At length, after days of travel, the two lone women, weary and footsore, arrived at Bethlehem, and all the city was moved about the event, and as they looked into the face of the elder woman and saw the deep lines of sorrow, they said, “Is not this Naomi?” Yes, it was Naomi (which means delightsome), in her youth, before her life became blasted with sorrow and want. In her destitution her name seems to her to be a mockery, and she exclaims, “Call me Mara!” that is, bitterness. She went out with her husband and sons full of hope, now she has returned with only the bitter recollection of three graves in the land of Moab, and herself in abject poverty. No one seemed to have helped Naomi in her sorrow and distress. But Ruth, true to her declaration, clung to Naomi, and bravely took it upon herself to provide for both. It was the time of the barley harvest, and the brave girl went out into the fields to glean after the reapers, a privilege that the law of Moses allowed to the poor of the land. “Her hap” was to enter the field of Boaz. It was a “hap” so far as Ruth was concerned, but back of it was the ordering of Him who is the husband of the widow and the Father of the fatherless. Boaz came into the field, and after the good manners of those times, exchanged pious and kindly salutations with his reapers. Now Boaz was a near kinsman of Ruth’s deceased husband, and a man of wealth and consideration, but of course knew nothing about this Moabitess. However, having learned that she was the companion of Naomi, he generously permitted her to glean among the sheaves, and instructed his reapers to let drop a handful now and then on purpose for her. And so this loving heart gleaned through the hot hours of the day until evening, and then she beat the barley from the straw, and the result proved she had “about an ephah” (over a bushel) of barley. With the result of her day’s labor under her arm, she hastened home, and when Naomi saw it, she asked, “Where hast thou gleaned to-day?” Ruth replied that the name of the man in whose field she had gleaned was Boaz. Naomi loved her beautiful, widowed daughter-in-law; and she was eager for her to have a happy home, claiming in Israel the inheritance of the departed, and so she told Ruth of the relation in which Boaz stood to her, and instructed her to claim at the hands of Boaz that he should perform the part of her husband’s near kinsman, by purchasing the inheritance of Elimelech, and taking her to be his wife. But there was a nearer kinsman than Boaz, and it was necessary that he should have the option of redeeming the inheritance for himself. He, however, declined, fearing to mar his own inheritance. Upon which, with all due solemnity, Boaz took Ruth to be his wife, amidst the blessings and congratulations of their neighbors.