Ruth Lay in the Dust at Midnight and the Shekhinah Fell With Her

The Threshing Floor After Midnight

Naomi gave the instructions with precision. "Wash yourself and put on perfume. Go down to the threshing floor after dark. Do not let the man know you are there until he has finished eating and drinking. When he lies down, go and uncover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do." Ruth said: "everything you say I will do."

She went. The night was warm with the smell of fresh grain. Men slept beside the harvest they had winnowed, guarding it against theft. Boaz ate and drank and his heart was merry, and he lay down at the edge of the heap of grain. Ruth came quietly and uncovered his feet and lay down in the dust. At midnight, he woke with a start and turned, and there was a woman at his feet.

The Night Was Not Safe

Nothing about what Ruth was doing was safe. Naomi had sent her because the family line was collapsing. Elimelech was dead. Mahlon was dead. Chilion was dead. Naomi had come back from Moab with nothing but a foreign daughter-in-law who had refused to leave her. Ruth had followed Naomi into a people and a God that were not hers by birth, had gleaned in Boaz's fields as the poor were permitted to do, had eaten at his table and been treated with unusual kindness. And now here she was at midnight, alone on a threshing floor with a sleeping man, doing something that could be misunderstood in ways that would destroy whatever future remained to her.

She was also, according to the Tikkunei Zohar, doing something cosmic. The thirteenth-century Kabbalistic compilation reads Ruth's body on the ground as the Shekhinah fallen to the lowest place: the divine presence that goes into exile with the people, that descends to wherever they descend, that lies in the dust of foreign fields because that is where Israel has gone and the Shekhinah does not abandon her people to any darkness she will not enter herself.

Dust Belongs to Malkhut

In the Kabbalistic structure of the sefirot, dust belongs to Malkhut, the Kingdom, the lowest divine emanation, the Shekhinah's own domain. When the flow from the upper sefirot is cut off, when the channel between Yesod and Malkhut is blocked, the Shekhinah falls. She does not disappear. She descends to the lowest point available, which in the structure of exile is the dust. Dust is where fallen things land. It is also, for the Tikkunei Zohar, the ground of resurrection: the dust into which Adam was formed, the dust to which he returned, the dust from which the dead will rise at the end of days.

Ruth lying in the dust at Boaz's feet is not merely a widow's desperation. It is the posture of the divine presence at the lowest point of the exile, waiting for the redeemer to wake and recognize his obligation. Boaz is more than a kinsman-redeemer in this reading. He is the figure of Yesod, the Foundation, the sefirah through which divine blessing flows downward. When he wakes and recognizes Ruth and spreads his cloak over her, he is performing the cosmic reconnection: Yesod reaching down to Malkhut, the upper flow restored to the lowest vessel, the Shekhinah lifted from the dust by the one who was always meant to find her there.

What Boaz Said When He Woke

He was afraid when he turned at midnight and found her. He asked who she was. She said: "I am Ruth your servant. Spread your cloak over your maidservant, for you are a redeemer." He did not rebuke her. He said: "blessed are you by the Lord, my daughter. Your kindness now is greater than your first kindness, in that you did not go after young men, rich or poor. Do not be afraid, I will do for you all that you say. The people know you are a woman of valor."

The Tikkunei Zohar reads his words as the words the Holy One speaks to the Shekhinah in her exile: "your faithfulness is acknowledged, your waiting will be answered, I will do all that you require." "Stay until morning." He gives her six measures of barley and tells her not to go back to her mother-in-law empty-handed. The gift is the sign that the exchange has occurred, that Malkhut has received from Yesod, that the Shekhinah is no longer empty at the moment of dawn.