THE TALE OF OPEN MINDED WOMEN.
“Don’t call me Naomi, she told them. Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life bitter” (Ruth 1:20)
This satire style story of Ruth and Naomi is just too good to be true.
If Ruth didn’t appear in the ancestry/family tree of King David and consequently the Messiah Jesus Christ, I would pass this as a work of fiction, but this piece has historical evidence.
Naomi and Ruth, a combination of Mother and daughter in law who are both widows are to survive in a male dominated world, gives birth to a generation of OPEN MINDED WOMEN.
Bitterness is often viewed as a weakness, but don’t you dare underestimate the power of a broken bitter woman who has lost everything.
When Hannah was bitter, she turned to God in the temple. When Naomi was bitter she began to think out of the box.
The first thing she did when she returned was to change her name.
The woman that left was Naomi, but this returning woman is Mara (which means bitter).
The name Naomi means pleasant. There are things that Naomi (pleasant) can’t do that only Mara (bitter) can do.
As Naomi she has to be pleasant to her friends, men and to the legal system that favours males over females. But as Mara (bitter) she doesn’t care how anyone thinks, she is a woman that must survive.
What is at stake Lawrence?
Firstly, Naomi having lost her husband and her two sons, she is concerned about the extinction of the family name. The particular family line without a male survivor will forever be forgotten.
Secondly, the family inheritance needs to be redeemed, and it can only be administered by a male child.
Lawrence, what are Naomi’s options?
She has to use unorthodox means of going around the law to find loopholes that she can capitalize on.
The available legal options does not work in her favour. She is basically looking for two things here;
firstly; she is looking for a Progenitor.
'Progenitor' is a legal term that defines a brother of a dead man who has to perform a duty not a right by having sexual intercourse with the widow of his late brother in order to produce the male child.
The duty of the progenitor ends when the widow has produced a male child.
Therefore, there is nothing so romantic about this duty the way the story of Ruth and Boaz is portrayed.
The Ruth-Boaz romantic marriage seems to take a complete different route to the stipulations in the law. (Deuteronomy 25: 1-10).
Because Boaz was not the living brother of Ruth’s husband. The living brother to Ruth’s husband is also dead.
Secondly; Naomi is looking for a redeemer to which the Book of Ruth seems to favour or the title 'redeemer' for Boaz. The duty of the redeemer was restoration.
When a clay jar is broken for example, the duty of the redeemer is to restore the clay jar to it’s original glory.
Other terms to describe the redeemer are avenger or counselor.
Boaz’s duty therefore as a redeemer is to restore the inheritance belonging to Naomi that was lost due to the death of her husband and sons.
In contrast with Esther whose Jewishness is emphasized, Ruth’s foreignness is emphasized.
But it is not just her foreignness that the tale emphasizes but her being a Moabitess woman.
Again if you are a critical person like me you will begin to ask why the constant reference to her as a Moabitess?
There was a time when our little beach town of Muizenberg here in Cape Town was a place for foreigners from different parts of the World.
But there are people who until now say there was a time that Muizenberg was full of Nigerians.
Why would a people push the ‘Nigeria-ness’ in the description of foreigners?
It is to advance a particular narrative that paints the Nigerians in a bad way than other nationalities in Cape Town.
The scandalous question, “Has Ruth the Moabitess woman become the example of morality among women in Israel?”. How is Ruth a role model & exemplary woman?
While there is so much negativity around Nigerians, I personally have a Nigerian family that I look up to, admire as my mentor.
What then distinguishes Ruth from that bad name of the nation of Moab? “……no Ammonite or Moabite should be admitted in the assembly of God” (Nehemiah 13: 1).
Strangely a nationality that is not allowed in the assembly of God, has produced a woman who through marriage has become part of the family line of King David, and consequently Jesus Christ.
The favour Ruth receives, is based on how good she took care of her Mother in law.
Naomi will not fold her arms and allow her family’s inheritance to be swept from under her nose 👃.
In a very shrewd way she begins to think like a man. What is the end game of this fight for the inheritance?
She needs to be pregnant! Yes, Naomi needs to carry forth a male-child so that the inheritance can legally be hers.
The Boaz we know is not the first in line as a #kinsman redeemer.
“At this, the kinsman-redeemer said, then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate. You redeem it yourself, I cannot do it” (4: 6).
I defined the redeemer as one who restores, once redeemed the piece of real estate goes back to Elimelech’s widow.
The way they will rob the widow of her inheritance is simply to refuse to redeem it.
Once she is dead too, then the kinsman will redeem it for himself.
Fate took Ruth to Boaz’s field, and this fate #ignited hope for Naomi.
“So Boaz said to Ruth, my daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here….” (2:8).
Naomi knows the struggle among young widows. Most younger men will not risk their estate by producing an heir with Ruth.
However, Boaz is not a young man. He is old enough to be on the same WhatsApp group with Naomi.
But rich and powerful old men are not attracted to women of their age, the younger and beautiful the better, he has resources and connections.
Boaz calls Ruth my #daughter, Naomi also calls Ruth my daughter.
Naomi imagines herself with Boaz, she is dreaming herself having bathed, wore a nice perfume to #entice Boaz by dressing to kill.
She imagines herself in Boaz's bed uncovering his feet.
Allow me to be brutally honest here friends by saying men in those days never wore pants with zips.
Or shirts with buttons for a woman to unbutton.
The only way you can begin to undress a man is to go down to uncover his feet, and maybe all the way up.
Naomi imagines herself getting pregnant with Boaz and producing a male child. Then she had to wake herself up from her day dreaming!
She is too old, and might never carry a child. She needs to go to Boaz in a young beautiful body, and you guessed right, she picked Ruth as her #substitute womb.
“Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. The women living there said, Naomi has a son. And she named him Obed.
He was the father of Jesse, the father of David”.
Like the #heroic stories these two women made it from #rags to riches, in defiance of the system that favored male-chauvinists, to become the greatest women in the ancestry of Christ.
Naomi and Ruth desperate poor widows exploited the weakness in Boaz, used his particular liking in Ruth to have a double victory.
Ruth the young widow is married to the most powerful man Boaz, and Naomi received a male heir to secure her family inheritance.
It has to be clear that in legal terms, Obed is the son of Elimelech and Naomi.
But he is also the son of Boaz and Ruth. Obed will therefore legally obtain two inheritance, one from Boaz, and the other from Elimelech,
What a profitable ingenuity of two desparate bitter widows whose bitter lives turns better when women work with one another instead of working against each other.
LAWRENCE MUSUNTE
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