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Bible - OT - Ruth: Eucharistic meditation

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2 Chronicles 3:1: Solomon began to build the house of Yahweh in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had prepared, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

Naomi gives Ruth specific instructions for her approach to Boaz: “Wash your clothes, anoint yourself, put on your best clothes, and go down to the threshing floor” (3:3).

Ruth adorns herself as a bride, but she also dresses herself as a priest.

When he ordained Aaron as priest, Moses washed him, anointed him with oil, and invested him with his best clothes, the garments of glory and beauty in which Aaron ministered in the tabernacle.

The setting of Ruth’s encounter with Boaz also evokes the temple. As 2 Chronicles says, the temple was built on the piece of property that David purchased from Araunah or Ornan, the threshing floor on Mount Moriah.

Ruth prepares like a priest in order to approach her husband on the threshing floor. Israelites reading Ruth after the building of the temple would think of the temple and its worship.

This gives us a double picture of what happens in worship. On the one hand, the threshing floor is the place where wheat and chaff are separated. God is sifting and separating us every week. He separates us from our sins, but He also sits enthroned as the King before whom we pass in review. In worship, He is separating sheep from goats, tares from wheat.

On the other hand, worship at the threshing floor means that worship occurs at a trysting place. Ruth seeks a husband on the threshing floor near Bethlehem, and Israel sought her husband Yahweh at the temple built on a threshing floor.

We too come to worship, washing, anointed, and clothed by our baptisms, and we come to seek our husband. We are adorned as priests, and as the bride. We come to this table to rejoice in the marriage supper of the lamb. As we approach at His feet, He covers us with the wing of His robe, He promises to be our protector, provider, redeemer, and He sends us away full, with the assurance that He will complete the work He began in us.

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 7:47 am

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Bible - OT - Ruth: Eucharistic meditation

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