Ruth 2:21

21 Ruth the Moabitess said, "He also told me, 'Stay with my young men until they have finished all of my harvest.' "

Ruth 2:21 Meaning and Commentary

Ruth 2:21

And Ruth the Moabitess said, he said unto me also
Besides the favours he has shown me already, he has given me reason to expect more, for he has given me this strict order:

thou shalt keep fast by my young men, until they have ended all my
harvest;
both barley harvest and wheat harvest; his will was, that she kept following them, and gleaned after them, as long as both harvests lasted. The Septuagint version is, "with my maidens", and which agrees with ( Ruth 2:8 ) , where the order of Boaz is expressed, and with the instructions of Naomi in the next verse, who so understood it; but if we understand it of young men here, there is no contradiction; for both young men and maidens wrought together in the same field, either in reaping or binding up; so that if she kept fast by the one, she also would do the same by the other.

Ruth 2:21 In-Context

19 Then her mother-in-law said to her, "Where did you gather [barley] today, and where did you work? May [the Lord] bless the man who noticed you." Ruth told her mother-in-law about the men she had worked [with] and said, "The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz."

20 Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, "May he be blessed by the Lord, who has not forsaken his kindness to the living or the dead." Naomi continued, "The man is a close relative. He is one of our family redeemers."

21 Ruth the Moabitess said, "He also told me, 'Stay with my young men until they have finished all of my harvest.' "

22 So Naomi said to her daughter-in-law Ruth, "My daughter, it is good for you to work with his young women, so that nothing will happen to you in another field."

23 Ruth stayed close to Boaz's young women and gathered [grain] until the barley and the wheat harvests were finished. And she lived with her mother-in-law.