Musings in CMi and the Bible is a 12-part series on each of the 12 Dimensions of Culture of the Cultural Mapping Inventory (CMi). You can find the overview article here. This is part two on the cultural dimension of Relationships.
Do you see relationships as situational, where a friendship is restricted to a few parts of your life, like work or school? Or are relationships universal, where a formed relationship will extend to almost all areas of life?
The book of Ruth is one of the shorter books of the Old Testament. It’s worth spending a few minutes reading the book if you haven’t done so (It’s just over 2,000 words). The events in this book play out at the end of the era of the judges and before the start of the reign of king Saul.
Going Home and Leaving Home
Naomi and Elimelik left Bethlehem in Israel with their sons to escape a brutal famine. They settled in Moab and as they settled, their sons each married a Moabite wife. Fast forward 10 years and Elimelek and both sons have died in Moab without leaving Naomi any grandchildren. As the famine in Israel had subsided, Naomi decides to return to her homeland. Her one daughter-in-law, Orpah, stays behind in Moab and the other one, Ruth, moves with her to Bethlehem. On the same journey, Naomi returns, and Ruth moves to a new, unknown, country.
When Naomi and Ruth arrive in Bethlehem, Naomi’s hometown, they are broke and without means to rebuild their lives. Ruth, who is now an immigrant, goes to glean grain. – In the law of Moses God told the Israelites to not harvest all the grain and to not pick up any ears of grain they dropped on the field. This way the poor could walk up to a field and harvest these leftovers and have something to eat. – This is exactly what Ruth is doing. She gathers her courage and goes to the fields in this strange-to-her land and picks up the grain that is left behind by the harvesters.
It turns out that the field she’s on is from Boaz, and when he comes to check in on his workers, he notices Ruth. The workers give a good report about her, and, in return, he tells his workers to be kind to her and give her the dignity of coming home with a decent amount of grain. – A situational relationship. Ruth is harvesting on Boaz’s field and when harvest season is over, she’ll remember him as a kind man and move on. He’s not part of any other sphere of her life, not even a permanent part of this one sphere of her life.
This is about to change as Noami seeks to set up Ruth for success in her future. Naomi is old and when she dies, there is no-one to take care of Ruth. She is very fond of Ruth, so she starts scheming. She remembers that Boaz, who was kind to Ruth, is actually a relative of Naomi’s late husband and a Guardian-Redeemer. He has duties against the widow of Elimelek, his late relative and also against the widow of his late relative’s late son.
This spins into a great story of Ruth taking initiative, and in a (not so) indirect way, asking Boaz to marry her. Boaz is charmed by her proposal and goes to work to overcome all the legal obstacles to a marriage between him and Ruth. There is another, closer relative who has the first right to redeem the property of Naomi’s late husband, which would include the right to marry Ruth. With skillful communication and negotiation, Boaz overcomes these obstacles, and the happy ending is that Boaz does end up marrying Ruth, and their first-born baby becomes the grandfather of King David.
The situational relationship has become universal.
Published September 22, 2025
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