Social minefields
I don't suppose Ruth fully understood what was going on. This was not her home territory and other people's cultural practices often seem very obscure. Nor does the 21st-century reader have many clues as to what Naomi was setting up. The practice of kinship redemption of land and the practice of levirate marriage may be relevant here (Deuteronomy 25:5-10 and Leviticus 25:24-25), but in the time of the judges, access to the clear instructions of the law had probably given way to much less precise folk memories. It all looks very compromising - the powerful boss and the young widow who relied on him for food lying together on the dark threshing floor.
In our time, with looser networks and far fewer constraints of law and custom, the sexual politics of casual attraction, finding partners and sometimes marrying them, can seem as difficult and as risky as Ruth's night-time adventure. For the young in particular navigating the ambiguities of sexual attraction and peer group 'etiquette' can seem particularly fraught.
However, in our story Boaz took care of Ruth, telling her carefully just what would happen next to ensure her security and that of her dead husband's inheritance and then making sure that she left the threshing floor without being spotted by those who could damage her reputation (and his).
Boaz had the power to call the shots, but he swiftly dealt with the situation to protect a subordinate. Whether it is teachers with students, health care professionals with patients or people in political power with interns, or simply the more confident with the shy, we are our brothers' and sisters' keepers. And some of the responsibility, surely, for ensuring that no one takes advantage of the young, the stranger and the vulnerable in our social networkings, rests with those who have inside knowledge of the culture and who are willing to pull back and to advise others to pull back when sexual attraction (and alcohol) loosens inhibitions.
As our young move out into new challenging worlds, we pray for their protection, as Naomi did, and we pray for protectors, like Boaz, who will not take advantage of them.
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