Ruth 2:17

And she gleaned in the field until the evening, and beat out what she had gleaned, and it was about an ephah of barley. Gathering together her various sheaves, lots, or bundles (see Ruth 2:7 ), she threshed them with some suitable rod or simple 'flail' ( flagellum ), which she had either brought with her in the morning, as part of her equipment as a gleaner, or had obtained at the hut; or perhaps, like many others, she would make use of a convenient stone. Speaking of the village of Huj, near Gaza, Robinson says, "We found the lazy inhabitants still engaged in treading out the barley harvest, which their neighbors had completed long before. Several women were beating out with a stick handfuls of the grain which they seemed to have gleaned . One female was grinding with a hand mill, turning the mill with one hand, and occasionally dropping in the grain with the other". "In the evening," says Dr. W. M. Thomson, "you might see some poor woman or maiden, that had been permitted to glean on her own account, sitting by the roadside, and beating out with a stick or a stone what she had gathered, as Ruth did. I have often watched this process in various parts of the country". The diligent gleaner on Boaz's field found, after threshing, that she had nearly an ephah of barley. It would be a considerable load for a female to curry—about a bushel. Josephus mentions incidentally, in his ' Antiquities' (15:9, 2), that the Hebrew cot or homer was equivalent to ten Attic μέδιμνοι . But as the ephah was exactly the tenth part of a cor or homer, it follows that the Hebrew ephah was equivalent to the Attic μέδιμνος . Moreover, just as the ephah was the tenth part of a homer, so the omer was the tenth part of an ephah ( Exodus 16:36 ); and thus, if an omer of barley would be somewhat equivalent for nutritive purposes to an omer of manna, it would be a sufficient daily allowance for a man (see Exodus 16:16 ). Hence Ruth would take home with her what would suffice for several days' sustenance to Naomi and herself.

HOMILETICS