Ruth 2:4
And, behold, Boaz came from Beth-lehem, and said unto the reapers, The LORD be with you. And they answered him, The LORD bless thee. And, behold, Boaz came from Beth-lehem, and said unto the reapers, The LORD be with you. And they answered him, The LORD bless thee.
The verse belongs to the beautiful brief pastoral story of Ruth from the time of the judges, which closes with the ancestry of Jesus including a Moabite woman, and pictures the simple home life among the children of Israel. It places Boaz coming from Bethlehem into his harvest field with his reapers and company of gleaners, where grain was cut with small sickles, greeting the reapers with an invocation of the Lord and receiving a blessing invoking the Lord in return. The exchange of blessings reveals his habitual relation as an employer to all in his service and proves his comforting words to Ruth were not prompted by selfish motives. It displays kindly courtesy and mutual goodwill between employer and employees, truly different from the ordinary present-day relation when men of power and wealth grind down the laborer, and it furnishes a lesson in such courtesy. The scene of hand harvesting is contrasted with modern harvesting machinery as an example of how much technology and knowledge have increased.
The harvest-field of Boaz with reapers cutting grain pictures the Lord's harvest-field, the work of conversion. Cutting down the grain is preaching the law to make sinners feel guilt and danger so they repent, and cutting alone is not enough. Binding the sheaves is the necessary next step after cutting, gathering loose material and unorganized followers of Christ into Sabbath-schools, prayer-meetings, missionary associations, and churches, organizing the idle reserve into active companies, regiments, and battalions for service under King Immanuel to take the castles of sin.
Ruth's work as a gleaner in the fields is an example of joining in humble labor rather than remaining idle. Gleaners must follow behind the reapers and at the corners of the field to gather the missed handfuls so they are not lost. Those handfuls are souls missed when the church barns were filled, rich and poor and shy, who feel no man cares for their soul. Ruth gathering grain for the eternal garner is the model for willing small work for God, gathering one troubled soul, one prayer, one good deed, and one inviting word at a time.