for our flourishing and for the flourishing of others through us. The Apostle Paul gets at this in another way in 1 Timothy 6:17–18 when he says,

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.

God empowers people to flourish^[25] so that they can enjoy the fruits of their labor and facilitate the flourishing of those who are around them.

List of Abbreviations

BHRG             Merwe, Christo H. J. van der, J. A. Naudé, and J. H. Kroeze. A Biblical Hebrew Reference Grammar: Second Edition. London: T&T Clark, 2017.

CHALOT        Holladay, William L. A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988.

NIDOTTE      VanGemeren, Willem, ed. New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology & Exegesis. 5 vols. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997.

WO                 Waltke, Bruce K., and M. O’Connor. An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990.

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[1] Scripture quotations are taken from the 2011 NIV, unless indicated otherwise.

[2] WO §33.2.2.a. “Sometimes the situation represented by וַ‧ does not succeed the prior one either in time or as a logical consequence; rather it explains the former situation….” See the end of this article for a list of abbrevations.

[3] NIDOTTE 1.758–759 (emphasis added). WO §34.4.c. “The imperative, like the jussive, has uses in which its ordinary force is lost. The figure of heterosis involves the exchange of one grammatical form for another; with the imperative, heterosis creates a promise or prediction to be fulfilled in the future, made more emphatic and vivid than would be the case were the prefix conjugation used….”

[4] We will discuss this in greater detail in the next section, but for now, consider Genesis 24:35; 26:12; Deuteronomy 2:7; Psalm 67:6–7 [MT 67:7–8]; 128:5.

[5] I tell my students that (metaphorically speaking) Hebrew mothers taught their children to repeat their vocabulary so that people would not miss the main point.

[6] Emphasis added.

[7] If space permitted, I would likewise argue that the coming of the kingdom has as one of its goals human flourishing.

[8] The Primary History refers to Genesis through Kings (minus the book of Ruth) as an integrated historical, literary, and theological unit. The absence of Ruth is owing to the fact that the Primary History is based on the Hebrew canon and comprises the Torah and the Former Prophets. See Bruce K Waltke, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 55–61.

[9] See Ryan M. Reeves and Charles Hill, Know How We Got Our Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018); Gregory R. Lanier, A Christian’s Pocket Guide to How We Got the Bible (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2018).

[10] The position of the book of Ruth in the Hellenized canon sets it in temporal sequence with the book of Judges, and the ending of the book of Judges portrays the line of Abraham as anything but flourishing. So, both canonical positions take away any surprise at the theme of flourishing in the book of Ruth.

[11] CHALOT 176.

[12] And in this way Ruth serves as a type of Christ.

[13] Woodenly, the Hebrew clause could be translated as “her happening happened.” The King James Version renders this phrase with, “and her hap was to light on” with “hap” meaning, something that happens unexpectedly or observable cause: “chance or fortune” (the second definition in Merriam-Webster). Of course, as in the book of Esther so in the book of Ruth, nothing happens by chance but is all under divine orchestration. This clause functions somewhat like the Hebrew word הִנֵּה/hinneh, which is used to introduce a clause containing a surprise.

[14] Jan de Waard and Eugene Nida, A Translator’s Handbook on the Book of Ruth, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: United Bible Societies 1991), 38.

[15] BHRG §21.2.1.1, “Wayyiqtōl appears predominantly in narration … where it introduces principal events of the narrative story (foreground of the narration). The wayyiqtōl or waw-consecutive imperfect is thus the backbone of Hebrew narrative.

[16] Hebrew עֹבֵד/obed is a Qal participle of the verbעָבַד , meaning “serve.”

[17] Walter C. Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1978), 152–55.

[18] The NIV translates תּוֹרָה/tôrâ with “law” 171 times out of its 219 occurrences, while the ESV translates with “law” 199 times.

[19] BHRG §25.4.6.4.

[20] WO §9.5.2.e.

[21] Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, 692.

[22] William J. Dumbrell, Covenant and Creation: An Old Testament Covenant Theology, rev. ed. (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2013), 152.

[23] The text also says “to take care of it” in the NIV and “keep it” in the ESV, but these translations miss the point. While these translations lend themselves to an environmentalist reading, the Hebrew verb (שָׁמַר/shamar) in this context refers to the priestly responsibility to maintain the sanctity of the Garden-Sanctuary. See for example, the ESV of Numbers 1:53, “But the Levites shall camp around the tabernacle of the testimony, so that there may be no wrath on the congregation of the people of Israel. And the Levites shall keep guard over the tabernacle of the testimony” (emphasis added). In keeping with this sense of the verb, after God expelled Adam, the first priest, from the garden, God “placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:14, ESV, emphasis added). See Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 87, “work it and take care of it… Elsewhere in the Pentateuch this expression describes activity only of priests. The latter term entails guarding the garden against Satan’s encroachment (see 3:1–5). As priest and guardians of the garden Adam and Eve should have driven out the serpent; instead it drives them out” (emphasis added).

[24] Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, 87.

[25] Similarly, Deuteronomy 8:18 says, “But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.”