Humility and Trembling before God in Book of Ruth
Humility and Trembling Before God in Book of Ruth
Jaroslava Halper
Upon reading the Book of Ruth on Shavuot a couple of days ago I was struck by two traits exhibited by the main protagonists, Naomi, Ruth and Boaz. The two traits are humility and trembling before God. From this we should immediately recognize that we are dealing with righteous people. What can we learn from each of the three main figures?
When Naomi’s husband and two sons die in Moab she is left alone with her two Moabite daughters-in-law. She does not have any family and no ties to Moab so she decides to go back to her people in Bethlehem in the land of Judah. As she realizes that it would be difficult for her daughters-in-law to live among foreigners, she encourages them to go back to their respective families. One woman agrees and goes back, the other, Ruth refuses to leave Naomi saying that “your God is my God” and that she will stay with Naomi for better or worse. Both Naomi and Ruth exhibit great humility, Naomi because she does not want to force the daughters-in-law to accompany her to a place that was unknown to them and potentially hostile and Ruth because she decided to convert to Judaism and accept all what this step entails. She simply proclaims that Naomi’s God is her God, a simple but all encompassing statement of conversion, still used by people today during their conversion, though the conversion process has become much more protracted and complicated.
Once Naomi and Ruth get to Bethlehem, they have no options to earn livelihood. Ruth decides to go and glean (collect) leftovers left on the fields during barley harvest. By chance she chooses fields that belonged to Boaz, a well regarded and affluent man, who also happened to be a close relative of Elimelech, the deceased husband of Naomi. Ruth follows the workers and is noticed not only by the field men but also by Boaz who takes liking to her and encourages her to stay on to gather more barley and, then, wheat. He tells his workers to leave more sheaves for her to collect and warns them not to molest her.
Appreciating Boaz’s extraordinary generosity to Ruth, Naomi tries to assure for her a safe and respectable future. She tells Ruth that Boaz, as their relative, is Ruth’s redeemer. As such, he has the right to marry her and receive Elimelech’s inheritance. Naomi instructs Ruth to wait for Boaz to fall asleep after a feast celebrating the end of the harvest. She should then reveal herself as Boaz’s kin and remind him that he is a redeemer. And as Boaz is a righteous and God-fearing man he promises Ruth to take care of it, but because there is another relative/potential redeemer he needs to ask that man. The other man declines, and Boaz does the right thing by marrying Ruth (though many feminists will object calling a levirate marriage and haggling with another redeemer over the bride a righteous act). The Megillah ends with a brief genealogy: Ruth gives birth to boy named Obed who becomes the father of Jesse, the father of David. And Melech David is of course the composer of Psalms (Tehilim), a perfect example of humility and trembling before God.
Perhaps the symbolism of humility and trembling before God is applicable to the acceptance of Torah at Mount Sinai. The usually stubborn and rebellious people called Jews were trying Moses’ patience and defying his anger that led to the destruction of the first set of tablets. After the event Jews had finally realized their sin and that they should have kept their humility and trust. They became also aware that there is a special task for Jews to be a light among nations. Possibly to their own surprise they recognized how unique this was, they became humble and trembling. Well, as we know that did not last for long.
We can learn humility from the Book of Ruth as well. The old Tzaddikim and Rabbis living in shtetls of Poland and Ukraine tried to instill humility and trembling into their congregants and beyond. And they were successful, likely to their own detriment as many European Jews perished in pogroms and later in the Holocaust. Many survivors of the October 7 massacre exhibit remarkable humility. That does not mean that all Israelis are going in their footsteps, and maybe they cannot and they should not during the ongoing war and rise in global antisemitism. But teenagers marauding through Jerusalem on Jerusalem (Flag) Day and clamoring for “Death to Arabs’ are neither humble nor trembling, where are their parents and teachers to teach and rebuke them? The same applies to Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister of Israel, likely never learned or even heard of humility or trembling before God judging from his outrageous tantrum vis a vis the unwanted visitors from the latest so called Gaza flotilla. My hope is that people, specifically Jews will learn from these two examples of inappropriate behavior and perhaps will go back to reading Book of Ruth.
