Then said Boaz unto Ruth, Hearest thou not, my daughter?
Go not to glean in another field.
Loving-kindness
1. There may be an hearing without an heeding.
2. Loving-kindness to necessitous persons ought not to be shown in word and tongue only, but also in deed and truth (1 John 3:1). Boaz’s kindness was real, as well as verbal. Mouth-mercy and lip-love is good, cheap, and aboundeth everywhere in our age. God is kinder to those that glean in His gospel-fields than ever Boaz was to Ruth; He will not put us off with mouth-mercy only, but will make Himself known by His name Jehovah as well as by His name of God Almighty.
3. God’s gleaners should have their proper and peculiar gospel-fields to glean in. They should not go to glean in the fields of strangers (John 10:5; John 10:8). They have their senses exercised to discern good and evil (Hebrews 5:14). They have a spirit of discerning (1 Corinthians 12:10) whereby they do discern the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). This makes them hate every false way (Psalms 119:104). (C. Ness.)
Let thine eyes be on the field that they do reap.
Harvest lessons
(for the Young):
I. The manifestation of what is hidden in human life. In the early spring the buried seed-corn was completely hidden. You could get no answer to such questions as, What sort? How much? Is it germinating or rotting? The reply would be, Wait. Harvest will reveal. So in human character. Thoughts, and wishes, and life-bias are often concealed. The good, through failure, seems bad; the bad, through hypocrisy, good. There shall be an unveiling. Contact with Christ brings out, in conversion and in judgment, many surprises in human character. “There is nothing hid that shall not be known.”
II. The increase of what is small in human life. What contrast between the seeds and the sheaf. What growth, “some sixty-fold, some an hundred-fold.” So with the greatest thing in human history, Christianity. The babe, becoming the sovereign of the race. So with good and evil in human lives. The thought growing to wish, wish to resolve, resolve to deed, deed to habit, habit to influence that is immeasurable. “Who hath despised the day of small things?”
III. The retribution for what is done in human life. In the destiny of tares and wheat, Christ teaches souls to read their retribution. It is the outcome of the life. Hell and heaven are the perfect outgrowth, the harvest of character. The good shall ripen to glory, the evil to shame. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap: he that soweth to the flesh,” etc.
IV. The passing away of opportunity in human life. Each season gives its own chances.
V. The providence of God over the whole of human life. He cares for human life, and through frosts and summer heats, storms and midnights, matures the Christly soul. “All things work together for good.”(Urijah R. Thomas.)
Have I not charged the young men.--
Masters and servants
1. Here we see that servile natures are most prone and proclive to wrong poor strangers. Indeed, generous spirits disdain to make those the subjects of their cruelty which rather should be the objects of their pity; but it complies with a servile disposition to tyrannise over such poor people as cannot resist them. Like petty brooks pent within a narrow channel, on every dash of rain they are ready to overflow, and wax angry at the apprehension of the smallest distaste.
2. From these words observe, that it is the part of a good master not only to do no harm himself, but also to take order that his servants do none (Genesis 12:20; Genesis 26:11).
3. In these words Boaz doth intimate that if he gave a charge to the contrary none of his servants durst presume once to molest her. If he, a mere earthly master, could procure such obedience to his commands, surely if the Lord of heaven enjoins us anything we ought to do it without any doubt or delay. (T. Fuller, B. D.)