'You Shall Not Afflict ...'

IN THE DAYS when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion....But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years; and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was bereft of her two sons and her husband.—Ruth 1:1-5

Thus begins one of the most compelling narratives in the scriptures, the story of Ruth. It is a story about a radical change in social status for three women, who suddenly found themselves widows in a culture that had no place for them.

Ruth's love and loyalty for her mother-in-law, Naomi, is perhaps the message most remembered from the tale. After her husband's death, as Naomi set out to return to Bethlehem, her home, she tearfully tried to prod Ruth to remain in Moab, where she could find security in her ties to her people and in the prospect of a new husband. In response, Ruth offered these cherished words: "Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you; for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God; where you die I will die, and there I will be buried" (Ruth 1:16-17).

When Naomi saw that Ruth could not be swayed, the two of them traveled together to Bethlehem. They went to the fields of Boaz, a wealthy kinsman of Naomi. There Ruth gleaned among the ears of grain in order to feed Naomi and herself.

When Boaz came to the fields and saw Ruth among the stalks of grain, he inquired of his servant in charge of the reapers, "Whose maiden is this?" When the servant explained that Ruth was the daughter-in-law of Naomi, Boaz said to her, "Now listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my maidens .... Have I not charged the young men not to molest you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn" (Ruth 2:8-9).

Ruth was deeply touched by this kindness, and equally so by Boaz' invitation to share a meal with him and the others of his house. For his part, Boaz had been moved by Ruth's care for her aging mother-in-law. Ruth gathered up some extra food after the meal, then gleaned in the fields until evening, and returned to Naomi to share all that she had acquired. Naomi was relieved for the protection that Ruth had been granted by Boaz and encouraged her to stay close to Boaz' maidens, which she did until the end of the barley and wheat harvest.

Naomi then began to be concerned about Ruth's future, saying to her, "My daughter, should I not seek a home for you, that it may be well with you? Now is not Boaz our kinsman? See, he is winnowing barley tonight. Wash therefore and anoint yourself, and put on your best clothes and go down to the threshing floor ..." (Ruth 3:1-3).

Ruth did as Naomi had counseled her. After Boaz had eaten and drunk and fallen asleep at the end of a heap of grain, Ruth went and lay near him. At midnight Boaz was startled to roll over and find a woman at his feet. When he groggily asked who she was, Ruth explained that she was there to ask him as next of kin to her deceased husband to perform his duty of marriage to her. Boaz explained that there was a nearer relative who should be offered the first opportunity to marry her, but that if he refused, Boaz would be glad to oblige. So the next morning Boaz went to the city gate, where such business was customarily transacted, and talked with the next of kin in the presence of the elders.

Then he said to the next of kin, "Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land which belonged to our kinsman Elimelech....The day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you are also buying Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of the dead, in order to restore the name of the dead to his inheritance." Then the next of kin said, "...Take my right of redemption for yourself, for I cannot redeem it. "...So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife.

THE POIGNANT STORY reflects kindness, loyalty, and character. Ruth was a compassionate woman, considered by all to be a "woman of worth," whose loyalty to her grieving mother-in-law outweighed considerations of her own security and future. The deep love between the two women, confirmed by the anguished tears that came at the thought of their parting, was the foundation for a relationship that included great sacrifice on the part of Ruth, who left her own people and worked long hours"from early morning ... without resting for even a moment"gleaning in the fields to support herself and Naomi. Boaz too is a kind and likable character, who offered the women the sustenance of his fields, covered Ruth with his protection and invited her to his supper table, and was truly touched at Ruth's expressions of love toward him, a man well beyond her age.

But between the lines of respect and care that flowed between Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz can be found a case study of the victims of a rigidly patriarchal society. Widowhood plunged Ruth and Naomi into the class of the society's most vulnerable individuals.

Widows
In early Israel widowhood was used as an analogy of grief and desolation. The Book of Isaiah compares the period of exile to widowhood, a time of reproach when the people of Israel lived "like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit" (Isaiah 54:6). Lamentations begins by mourning the loss of Jerusalem: "How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become."

The grief of widowhood was not limited to the loss of a husband but included the loss of livelihood itself. Ruth was forced to glean the leftovers in the fields because she had no other option for survival apart from a husband. Early Jewish law demanded that such leftovers be kept on the stalks for the very poorest: "When you reap your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow" (Deuteronomy 24:19).

The phrase "widows and orphans" recurs throughout the scriptures as the paradigm of the most vulnerable and oppressed people in biblical times. The word "fatherless" is often substituted for "orphans," bringing home the point that children without a male parent had no secure means of survival. They are often listed with "sojourners" or "aliens," who also lived outside the normal provisions of Jewish society. Ruth bore the burden of being a widow as well as a foreigner.

TREATMENT OF WIDOWS and their children was often reprehensible. According to scripture, the proud and wicked "slay the widow and the sojourner, and murder the fatherless" (Psalms 94:6); they "feed on the barren childless woman, and do no good to the widow" (Job 24:21). The princes "do not defend the fatherless, and the widow's cause does not come to them" (Isaiah 1:23); they "have been bent on shedding blood....the fatherless and the widow are wronged" (Ezekiel 22:7). The widows and their children, cast off from the normal protections of the society, were defenseless against the violence and exploitation of the wicked and powerful.

