i
Boaz says: The Lord be with you to his workers who are with him in the field.
They answer him back: The Lord bless you.
*
Naomi, Elimelech’s wife, says: The Lord do kindness with you, to her daughters-in-law, as she sends them away from her forever.
Sending her daughters-in-law away, she invokes the Lord.
ii
Elimelech and his family are rich. They leave the
people Israel behind during a time of famine. And they perish in
squalor, away in a foreign land.
*
Boaz, Elimelech’s kinsman, stays with the people in that famine. He remains wealthy among the people.
iii
Often, people think that there is a divide between their ways with God and their ways with other people.
But really, there is no division.
That is one lesson of the Book of Ruth.