Rut 3:2

3:2 Now Boaz, with whose female servants you worked, is our close relative. ¹  Look, tonight he is winnowing barley at the threshing floor. ² 

Rut 3:14

3:14 So she slept beside him ³  until morning. She woke up while it was still dark. ⁴  Boaz thought, ⁵  “No one must know that a woman visited the threshing floor.” ⁶ 

[3:2]  ¹ tn Heb “Is not Boaz our close relative, with whose female servants you were?” The idiomatic, negated rhetorical question is equivalent to an affirmation (see Ruth 2:8-9; 3:1) and has thus been translated in the affirmative (so also NCV, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT).

[3:2]  ² tn Heb “look, he is winnowing the barley threshing floor tonight.”

[3:2]  sn Winnowing the threshed grain involved separating the kernels of grain from the straw and chaff. The grain would be thrown into the air, allowing the wind to separate the kernels (see O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel, 65-66). The threshing floor itself was usually located outside town in a place where the prevailing west wind could be used to advantage (Borowski, 62-63).

[3:14]  ³ tc The consonantal text (Kethib) has the singular מַרְגְּלָתַו (margÿlatav, “his leg”), while the marginal reading (Qere) has the plural מַרְגְּלוֹתָיו (margÿlotayv, “his legs”).

[3:14]  tn Heb “[at] his legs.” See the note on the word “legs” in v. 4.

[3:14]  ⁴ tn Heb “and she arose before a man could recognize his companion”; NRSV “before one person could recognize another”; CEV “before daylight.”

[3:14]  ⁵ tn Heb “and he said” (so KJV, NASB, NIV). Some translate “he thought [to himself]” (cf. NCV).

[3:14]  ⁶ tn Heb “let it not be known that the woman came [to] the threshing floor” (NASB similar). The article on הָאִשָּׁה (ha’ishah, “the woman”) is probably dittographic (note the final he on the preceding verb בָאָה [va’ah, “she came”]).