Ruth 2:16

2:16 Make sure you pull out ¹  ears of grain for her and drop them so she can gather them up. Don’t tell her not to!” ² 

Ruth 3:1

Naomi Instructs Ruth

3:1 At that time, ³  Naomi, her mother-in-law, said to her, “My daughter, I must find a home for you so you will be secure. ⁴ 

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¹ tn The infinitive absolute precedes the finite verb for emphasis. Here שָׁלַל (shalal, “pull out”) is a homonym of the more common Hebrew verb meaning “to plunder.” An Arabic cognate is used of drawing a sword out of a scabbard (see BDB 1021 s.v.).

² tn Heb “do not rebuke her” (so NASB, NRSV); CEV “don’t speak harshly to her”; NLT “don’t give her a hard time.”

³ tn The phrase “sometime later” does not appear in Hebrew but is supplied to mark the implicit shift in time from the events in chapter 2.

⁴ tn Heb “My daughter, should I not seek for you a resting place so that it may go well for you [or which will be good for you]?” The idiomatic, negated rhetorical question is equivalent to an affirmation (see 2:8-9) and has thus been translated in the affirmative (so also NAB, NCV, NRSV, TEV, CEV, NLT).