Their vulnerability put their very lives at risk and reached every level of their existence. On a political level, women in biblical times were not even counted among persons. They were left out of the official census and considered an afterthought by the numbers keepers at such events as Jesus' feeding of the crowd with the seven loaves of bread and the fish: "Those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children" (Matthew 15:38).

In the Ten Commandments, wives are listed in the 10th among possessions that are not to be coveted: "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's" (Exodus 20:17). Indeed, as the story of Ruth reminds us, women were property to be bought and sold, passed on from father to husband; Boaz' first question upon seeing Ruth, "Whose maiden is this?" was a natural one for the times. Adultery was a most serious crime because it was considered a violation of a man's property rights.

Economically, women were completely dependent on men. As property, they could not own property. Possessions such as fields and herds were passed on to male heirs, and chief among women's functions was to provide those heirs. "Barrenness" or failure to produce male offspring were particular burdens of shame for women.

After a man's death, if no male heir had been produced, the law of levirate marriage prevailed: the man's brother, or next closest kin, would marry his widow to provide heirs and keep his inheritance in the family (Deuteronomy 25:5). This arrangement could be rejected by the man's kin, as in the story of Ruth, but could not be refused by the widow. We can imagine that Ruth was one of the rare women who took this matter into her own hands and one of the fortunate ones who found a kind and responsive husband. As strong a woman as she appears to have been, she recognized that the long-term survival of Naomi and herself depended on her finding a viable relationship with a man.

Divorce was also a decision over which women had no power. Their husbands could put them away for "indecency," relegating them to outcast status outside the protections of the community.

Women of such status by virtue of widowhood or divorce faced vulnerability on a sexual level as well. Three times the story of Ruth mentions her decision to work in Boaz' fields as a choice for protection from being molested. Women on their own were visible targets for rape, as the biblical record shows.

BUT THE SCRIPTURES also make clear that "widows and orphans" were not left without an advocate. "God executes justice for the fatherless and the widow ..." (Deuteronomy 10:18); "The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the sojourners, God upholds the widow and the fatherless" (Psalm 146:8-9).

God's exhortations to the people to become advocates as well for the vulnerable are many: "You shall not afflict any widow or orphan" (Exodus 22:22); "Seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isaiah 1:17); "Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless ..." (Zechariah 7:10). Judgment and promise were tied up in how the people of God treated the poorest among them: "For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow ....then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors for ever" (Jeremiah 7:5-7).

Care for widows and orphans was a central sign of faithfulness to God. Not only were reapers instructed to leave grain for the gleaners, "At the end of every three years you shall bring forth all the tithe of your produce...and the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled" (Deuteronomy 14:28-29).

Institutionalized charity became the norm, and this eventually developed in the early church into a collection for maintaining widows and orphans. Care was taken, however, that no undeserving woman receive the charity of the church. The fifth chapter of 1 Timothy is devoted to a lengthy definition of "real widows" and suggests that younger widows should marry and bear children or else they "learn to be idlers, gadding about from house to house, and not only idlers but gossips and busy-bodies, saying what they should not" (1 Timothy 5:13).

The Letter of James, which emphasizes the important marriage between faith and works, places care for the vulnerable at the heart of salvation: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1:27).

BUT THE FAILURES of charity are as evident today in the United States as they were when Ruth and Naomi faced a life of desperation as widows—perhaps more so. At least Ruth found stalks from which to glean what reapers left behind. Today marginalized women are left without even society's crumbs.

Welfare as a system has shifted poor women's dependence from men to government handouts, which shrink with each passing year. A modern population of "widows and orphans" has been created by a system that withholds support when a man is present in the home and that strikes at the roots of the family structure.

The message for us today is one that was delivered by a woman who, like Ruth, was the victim of triple jeopardy. A victim of poverty through Rome's exploitative occupation of her homeland, of racism from the surrounding culture, and sexism by a religious tradition that defined her as property, Mary was chosen to be the vehicle of God's liberation. She delivered the message that has echoed through the centuries.

My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my savior,
For you have regarded the low estate of your handmaiden ...
You have scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,
You have put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted those of low degree;
You have filled the hungry with good things,
And the rich you have sent empty away.
—Luke 1:46-53

The liberation had already begun before Jesus' eyes even saw the light of day. The message of radical social upheaval on the horizon had been entrusted to a woman—a poor Jewish woman. She was already a sign of the good news, a sign of the change that was coming and had already come.

Three decades later Jesus watched as a multitude of people stepped forward and put large sums of money into the treasury of the temple. Then a poor widow came and put in two copper coins, about a penny's worth. And he said to his disciples, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living" (Mark 12:43-44).

The parable is repeated every day as poor women give generously of their whole lives to their children and people around them in need. They have the respect of Jesus, and deserve ours as well, for the sacrifices they make and the burden of vulnerability they bear.

But they do not simply wait for life to bring a better deal. Like the widow of Luke 18, they pray with persistence and hound the judge of history for justice. Jesus responds: "And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night?" (Luke 18:7).

The response is a promise: The day of justice is coming.

Joyce Hollyday was associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.