Ruthful
from Cholérique Misandro’s commentary on Ruth, Chapter 3 (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2019, p. 8) —
III. 4 “Watch where he goes to sleep. Go there. He’ll be lying on his side,” Naomi said. “Open his cloak, and lie next to him on your side with your backside to his front. Say you are cold. Ask, ‘Aren’t you cold?’ He will tell you what to do.” (“As if you didn’t know,” Naomi thought.)
Commentary
As always in this commentary, we are interested in what goes unsaid. The stories of women are incomplete unless women fill in the blanks. The blanks include the usual patriarchal innuendos,a but they may also include the contributions that strong women can make to the few stories of strong women we find in the Hebrew Scriptures.b A more literal translation might read, “Then, when he goes to lie down, make sure you know where it is; then, go and uncover his feet and lie down at them; he will tell you what to do.” But such a translation ignores, among other things, that Naomi has other (much more poetic) feet in mind; it also ignores that, however far Ruth has come with her, her mother-in-law hasn’t forgotten that she’s a Moabite; nor has she forgotten where Moabite women come from.
The story is found in Genesis 20. Lot and his family, his wife and daughters, have been allowed to flee from Sodom before God rains fire and brimstone upon it and all of its inhabitants are consumed, the whole city going up like smoke from a factory furnace. And flee they do; only Lot’s wife looks back and for no reason, except that he told none of them to look back, the Lord (Yahweh) turns her into a pillar of salt.
Father and daughter flee first to the village of Zoar,c but they go on from there to live in the hills away from the town, the three in a cave. It is the elder that says to her sister, “Before it’s too late . . . . He’s getting old; there is no other man to have sex with us so we may have sons to berate when they are small and when they grow up to protect us. So, let’s get him drunk, and we can sleep with him - to put it euphemistically - and maybe we’ll get pregnant.” It is the younger that agrees.
So they get their father drunk, and the elder gets into his bed and climbs under his cloak, and - willy-nilly, for he seems to know nothing about it the next morning - she “lies” with him. The same thing the next night. The elder says to the younger, “Your turn”; and the younger agrees. And she gets into his bed and under his cloak, and - willy-nilly, for he seems to know nothing about it the next morning - he gets into her.
And both ces poufliassesd (in the patriarchal narrative) get pregnant. The son of the younger was called Ben-ammi, the forefather of the Ammonites “to this day”; the son of the older was called Moab - the ancestor of all the Moabites from that day to the day Naomi sends Ruth out to climb into the make-shift bed and under the cloak of Boaz. However many the generations, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
We’ll see this when we get to verses 8 and 9, where Ruth carries out Naomi’s plan by going her one better. She doesn’t wait for Boaz to tell her what to do; she tells him what to do.
Notes
a Always only innuendo because they cannot tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, especially if they miss so much of it drunk or asleep.
b The advice women give to women in the stories and the ability of women to read between the lines of stories written by men.
c The Hebrew means something very like “Tiny Town.”
d Hebrew: שלטת אשת־זונת. See Ezekiel 16:30.
07.05.18
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Links to passages exegeted in this and other volumes from Rantrage Press’s Incoherent Series, may be found here.
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